The Death Penalty

North Carolina has ceased executing people. A conflict between the requirements of death penalty law (a doctor must be present at executions) and the position of the North Carolina Medical Board (doctors should not be complicit in executions) and  has created an impasse which means there have been no executions in the state since 2006. In 2009, the state passed its Racial Justice Act, which allowed death row inmates to use statistical information to contest their convictions

This de facto moratorium coincides with an apparent decline in support for the death penalty, in large part because of concerns that innocent people were being executed. In North Carolina, there were no death sentences handed down in 2012 and 2013.

So, in North Carolina as well as nationally, the death penalty appears to be in decline. But this isn’t the first time North Carolina stopped executing. Between 1962 and 1983, no one was executed. In the years before then, North Carolina put to death just a handful of people. But the death penalty came roaring back in the 1980s. Why? I try to answer this question in my book, Lethal State.

Lethal State, 2019. (UNC Press: https://bit.ly/2QbvkL3; Amazon: https://amzn.to/2PWpr49) tells this story and more.