A bill pending in the North Carolina House would potentially restart capital punishment in the state, including providing the option for a firing squad as a method of execution.
Current NC law is that lethal injection is the only permissible method of execution. But there has been a de facto moratorium on executions since 2006 due to legal challenges surrounding the death penalty, including the availability of drugs needed to carry out the execution.
House Bill 270 would revise state law to allow convicted individuals sentenced to death to choose between the electric chair, lethal injection, or a firing squad. The choice would need to be made in writing 14 days prior to the execution date. If no choice is made, electrocution is the default option. Lethal injection would only be available if the drugs to administer it are available.
The measure also stipulates that licensed health-care professionals overseeing executions are protected from disciplinary actions from licensing boards, and that the administration of a lethal substance is not considered the practice of medicine.
“This bill does not change the limited number of serious criminal offenses that can seek the death penalty” said state Rep. A. Reece Pyrtle, R-Rockingham, one of the primary sponsors of the bill. “It only seeks to restore the death penalty as a deterrent and an option for prosecutors across the state.”
Pyrtle added that the bill is modeled after similar legislation in South Carolina giving death-row inmates a choice for execution method.
Although HB 270 passed the House Judiciary Committee by a voice vote on May 6, Democrats condemned the measure.
“The handful of folks I’ve mentioned this bill to have literally kind of stopped in their tracks at the idea that we would reintroduce electrocution and introduce the firing squad as a method of execution,” said state Rep. Vernetta Alston, D-Durham, during the committee meeting. “I also think it puts our corrections officers in a really kind of awful spot to ask them to participate in these types of executions, especially when we’re struggling with recruitment and retention of those positions right now statewide with [the Department of Adult Corrections].”
“I do not believe that execution, by any means, brings healing or justice to victims’ families. To add additional more violent means of execution will make the system even more brutal,” added state Rep. Tracy Clark, D-Guilford.
In the waning days of his administration, Gov. Roy Cooper commuted the sentences of 15 death-row inmates. The NC Department of Adult Corrections reports there are 121 individuals on death row currently — 119 men and two women — with the majority being housed at Central Prison in Raleigh.
Those on death row have typically been convicted of first-degree murder with aggravating factors, including multiple victims, cruel circumstances, or the murder of law enforcement officers.
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