Folks who watch cop shows on television know it already. Our legislators apparently are not in the audience for such shows as “Law and Order” (all three of them) and “CSI” (both of them).

Otherwise, they would know that DNA is the latest surefire way to pin guilt on the perp. It’s also a good way to clear the innocent.

Almost weekly there’s a news story about somebody on death row whose name is cleared as a result of DNA testing, a scientific measure not available when many were convicted of murder.

Who knows how many innocent people may have gone to their deaths?

First, you need to know a few facts about North Carolina’s death penalty laws. In many ways, we are pretty liberal. Our law grants the convicted innumerable opportunities for appeal, and convicted murderers often spend decades on death row while attorneys pursue appeals.

David Junior Brown of Moore County, executed two years ago, sat it out some 20 years before he was put to death. In his case, a second trial was carried out, something that added to his death row years. He was put to death for fatally stabbing a woman and her daughter so many times that the medical examiner was unable to count all the wounds.

But questions have long been raised about the manner in which we carry out the death penalty. Does everyone have a fair chance at defense? Are investigators and prosecutors as zealous to determine the truth as they are to convict the accused?

In recent years, there has been an effort to encourage the state to undertake a moratorium on the death penalty, giving state officials time to study the system and correct flaws.

The state Senate passed a moratorium bill last year, but it never made it through the House.

Now, state Rep. Ron Sutton, a Democrat from Pembroke, has proposed a compromise. Whereas the Senate bill calls for a delay in executions for two years, Sutton’s proposal would allow executions to continue but would require a study of the system.

Sutton is on record as favoring capital punishment and criticizes the Senate bill as a foot-in-the-door approach to eliminating the death penalty altogether in North Carolina.

State Sen. Ellie Kinnaird of Orange County, a leader of the moratorium effort, agrees that she and other capital punishment opponents would like to remove the death penalty. She is one of the two Democratic senators who represented Moore County for a couple of terms in the 1990s.

However, Sutton says that he intends to pull his bill if any attempts are made to add an execution moratorium.

Opponents of the death penalty made their views clear in a May 2 forum on the subject at the Village Chapel fellowship hall in Pinehurst.

Speakers included two men recently rescued from the death penalty as a result of latter-day evidence, or at least evidence that did not come to light until much later.

Sponsors included the League of Women Voters, the Sandhills Fellowship of Churches, Church Women United and the Moore County Committee for a Moratorium.

In the wake of that forum, death penalty opponents are waging a campaign to persuade legislators to approve a moratorium. They’re sending letters urging state House Speaker Richard Morgan to support legislation similar to the bill passed in the Senate last year.

Whether Morgan will fall in line is open for debate. He is in a spirited contest for the Republican nomination in the July 20 primary election, and he may feel that a moratorium, or even Sutton’s bill, is too liberal an issue for him to support. Besides, I suspect that he is in favor of capital punishment. That’s speculation on my part, largely because so many North Carolinians, I regret to report, favor the death penalty.

Nevertheless, the opponents are making themselves known.

Among those writing to Morgan are local clergy opposed to the death penalty.

“Justice for all men is what we expect our legislature to assure as it fulfills its role of providing checks and balances between the executive and judicial branches of government,” says one of the letters.

Opponents point out that the moratorium contained in the Senate bill does not halt sentencing in capital cases, it just delays carrying out executions during the moratorium. Juries can continue to recommend death, and judges can continue to sentence convicted murderers to death. It’s just that under this bill, there would be no executions while the study is under way.

When I wrote my first column on this issue a year ago, a reader scolded me for taking a stand that would alter the statutory responsibilities of the criminal justice system. He said the state appeal system is far-reaching and adequate and a study is not needed. Furthermore, he argued that the moratorium would represent infringement of one arm of government on another.

The appeal system is a long one, but it does not give back precious years wasted on death row or remove the attendant humiliation.

I dream of a day when North Carolina and the United States join other civilized countries in banning the death penalty. In the meantime, the least we can do is study the system. Otherwise, it appears that our mentality focuses on killing somebody, regardless of guilt or innocence.