NC DAs Drive Up Death Penalty Costs

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Monday January 12, 2009 · 9:21 AM PST

2009/01/12 · 09:21

Indigent Defense Services, which oversees legal representation for all indigent defendants in North Carolina, has released a study about the cost of the death penalty at the trial level. The study is available online here.

The primary revelation of the study is that the cost of the death penalty has been exploded by DA charging decisions - to the tune of $20 million a year.

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Thursday December 18, 2008 · 8:56 AM PST

2008/12/18 · 08:56

It has been an exceptional year for life in North Carolina. No one was executed, and only one new person was added to death row (the lowest number since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1977). This year, as many capital defendants were acquitted as were sentenced to death. More death row inmates were exonerated than executed. North Carolina should be proud.

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Friday October 17, 2008 · 11:24 AM PDT

2008/10/17 · 11:24

Lethal injection has been on hold in North Carolina since January 2007. The North Carolina stay predated and outlasted the national moratorium from Baze v. Rees. But the killing machine may be gearing up again...

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Friday June 27, 2008 · 7:32 AM PDT

2008/06/27 · 07:32

In a rare move, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals (which handles cases from North and South Carolina, as well as Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia) granted relief to death row inmate Dr. William Gray [1] earlier this week. The Court said that Gray, who was sentenced to die for the 1992 murder of his wife in Lenoir County, should receive a new sentencing hearing because his lawyers failed to investigate and present considerable evidence that Gray was severely mentally ill.

Dr. Gray had been exhibiting bizarre behavior for months before he shot his wife. After he was arrested, he was kept in the state mental hospital for five weeks. Once Dr. Gray returned to the jail, he had to be kept in the juvenile cell block for his own safety. Everyone around him in the months before and after the murder noticed that Gray had made a precipitous decline into mental illness, but his attorneys – neither of whom had tried a capital case before - presented no such evidence to the jury. Now William Gray has a second chance.

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Tuesday May 06, 2008 · 9:19 AM PDT

2008/05/06 · 09:19

In 1993, Levon "Bo" Jones was sentenced to death for a crime he did not commit. Yesterday, a free man surrounded by family, he spoke about his innocence and his hope that those responsible for his wrongful conviction will be punished accordingly.

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Tuesday November 20, 2007 · 6:50 AM PST

2007/11/20 · 06:50

In the summer of 1990, Minh and Linda Rogers were shot to death while working at their family-owned grocery in rural Gates County, North Carolina. Some money was taken. Sixteen year-old Linda was raped. The next year, Jerry Wayne Conner was tried and sentenced to death for the murders. His sentence was overturned on appeal, but after a re-sentencing hearing in 1995, Mr. Conner was again sentenced to die. In May of 2006, Conner came within 36 hours of execution before the North Carolina Supreme Court intervened. The Court didn’t want Jerry Conner to be killed until he had the chance to apply modern DNA technology to the semen found on Linda Rogers’ body. Unfortunately, the semen sample was too degraded to produce conclusive results.

We may never know if Jerry Conner killed Minh and Linda Rogers seventeen years ago. What we do know is that if and when lethal injection returns to North Carolina, Conner will be among the first scheduled to die. With that in mind, his attorneys have released a video on YouTube highlighting another major issue in the case: juror misconduct.

RSS

NC DAs Drive Up Death Penalty Costs

NC Has Lowest Number of New Death Sentences Since 1977

NC Lethal Injection Update

Death Row Inmate Gets New Sentencing Hearing

Death Row Exoneree Bo Jones Speaks

Death Row Inmate Video