Letter to Governor on Commutation of North Carolina’s Death Row

December 6, 2022

The Honorable Roy Cooper
Governor of North Carolina
200 North Blount Road
Raleigh, NC 27601

Re: Commutation of North Carolina’s Demise Row

Pricey Governor Cooper,

We’re attorneys, advocates, organizers, and folks instantly affected by North Carolina’s demise penalty. Please settle for this letter as the primary of many discussions in regards to the demise penalty, which we hope to have

together with your administration within the coming two years. We’re honored to start this course of on behalf of North Carolinians who’ve skilled the traumatic lack of a liked one to homicide.

Enclosed with this cowl letter is a letter signed by North Carolinians who’ve every had a liked one taken by murder. These people consider the demise penalty fails victims’ households, and broadens the ache brought on by violent crime as an alternative of therapeutic it. They urge you to commute the demise sentences of each particular person on North Carolina’s demise row, in order that our state can start to concentrate on public security methods which are truly confirmed to handle crime and scale back violence. We be a part of collectively in asking that, by the top of your time period, you commute the demise sentences of each particular person on demise row.

These letters mark the launch of an ongoing effort to mobilize our state’s residents to influence you that the time has come to handle North Carolina’s outsized demise row. Regardless of our state’s lengthy pause on executions, North Carolina has the nation’s fifth largest demise row, and the resumption of executions stays a relentless risk. As Governor, by granting commutations, you will have the authority to ship the highly effective message that North Carolina is popping the web page on this archaic follow.

Opposition to the demise penalty is constructing across the nation. Final month, Josh Shapiro turned the governor-elect of Pennsylvania after publicly supporting demise penalty abolition. Earlier this 12 months, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine issued execution reprieves and stored his state’s demise penalty on maintain as a result of, in his phrases, it endangers Ohioans. In 2020, Rev. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, who each oppose the demise penalty, had been elected as Georgia’s U.S. Senators. And each Democratic presidential candidate in 2020, together with Joe Biden, declared their help for abolition. In Alabama, Governor Kay Ivey lately halted executions and ordered a “top-to-bottom evaluation” after that state’s third botched execution try prior to now few months.

North Carolinians would help you in granting commutations. A 2019 ballot confirmed that almost 75% of voters on this state reject capital punishment for homicide, and as an alternative help completely different types of punishment. Nationally, a 2021 Gallup Ballot confirmed that 66% of Democrats and 43% of all respondents oppose the demise penalty.

There are compelling causes for this strong and rising public sentiment towards the demise penalty:

• North Carolina’s demise sentences are poisoned by racism. Your Activity Drive for Racial Fairness in Felony Justice (TREC) present in no unsure phrases, “Proof demonstrates that using capital punishment has been tainted by racial bias.” TREC additionally discovered that “North Carolina’s demise penalty prioritizes executions for circumstances with white victims and depends on the sentencing verdicts of juries, lots of which have been all-white, that violate constitutional guidelines concerning jury choice.”

• Demise sentences are a part of North Carolina’s previous, not its future. Virtually the entire folks on demise row in the present day had been tried greater than twenty years in the past beneath vastly completely different public requirements and legal guidelines. Only one unconscionable results of these outdated legal guidelines is, of the 12 identified circumstances wherein harmless folks had been despatched to demise row in North Carolina, 11 are folks of coloration. The TREC report additionally famous that many on North Carolina’s demise row had been despatched there beneath a statute not in drive that required prosecutors to hunt demise sentences in practically each case of first-degree homicide. North Carolina is the one state within the nation to ever have such a regulation, and it was rightly abolished in 2001.
• Having the fifth largest demise row within the nation wastes sources and does nothing to maintain our state secure. There is no such thing as a dependable proof that the demise penalty deters homicide, but it prices taxpayers hundreds of thousands. It’s time for North Carolina to maneuver towards a future wherein we depend on evidence-based methods to cut back violence and nurture communities.

For all of those causes, on December 10, 2022, our Coalition is launching a marketing campaign to construct public help for the commutation of North Carolina’s demise row. We invite you and members of your employees to hitch us.

Over the subsequent two years, we are going to constantly and persistently work to develop our coalition, and to construct public consciousness of the pressing want for the commutation of North Carolina’s demise row. At any time, we welcome dialog together with your administration about how greatest to attain this objective.

It is a ethical concern, a racial justice concern, and a public security concern. North Carolinians deserve a lot greater than the dysfunction, inequity, and trauma that the demise penalty perpetuates. We deserve a public security system rooted in confirmed methods with a observe document of decreasing hurt and violence. We sit up for working towards this objective with you over the subsequent two years.

Sincerely,

Noel Nickle
Government Director
NC Coalition for Options to the Demise Penalty

Megan Smith
Buncombe County Resident
Daughter of fogeys misplaced to homicide

Alfred Rivera
Cabarrus County Resident
North Carolina demise row exoneree
Son of father misplaced to homicide

Pat McCoy
Government Director, Motion NC
Brother of sister misplaced to homicide

The Honorable Vernetta Alston
N.C. Home Consultant, District 29

Deborah Dicks Maxwell
President
NAACP of North Carolina

Henderson Hill
Senior Counsel
ACLU Capital Punishment Challenge

Daryl Atkinson
Co-Director
Ahead Justice

The Rev. Dr. Jennifer Copeland
Government Director
North Carolina Council of Church buildings

Olivia Ensign
Senior Advocate
Human Rights Watch

Jennifer Marsh
Government Employees
Self-Assist Credit score Union

James E. Coleman Jr.
John S. Bradway Professor of the Apply of Regulation
Director, Duke Middle for Felony Justice and Skilled Accountability

Jamie T. Lau
Scientific Professor of Regulation
Deputy Director, Duke Middle for Felony Justice and Skilled Accountability

Kristie Puckett-Williams
Deputy Director for Engagement and Mobilization
ACLU of North Carolina

Daniel Bowes
Coverage Director
ACLU of North Carolina

Daybreak Blagrove
Government Director
Emancipate NC

Cierra Cobb
Jail and Jail Household Advocate
Emancipate NC

Kerwin Pittman
Coverage and Program Director
Emancipate NC

Laura Holland
Director of Truthful Likelihood Felony Justice Challenge
NC Justice Middle

Quisha Mallette
Employees Lawyer for Truthful Likelihood Felony Justice Challenge
NC Justice Middle

Aimee Durant
Senior Counsel for Justice System Reform
Southern Coalition for Social Justice

Gretchen Engel
Government Director
Middle for Demise Penalty Litigation

Kristin Collins
Communications Director
Middle for Demise Penalty Litigation

Tyler Swanson
Marketing campaign Strategist, Middle for Demise Penalty Litigation 
Wake County Board of Training, District 9

James E. Williams Jr.
Of Counsel, Middle for Demise Penalty Litigation
Chief Public Defender for Orange and Chatham Counties (former)

Ken Rose
Government Director (former)
Middle for Demise Penalty Litigation

Jay H. Ferguson
Thomas Ferguson & Beskind, LLP
Durham, NC

Aelya Salman
Durham County Resident

Jon Powell
Director, Restorative Justice Clinic
Campbell College of Regulation