After a review of North Carolina’s death penalty, the North Carolina Academy of Trial Lawyers has issued a series of 11 recommendations that aim to address issues of fairness and accuracy in the state’s capital punishment statutes. In addition to recommendations addressing hidden evidence, mistaken eyewitness identifications, discrimination, and unreliable confessions, the group urged North Carolina lawmakers to enact a moratorium on executions while they consider implementing reforms to make the system more reliable. James Exum, former Chief Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court, stated, “The Academy’s analysis includes important questions of legal procedure and process. We should address them to insure that we are doing all we can not only to prevent an innocent person from being executed, but also to protect the public by making sure that the right person is convicted and kept off our streets.” The Academy’s recommendations come as North Carolina’s legislature prepares to consider imposing a moratorium on executions, and just weeks after the exoneration of two North Carolina men who had been wrongly convicted of murder, Alan Gell and Darryl Hunt. Hunt spent 18 years in prison, while Gell had spent many years on death row. (North Carolina Academy of Trial Lawyers Press Release, May 6, 2004) Read the Press Release and Recommendations. See also, Innocence.