Family Members of Murder Victims Call on North Carolina, Nevada to Commute States’ Death Rows

In North Carolina and Nevada, fam­i­ly mem­bers of mur­der vic­tims are speak­ing out against the death penal­ty, encour­ag­ing offi­cials in both states to com­mute their death row. 

At a press con­fer­ence (pic­tured) out­side the North Carolina governor’s man­sion on December 10, 2022, 19 mem­bers of the North Carolina Coalition for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (NCCADP) Homicide Survivor Engagement Group read a let­ter urg­ing Governor Roy Cooper to abol­ish the death penal­ty and com­mute the sen­tences of the 135 indi­vid­u­als on death row. The let­ter unequiv­o­cal­ly ​“reject[s] the premise that the exe­cu­tion of a per­son, even one who com­mit­ted mur­der, could some­how bring us jus­tice or clo­sure. …Instead, it per­pet­u­ates the violence.” 

“We believe in the dig­ni­ty and worth of every per­son, includ­ing those who have com­mit­ted heinous crimes. We believe in the pos­si­bil­i­ty of redemp­tion for all peo­ple. Death sen­tences do not chal­lenge offend­ers to take respon­si­bil­i­ty or trans­form their lives. Death sen­tences declare them unwor­thy of liv­ing,” con­tin­ued the letter. 

A December 21, 2022 op-ed in the Reno Gazette Journal by Monique Normand echoed the same sen­ti­ments. After the 2017 mur­der of her uncle, Normand’s fam­i­ly opposed the death penal­ty for the per­pe­tra­tor. ​“The death penal­ty is an inef­fec­tive response to crime that nei­ther makes us safer nor brings the legal clo­sure that is so often promised,” she wrote. ​“Half of all death sen­tences in Nevada his­tor­i­cal­ly have been reversed by the courts and there hasn’t been an exe­cu­tion in more than 16 years. It is a false promise to vic­tims that fre­quent­ly inflicts far more trau­ma than healing.” 

Normand also iden­ti­fied sev­er­al oth­er issues with the death penal­ty, includ­ing the cost­ly nature and racial bias. ​“To let a sys­tem that is so dys­func­tion­al and inef­fec­tive con­tin­ue to mas­quer­ade as jus­tice is an insult to Nevadans and many of us who have lost loved ones to mur­der.” Referencing a thwart­ed attempt by out­go­ing Governor Steve Sisolak to com­mute the sen­tences of every­one on Nevada’s death row, she wrote, ​“The Pardons Board would have demon­strat­ed great wis­dom if they had been able to com­mute all death sen­tences to life in prison with­out parole, end­ing the cha­rade that these sen­tences were ever going to be car­ried out. They would have also saved the tax­pay­ers from wast­ing mil­lions of dol­lars which could be rein­vest­ed in vic­tims’ ser­vices and more effec­tive crime pre­ven­tion pro­grams,” she concluded. 

Megan Smith – a mid­dle school teacher whose father and step­moth­er were mur­dered – wrote an op-ed in The Charlotte Observer, expand­ing on the mes­sage of the NCCADP letter. 

“I dis­agree that jus­tice is syn­ony­mous with revenge, which cre­ates more hurt and ignores any mech­a­nism for heal­ing or meet­ing fam­i­lies’ actu­al needs after vio­lence occurs. In fact, the more I learn about this sys­tem, the more I real­ize that it per­pet­u­ates the oppo­site of jus­tice on a statewide and nation­al scale — racism, more vio­lence, eco­nom­ic divi­sion, finan­cial waste for our state in com­par­i­son to life sen­tences, and extreme­ly high stakes mis­takes when the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem makes an errant con­vic­tion,” Smith wrote, ​“To move toward the true def­i­n­i­tion of jus­tice, we must reck­on with the con­di­tions that fos­ter vio­lence and use our resources to instead build strong, sup­port­ive com­mu­ni­ties that pre­vent crime before it hap­pens and address trau­ma after it does. … My stu­dents need a soci­ety that invests its col­lec­tive resources in men­tal health care and oth­er pos­i­tive social pro­grams, not state-sponsored killing.” 

Smith also iden­ti­fied those who would suf­fer because of an exe­cu­tion, such as ​“inno­cent fam­i­ly mem­bers and the prison work­ers who would be asked to car­ry out his exe­cu­tion. Not a sin­gle per­son would be healed.”