For the first time in more than a decade, a jury in Wake County, North Carolina has sen­tenced a defen­dant to death. On March 4, 2019, a cap­i­tal sen­tenc­ing jury vot­ed to impose the death penal­ty upon Seaga Edward Gillard, con­vict­ed of the dou­ble mur­der of a preg­nant pros­ti­tute and her boyfriend, who was assist­ing her in her busi­ness. It was the county’s tenth death-penal­ty tri­al since 2008, but juries had reject­ed a death sen­tence in each of the pre­vi­ous nine cas­es. Prosecutors por­trayed the Caribbean-born Gillard as a man who preyed on sex work­ers and told the jury that the case was about secur­ing ​“max­i­mum justice.”

The sen­tence bucks a trend in North Carolina, where the use of the death penal­ty has declined sig­nif­i­cant­ly over the last decade. Just 14 death sen­tences have been imposed in the state from 2009 – 2018 ­– more than a 90% decline off the peak of 241 death sen­tences imposed from 1991 – 2000 – and North Carolina has not car­ried out an exe­cu­tion since 2006. However, Wake County has con­tin­ued to be an out­lier in the state. The ten Wake County pris­on­ers on North Carolina’s death row at the end of 2012 placed the coun­ty among the 2% of coun­ties that account­ed for 56% of all pris­on­ers on U.S. death rows. Gretchen Engel, exec­u­tive direc­tor of North Carolina’s Center for Death Penalty Litigation crit­i­cized the pros­e­cu­tion as waste­ful and dis­crim­i­na­to­ry. ​“Since tak­ing over as Wake dis­trict attor­ney, Lorrin Freeman has pur­sued the death penal­ty more than any oth­er pros­e­cu­tor in North Carolina, cost­ing tax­pay­ers mil­lions of dol­lars,” Engel said. ​“That is a poor invest­ment, even in this case.”

Wake County has had four cap­i­tal tri­als since Freeman’s elec­tion in 2014, with anoth­er cap­i­tal case in jury selec­tion. Eight of the ten pris­on­ers on the county’s death row are Black, one is Latino, and just one is white, and eight of the ten defen­dants tried cap­i­tal­ly since 2008 have been Black. ​“All it shows is that, if you try ten death penal­ty cas­es in a row and exclude from the jury all the peo­ple who oppose the death penal­ty, you can find a jury that will sen­tence a per­son to death despite the death penal­ty’s doc­u­ment­ed unfair­ness,” Engel said. Although Engel said Gillard com­mit­ted a seri­ous crime for which he should be pun­ished, she ques­tioned whether his crime was ​“the worst of the worst.” In March 2016, Wake County jurors sen­tenced Nathan Holden to life for the dou­ble-mur­der of his ex-wife’s par­ents and attempt­ed mur­der of his ex-wife. In January 2018, in a crime Freeman had called ​“everybody’s worst night­mare,” a jury also sen­tenced Donovan Jevonte Richardson to two life sen­tences for a home break-in that end­ed in a dou­ble mur­der. ​“Wake County jurors have refused to impose the death penal­ty in oth­er dou­ble homi­cide cas­es and even in a case in which the defen­dant was con­vict­ed of mur­der­ing five peo­ple,” Engel said. ​“All today’s ver­dict shows is what we already knew: That the death penal­ty is imposed arbi­trar­i­ly, and dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly on black men.”

(Josh Shaffer, Death sen­tence giv­en to killer who ter­ror­ized sex work­ers, Raleigh News & Observer, March 4, 2019; Alfred Charles, Seaga Gillard sen­tenced to die for 2016 dou­ble mur­der at Raleigh motel, WRAL​.com, March 4, 2019.) See Sentencing.

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