Entries tagged with “Center for Death Penalty Litigation — North Carolina”
Issues
Oct 07, 2020
Groundbreaking ‘Racist Roots’ Project Exposes Racism Endemic in North Carolina’s Death Penalty
North Carolina’s death penalty is a weapon of social control rooted in a racist past. That is the message of a groundbreaking new collaborative project, Racist Roots: Origins of North Carolina’s Death Penalty, by the Durham-based defense organization Center for Death Penalty Litigation (CDPL). Through essays and academic articles containing in-depth analysis, photographs, archival news-clippings, poetry, and stirring personal narratives, the CDPL staff and a legion of notable contributors…
Issues
Oct 16, 2018
73% of North Carolina’s Death Row Sentenced Under Obsolete Laws, New Report Says
Most of the 142 prisoners on North Carolina’s death row were convicted under obsolete and outdated death-penalty laws and would not have been sentenced to death if tried today, according to a new report by the Center for Death Penalty Litigation. The report by the Durham-based defense organization, titled Unequal Justice: How Obsolete Laws and Unfair Trials Created North Carolina’s Outsized Death Row, says that nearly three-quarters of the prisoners on the nation’s sixth-largest death row were…
Issues
Jun 22, 2015
STUDY: “The Hidden Costs of Wrongful Capital Prosecutions in North Carolina”
A new study by North Carolina’s Center for Death Penalty Litigation examines the financial and human costs of cases in which, “prosecutors sought the death penalty despite a clear lack of evidence, resulting in acquittal or dismissal of charges.” The report found 56 such cases in North Carolina since 1989, in which innocent people spent a total of 112 years spent in jail, with $2.4 million spent in defense costs alone in these weak death penalty cases. The authors compare these cases to those…