Our state has an opportunity to lead the change in reforming the criminal legal system and centering racial justice. Decades of punitive policies have deliberately targeted Black and Brown people in our state.  We can make amends by reimagining policing, fighting for decarceration, and repealing the death penalty.

North Carolina’s death penalty is not at all broken. In fact, it’s working as intended to produce the following results: white jurors decide who will live and who the state will execute; North Carolina prioritizes executions for people who killed white people, and the state’s death penalty is used aggressively against Black people and people of color. We need hope, healing, and redemption.

Decarcerating our state’s prisons and ending the death penalty in North Carolina are two clear steps that Governor Cooper’s Task Force for Racial Equity in Criminal Justice can recommend. If you agree, here are some good points to raise in your comments to the Task Force

Decarcerate NC Prisons

  • There are over 36,000 North Carolinians in prison and nearly 95,000 people under the Division of Community Corrections control. This crisis of mass criminalization in North Carolina must end, and Governor Cooper has the power to end it.
  • 50% of admissions into North Carolina prisons are due to probation or parole revocations. Beyond that, nearly 60,000 prison admissions are the result of something other than a crime against a person - people being thrown into prison for mental health issues or property offenses.
  • Currently, there are about 8,000 people in NC Prisons who are over the age of 50, most of whom are Black.
  • It costs North Carolina taxpayers nearly $40,000 to imprison just one person for one year.
  • Governor Cooper can and must use his executive clemency powers to confront these injustices and reduce our prison populations and save money that can be reinvested into our communities.
  • Governor Cooper can commute the sentences of people on North Carolina’s death row.
  • Our governor must utilize his clemency and commutation powers as a way to help end mass incarceration and replace it with a pathway to hope, healing, and redemption.

Repeal the Death Penalty

  • North Carolina’s death penalty grew from racist roots. As Reverend William Barber has explained, the “link between slavery, Jim Crow, lynching and the death penalty is as connected as the intertwined repose of the lynchman’s noose.”
  • Today, North Carolina has 145 people on death row. Since 1974, Nine people have been found innocent and released from our state’s death row. Eight of them were Black. One was Latinx.
  • Researchers have documented the odds of receiving the death penalty in North Carolina were between two and three and a half times higher when the victim was white. With all other factors being equal, Native Americans are twice as likely to be sentenced to death than whites.
  • Examination in 173 North Carolina death penalty cases over a 20-year period found prosecutors removed qualified Black jurors from juries at more than twice the rate of qualified white jurors.
  • Governor Cooper can commute the sentence of people who are serving unjustifiable sentences, including the death penalty, who are trapped in state prisons.
  • From the same racist playbook, North Carolina prosecutors have used animal names to dehumanize Black capital defendants, calling them animals, hyenas, wolves, and “a big black bull.”
  • Governor Cooper must work with the state Legislature to repeal the death penalty in 2021 because allowing this grave and gross injustice to continue perpetuates white supremacy and affronts to our state’s values.
All feedback to Governor Cooper’s Task Force must be sent through its official online form. 
Click here to submit your comments today! 

 

Please add your own thoughts and comments about what can be done to reduce the most harmful aspects of our state’s criminal legal system. Thank you for lending your voice to this fight for justice.