Execution bills win brief hearing

Associated Press June 01, 2007

Execution bills win brief hearing----Both measures call for study of state moratorium

2 bills that call for studying capital punishment in North Carolina - one of which would suspend executions for 2 years - got a brief first hearing in a House committee Thursday.

In a move designed to keep the bills alive for the entire two-year session, lawmakers adopted substitute versions of the bills without debating them. The substitute bills add appropriations for the studies; otherwise, the measures would have died under the rules for last week's crossover deadline.

Committee chairwoman Rep. Deborah Ross, D-Wake, pledged that the bills will be fully debated in a later meeting. Still, opponents made known their frustration that the measures - particularly the one that calls for a moratorium on executions - are still around.

"If they had the votes to pass it, they would have passed it before crossover," Rep. Paul Stam, R-Wake, said after the hearing. "They're not going to have any more votes next month than they did last month. So today was an exercise in futility."

One measure would stop executions for 2 years while an independent research group is hired to study "the cost of the state's current death penalty system and the savings that could be derived from making more cost effective decisions about whether a 1st-degree murder case may be tried as a capital case."

The other calls for narrowing the definition of aggravating circumstances that allow prosecutors to seek the death penalty in a 1st-degree murder case, ostensibly to "streamline and make more cost-effective" the process.

A handful of scheduled executions are already on hold due to court battles over the process by which North Carolina puts inmates to death.

Stam said both measures are simply a dodge to stop executions, sponsored by lawmakers who want to end the death penalty altogether.

"It's suspended now. They can study it now. We've had infinite studies on it, innumerable studies. There are five law schools, there are dozens of colleges that can study it," he said. "This is not about studying. It's about do you think this is an appropriate punishment for premeditated murder."

Rep. Paul Luebke, D-Durham, said an increasing number of lawmakers are concerned about whether capital punishment is fairly applied, as evidenced by the House voting 68-51 to pass the Racial Justice Act.

That measure, now before the Senate, would allow death penalty defendants who claim racial bias drove their prosecution to use statistical data among the evidence in an appeal.

"The people of this state want a death penalty - they want a death penalty that's fair to everybody, not a death penalty system that actually works to ensure that poor people, black or white, are the ones on death row," Luebke said.

The abbreviated hearing, which ran under 15 minutes, came on the same day that district attorneys and law enforcement officers lobbied lawmakers on a variety of issues. At a news conference, they urged the General Assembly to resolve the legal morass that has effectively halted executions in the state.

Garry Frank, president of the N.C. Conference of District Attorneys, said the uncertainty makes it harder for prosecutors to counter critics who say trying capital crimes wastes resources and is a futile exercise because a convicted defendant won't be executed.

"We asked that for the good of the public that this issue be resolved now," said Frank, the district attorney for four western Piedmont counties. "Let's decide up or down whether we're going to have a death penalty and let the people of this state go forward."

Forsyth County District Attorney Tom Keith said other changes being considered, specifically the streamlining bill, would send ripples across the court system and lead to further appeals and delays.

"These bills are all designed to eliminate the death penalty by the death of a thousand cuts," Keith said.
Source: Associated Press