Year-end review: justice in North Carolina

I regularly skim the rulings issued by the North Carolina Court of Appeals. Most of the time, I don’t find anything that rises to the level of a news story. That’s what I was thinking in October while perusing a ruling about a mother’s parental rights.

Then I saw a line that stood out. The mother in the case had committed a crime when she was pregnant, and argued that she shouldn’t lose her parental rights because that child hadn’t been living in her home at the time of the crime; it was a fetus in its mother’s womb.

The judge, Hunter Murphy, a Republican facing a primary opponent in his bid for reelection, wasn’t persuaded. He terminated the mother’s parental rights because “life begins at conception.”

It was an extraordinary ruling, one legal experts said could profoundly impact families across North Carolina. But less than a month after it was issued, the decision was quietly withdrawn, effectively making it like it was never written.

The key takeaway: Pay attention to all the decisions issued by the Court of Appeals, even the ones that seem outside the scope of my beat.

Below are some of my other favorite stories from the past year.

The death row clemency campaign

This collaboration between NC Newsline and Bolts involved efforts to persuade Gov. Roy Cooper to commute the death sentences of the 136 men and women on North Carolina’s death row before he leaves office at the end of 2024.

Republicans have weakened the governor’s power over the past year, overriding his vetoes in the legislature and defeating him in the courts. But one area where the governor still has immense authority is clemency. The state constitution permits the governor to grant commutations for all offenses except in cases of impeachment.

That means Cooper has the ability to resentence everyone on death row, sparing them from the execution chamber. The state hasn’t executed anyone since 2006, but a broad coalition of criminal justice reformers warn executions could resume in the future, should the state Supreme Court choose to overturn the 2020 ruling on the Racial Justice Act, and if Republicans in the General Assembly approve another method of executing people, like how legislators in South Carolina brought back the firing squad.

That means the lives of those on death row could be in Cooper’s hands.

“Our commutations campaign is very focused on 2024 because we have a sense of urgency that executions could resume, as they did in the federal system,” Noel Nickle, executive director of the North Carolina Coalition for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, told me. “I am concerned that the political climate of our state has become more entrenched in policies and practices that would lead to executions resuming.”

Click here to read my story on the death row clemency campaign, which is being led by people whose lives have been irrevocably altered by capital punishment: people exonerated after spending years on death row, family members who lost loved ones to violence, and individuals whose kin were killed in executions carried out by the state of North Carolina.

A miscarriage of justice, a life in prison

One of the most important stories of the year was about Bobby Norfleet, a 66-year-old man imprisoned for more than four decades for lighting a porch on fire. No one had been hurt, and there were questions about Norfleet’s mental capacity to stand trial, but his lawyer nonetheless let him plead guilty to arson, a crime that at the time carried an automatic mandatory sentence of life in prison.

Norfleet was sentenced in 1979, under a different sentencing model than the one used today. If he were sentenced under a later model approved by legislators, he would have served two decades behind bars, not including credit for good behavior.

Instead, Norfleet spent more than four decades in prison. He grew old as his incarcerated peers abused him. Despite his age and disability, he was never approved for medical parole.

Click here to read the story about the Norfleet family. And click here to read a story showing that Bobby wasn’t the only elderly person in North Carolina prisons who was eligible for parole but was stuck behind bars.

Lawmakers took action after publication of these stories, broadening eligibility criteria for medical parole, making more sick and elderly people eligible for release.

Homelessness and the First Amendment on trial in Asheville

I went to Asheville a few times in 2023 to cover the trial of two journalists from the Asheville Blade, a “leftist local news co-op,” who were arrested on Christmas night 2021 while covering police clearing protesters out of Aston Park.

The reporters’ lawyer, Ben Scales, said in court that the charges raised questions over how the police, and the Buncombe County District Attorney’s Office, responded to their critics. He argued the reporters were arrested as retaliation for their reporting and their news outlet’s political ideology, which is in favor of defunding and abolishing the police.

“Their viewpoints are directly contrary to the established interests that they report on,” Scales said.

Prosecutors — and the police who testified — framed the arrests as a simple case of trespassing. The reporters were told to leave after the park had closed, they didn’t, and they were arrested. Simple as that.

“I didn’t care whether they were reporters or not,” a police officer said on the stand. “It meant nothing to me.”

The judge convicted the reporters. They appealed, but lost in a jury trial months later.

The context is important. I had previously written a feature that put the arrests of the journalists in context with the city’s broader struggle with affordable housing and homelessness as living there becomes increasingly unaffordable.

“We marketed Asheville as a place to come that’s welcoming and inclusive, and it’s a beautiful place and you should come to visit, and you should come be our neighbor,” Kim Roney, a council member, said during a city council meeting last year. “If you have $700,000 to buy a house, you’re a neighbor. If you have $700 to rent a hotel room, you’re a visitor. But if you can’t afford those things, and you have $7 and a tent, then you need to go away.”

Thank you for reading and supporting NC Newsline. See you in 2024.