Public Support for Death Penalty Waning in North Carolina

A new poll from Public Policy Polling has found that a majority of North Carolinians believe the death penalty should be replaced with alternative punishments.

Voters question the fairness of the death penalty on several fronts, including racial bias, judicial error and mental health of the accused at the time of the crime.

Director of Public Policy Polling Tom Jensen says the change in public opinion has been gradual rather than swift.

“It’s definitely something where there is movement occurring over time away from support from the death penalty, and I think you can see that especially in the Democratic Party,” says Jensen.

The last Democratic President to voice public support of the Death Penalty was Bill Clinton.

While North Carolina still does have the death penalty as a sentencing option, no one has been executed in over a decade.

Jensen says one of the reasons the death penalty is rarely used in North Carolina anymore is there is no evidence that it helps to stop crime.

“It’s been over a decade now since we’ve had an execution, and that hasn’t led to some sort of increase in violent crime in the state,” says Jensen. “It’s really pretty steady, so I think that sort of throws the main argument of the death penalty out the window.”

While lack of political pressure on district attorneys to seek the death penalty has helped to minimize it’s use, Jensen also says that regional factors come into play.

“The more highly populated areas of the state, which will presumably have more murder cases, also have the most progressive voters in the state,” says Jensen. “So per capita, the places where the most crimes where you could seek the death penalty are happening are also the places where there’s the least will from their citizens for prosecutors to move forward with that as a punishment.”

Since the last execution in North Carolina, five people who were sentenced to death have been exonerated, and over 20 others have been removed from death row due to errors in their cases, according to the Center for Death Penalty Litigation.

Executions are temporarily barred in the state due to a case which challenges the lethal injection procedures.

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