Friday, March 15, 2013

NC: Bill to restart the death penalty


North Carolina Senate leaders filed legislation Wednesday to restart the death penalty in the state – a move to secure justice for more than 100 North Carolina families whose loved ones were brutally murdered.

Despite having 152 inmates on death row, the state has not conducted an execution since 2006 because of numerous legal challenges that have resulted in a de-facto moratorium on the death penalty.

Our bill, Senate Bill 306, allows doctors, nurses, and pharmacists to participate in executions without fear of punishment from licensing boards, brings certainty to the timeline of the execution process, and gives the Secretary of Public Safety flexibility to develop the most humane and constitutionally-sound method possible to conduct execution by lethal injection.

The bill also repeals a law allowing judges to use arbitrary statistics and random data to decide whether death row inmates were sentenced because of race. The law has allowed nearly every criminal on death row, regardless of race, to file an appeal. The bill reaffirms several avenues of appeal that are still available to ensure a fair hearing of race discrimination claims in capital cases.

We have a moral obligation to ensure death-row criminals convicted of the most heinous crimes imaginable finally face justice. Victims’ families have suffered for far too long. It’s time to stop the legal wrangling and bring them the peace and closure they deserve.


Senator Phil Berger
President Pro Tempore
2008 Legislative Building
Raleigh, NC 27601-2808
Phone: 919.733.5708
philbe@ncleg.net

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