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The latest on the Key Bridge collapse, New York puts forth legislation to get clean energy projects on the grid and Wisconsin and other states join a federal summer food program to help feed kids across the country.

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Republicans float conspiracy theories on the collapse of Baltimore's Key Bridge, South Carolina s congressional elections will use a map ruled unconstitutional, and the Senate schedules an impeachment trial for Homeland Secretary Myorkas.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

Data Points to Death of Death Penalty in NC

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Monday, December 26, 2016   

RALEIGH, N.C. – North Carolina hasn't executed anyone in the last 10 years, and legal experts say the reluctance of juries and prosecutors to place people on death row points to a lack of support for this type of punishment.

According to The Center for Death Penalty Litigation, the last five years have seen an average of one execution a year in the country, compared with 20 to 30 a year in the 1990s.

Gretchen Engel, the Center’s executive director, says it's time the state abandons capital punishment in favor of life in prison without parole.

"The death penalty has passed it's 'sell by date' here in North Carolina,” she states. “We have not had executions for more than 10 years, and juries and prosecutors have turned away from the death penalty."

A poll released by the Pew Research Center this fall found that, for the first time in four decades, the majority of Americans don't support the death penalty.

Some reduction in support could be tied to discoveries of wrongful convictions, or sentences where race played a role.

Former North Carolina Chief Justice I. Beverly Lake voted to affirm 185 people on death row during his career, but this year stated he now believes the punishment is unconstitutional.

While there have been no recent executions in the state and fewer people are receiving the sentence, 150 people remain on the state's death row.

Engel says 112 of them now would likely not be there if their cases were heard today.

"So many changes have been made in our legal system, improvements and reforms,” she stats. “Many of the people who were sent to death row in the 1990s and the 1980s just simply would not have been sentenced to death."

Almost half of the state's death row inmates are 50 or older, and 21 others are over 60.




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