But as a practical matter, something akin to a moratorium on executions is already being put into effect in this state. The number of death sentences handed down by North Carolina juries has declined precipitously for the past five years. In 1999, there were 26 death sentences. That dropped to 18 in 2000, 14 in 2001, seven in 2002 and to only one so far in 2003.
The drop is attributed to three laws passed in recent years by the legislature. One prohibits the execution of mentally retarded defendants. Another gives district attorneys the discretion not to seek the death penalty in first-degree murder cases. But probably the most significant factor is a law requiring higher standards of defense attorneys who are appointed by judges to represent indigent defendants in capital cases and giving those lawyers better tools to defend their clients. Under the law, appointed counsel must have jury-trial experience at the Superior Court level and must have previously represented defendants in death-penalty cases. The law brought to an end the formerly common practice of appointing rookie lawyers for such cases and matching them against trial-seasoned prosecutors.
One of the principal arguments advanced by advocates of a moratorium is that poor and minority defendants in death-penalty cases are typically represented by appointed lawyers who are out of their league or simply incompetent. The law requiring higher standards and the resulting drop in death sentences gives compelling credence to that contention.
If enacted, the two-year moratorium would not abolish the death penalty in North Carolina. It would afford legislators and legal experts time to study the imposition of capital punishment to determine if it is fairly administered in North Carolina and, if it is not, ways to make the system fairer. That seems to be an approach that all but the most vociferous proponents of executions could support. Indeed, many of the senators who voted for the bill support capital punishment but said they were troubled by questions about the arbitrary and capricious way death sentences are handed out. That’s the reason the bill’s principal sponsor, Sen. Ellie Kinnaird, D-Orange, was able to defy the conventional wisdom and steer it to passage.
The Co-Speaker’s of the House, Rep. Richard Morgan, R-Moore, and Jim Black, D-Mecklenburg, have shown no enthusiasm for action on the Kinnaird bill this year. Black says the moratorium is too big an issue to rush to a vote in the closing days of the session. But what harm could be done by enacting a temporary moratorium when people on death row would remain under death sentences until a study of their imposition is conducted over a two-year period? If such a study is done and capital punishment is kept on the books in North Carolina but with changes to make it more fairly administered, death-penalty proponents could be secure in the knowledge that our law will pass muster in the courts.
Morgan and Black should act in the interest of justice and see to passage of the moratorium in the House. If they do, their action will be in keeping with something North Carolina juries are already doing.
