EDITORIALS: Restarting North Carolina Executions Would Be ​“Unjust”

A recent editorial in The News & Observer (Raleigh, NC) has criticized legislative efforts to restart North Carolina’s death penalty as “retrogressive” and “macabre.” The editorial opposes a bill that would allow executions to resume in North Carolina by “expanding the list of medical personnel who can monitor executions.” In 2007, the North Carolina Medical Board said that doctor participation in executions violates professional ethics, effectively blocking any doctors from participating in executions. The new law would allow physician assistants, nurses, and emergency medical technicians to oversee executions in place of a doctor. The editorial said, “The death penalty is unnecessary, unjust and irreversible. Its use now is only an act of vengeance against a few prisoners who happened to be convicted in death penalty states and whose lawyers failed to negotiate the many legal options that could have spared them.” It goes on to criticize the arbitrariness of the death penalty: “The erratic application of the death penalty makes it unfair and its unfairness is dangerously compounded by its finality. Wrongly convicted people could be executed and likely have been.” It concludes, “The state Senate should reject this bill and, if necessary, Gov. Pat McCrory should veto it. Lives, perhaps even innocent lives, will depend on it.”