North Carolina

Timeline

1973 — North Carolina rein­states the death penal­ty fol­low­ing Furman v. Georgia.

1974 — The North Carolina leg­is­la­ture enacts a manda­to­ry death penalty statute.

1977 — The U.S. Supreme Court strikes down North Carolina’s manda­to­ry death sen­tenc­ing scheme in Woodson v. North Carolina.

2001 — The Indigent Services Commission is found­ed, ensur­ing that defense coun­sels are prop­er­ly trained, edu­cat­ed, and qual­i­fied. The ISC is respon­si­ble for the allo­ca­tion of resources for experts, inves­ti­ga­tors, and oth­er expens­es incurred in defend­ing a capital trial.

2006 — The Innocence Inquiry Commission is cre­at­ed by the North Carolina General Assembly, respon­si­ble for review­ing inno­cence claims and conducting hearings.

2009 — North Carolina pass­es the Racial Justice Act, which pro­hibits seek­ing or impos­ing the death penal­ty on the basis of race.

2013 — North Carolina leg­is­la­ture repeals the Racial Justice Act.

2015 — North Carolina Supreme Court vacates rul­ings that reduced four death row pris­on­ers’ sen­tences to life with­out parole under the state’s Racial Justice Act.

2018 — North Carolina Supreme Court agrees to hear appeals from three of the four death row pris­on­ers whose sen­tences were reduced and then reinstated.

2019 — North Carolina impos­es first death sen­tence in more than a decade when a cap­i­tal sen­tenc­ing jury votes to sen­tence Seaga Gillard to death.

2019 — North Carolina Supreme Court hears argu­ments on whether the state may retroac­tive­ly apply the leg­isla­tive repeal of the Racial Justice Act in 2013, restor­ing the rights of approx­i­mate­ly 140 death row pris­on­ers seek­ing redress of death sen­tences they claim were affect­ed by racial bias.

2020 — North Carolina Supreme Court restores life sen­tences giv­en to three of the death row pris­on­ers whose sen­tences were reduced and then rein­stat­ed fol­low­ing the 2013 repeal of the Racial Justice Act.

2021 — A North Carolina judge orders pros­e­cu­tors to dis­close decades worth of data per­tain­ing to jury selec­tion in capital cases.

2022 — North Carolina ACLU lawyers file a chal­lenge to the method in which jurors are select­ed, argu­ing that the process of ​“death qual­i­fi­ca­tion” pro­duces racial­ly and sex­u­al­ly unrepresentative juries.

Notable Exonerations

Henry McCollum and Leon Brown, two broth­ers who were con­vict­ed of mur­der and sen­tenced to death in 1984, were freed in 2014 because of evi­dence uncov­ered by the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission. McCollum was 19 and Brown was 15 when they con­fessed to the rape and mur­der of 11-year-old Sabrina Buie. Both men are intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled — McCollum has an IQ in the 60s and Brown has scored as low as 49 on IQ tests. McCollum and Brown have main­tained their inno­cence since their tri­al, say­ing they were unaware they were sign­ing a confession.

Jonathon Hoffman, a black man charged with killing a white man, was tried and con­vict­ed by an all-white jury despite the fact that no phys­i­cal evi­dence con­nect­ed him to the mur­der of Danny Cook. The pros­e­cu­tors in his case with­held evi­dence that was favor­able to Hoffman. Neither the defense attor­ney nor the judge knew of a deal in which pros­e­cu­tors paid Hoffman’s cousin to tes­ti­fy against him — an omis­sion that result­ed in the crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion of Ken Honeycutt and Scott Brewer, the pros­e­cu­tors in the orig­i­nal tri­al. Charges were dis­missed in 2007, after Hoffman had spent 12 years on death row.

Glen Edward Chapman was grant­ed a new tri­al in 2007, due to with­held evi­dence, ​“lost, mis­placed or destroyed” doc­u­ments, the use of weak, cir­cum­stan­tial evi­dence, false tes­ti­mo­ny by the lead inves­ti­ga­tor, and inef­fec­tive assis­tance of defense coun­sel. There was also new infor­ma­tion from a foren­sic pathol­o­gist that raised doubts as to whether the mur­der for which Chapman was con­vict­ed was a homi­cide or caused by an over­dose of drugs. Chapman was released in 2008, when charges against him were dropped.

Levon ​“Bo” Jones’ con­vic­tion was over­turned due to his defense coun­sel’s ​“con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly defi­cient” per­for­mance. In April 2008, short­ly before a retri­al was set to begin, Jones’ new defense team filed an affi­davit in which the star wit­ness from his first tri­al said, ​“Much of what I tes­ti­fied to was sim­ply not true.” Jones spent 15 years on death row, and was released in May 2008

Milestones in Abolition/​Reinstatement

Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1972 deci­sion in Furman v. Georgia, inval­i­dat­ing all death sen­tences nation­wide, the North Carolina Supreme Court reviewed North Carolina’s death penal­ty statute in 1973 in State v. Waddell. The Waddell court held that the uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of North Carolina’s death penal­ty statute could be resolved by sev­er­ing the por­tion of the statute that allowed a jury to rec­om­mend either a life sen­tence or a death sen­tence. The deci­sion there­fore made future death sen­tences manda­to­ry. In 1974, the North Carolina leg­is­la­ture fol­lowed the Waddell deci­sion by enact­ing a manda­to­ry death penalty statute.

Three years lat­er, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down North Carolina’s manda­to­ry death sen­tenc­ing scheme in Woodson v. North Carolina. The North Carolina leg­is­la­ture respond­ed by enact­ing a new death penal­ty statute that took effect on June 1, 1977.

In August 2009, North Carolina passed the Racial Justice Act, which pro­hib­it­ed seek­ing or impos­ing the death penal­ty on the basis of race, includ­ed the use of statewide sta­tis­ti­cal evi­dence to show a pat­tern of racial dis­crim­i­na­tion, and applied retroac­tive­ly for one year.

Kentucky was the first state to pass a Racial Justice Act, though NC’s RJA dif­fered from Kentucky’s as it allowed for retroac­tive appli­ca­tion and also per­mit­ted the use of sta­tis­ti­cal evi­dence to show that race was a ​“sig­nif­i­cant fac­tor in deci­sions to seek or impose the sen­tence of death in the coun­ty, the pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al dis­trict, or the State at large at the time the death sen­tence was sought or imposed.”

In 2013, the leg­is­la­ture repealed the Racial Justice Act. Prior to repeal, four inmates had been grant­ed relief under the act, but those deci­sions were vacat­ed by the North Carolina Supreme Court in December 2015.

North Carolina ​“Firsts”

Indigent Services Commission, cre­at­ed in July, 2001, devel­oped stan­dards gov­ern­ing the qual­i­fi­ca­tions of defense coun­sel, required coun­sel to seek con­sul­ta­tions with the Center for Death Penalty Litigation pri­or to tri­al, took over the respon­si­bil­i­ty of appoint­ing and com­pen­sat­ing coun­sel through the Office of the Capital Defender, pro­vid­ed increased train­ing and super­vi­sion of attor­neys, and took over respon­si­bil­i­ty for allo­cat­ing the resources for experts, inves­ti­ga­tors, and oth­er expens­es incurred in defend­ing a capital trial.

Innocence Inquiry Commission

The North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission is the first of its kind in the nation. The Commission was cre­at­ed by the North Carolina General Assembly in 2006 and began oper­at­ing in 2007. Since then, the Commission has reviewed hun­dreds of inno­cence claims and con­duct­ed mul­ti­ple hear­ings. On February 17, 2010, Gregory Taylor was the first per­son to be exon­er­at­ed by this unique process. Mr. Taylor was declared inno­cent by a pan­el of three judges after serv­ing 17 years for a mur­der that he did not commit.

Resources

• North Carolina Coalition for Alternatives to the Death Penalty
• Center for Death Penalty Litigation
• Department of Corrections
• North Carolina Conference of District Attorneys
• Indigent Defense Services
• Victims’ ser­vices
• The Death Penalty in North Carolina: A Summary of the Data and Scientific Studies by Dr. Matthew Robinson of Appalachian State University
• People of Faith Against the Death Penalty

North Carolina Execution Totals Since 1976