DURHAM, N.C. — For the first time in the state's modern history, North Carolina juries have rejected the death penalty for two consecutive years.

There were only three capital trials in North Carolina this year - one each in Lee, Scotland and Wake counties. All three juries chose life without parole for the defendants instead of death sentences. Gretchen Engel, executive director at the Raleigh-based Center for Death Penalty Litigation, has represented clients on death row and said more jurors are becoming educated about bias in the legal system.

"Jurors are turning away from the death penalty and, in response to less favorable jury pools, prosecutors are seeking the death penalty less,” Engel said. “And so, this trend away from the death penalty is really being led by citizens who've been summoned for jury duty."

Engel said now, there's greater public awareness about factors like race, geography and economic status that play a role in determining a person's guilt or innocence. North Carolina also has been home to a number of high-profile wrongful convictions in the past decade.

In light of these factors, death-penalty opponents ask why some prosecutors continue to seek it. In Wake County, juries have declined to issue death sentences in nine consecutive capital cases.

Engel said capital trials also are longer and more complex, and therefore, more expensive. According to the N.C. Office of Indigent Defense Services, if the Wake County cases had not been tried as capital cases, taxpayers might have saved nearly $2.4 million.

"So, the one outlier in North Carolina is Wake County, [which] year after year is having capital trials, losing those capital trials - and yet, continues to waste money and court time and resources,” she said.

Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman has said, "There are times when the facts of the case are so egregious, so terrible, that we believe it's appropriate for the community to make the decision in the case through the jury process." North Carolina has not carried out any executions since 2006.



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Cities and states are struggling with mounting homelessness, and West Virginia is no exception.

A recent report points to potential solutions and immediate actions local governments can take to reduce the number of people on the streets.

A different report, released this year by the state's Department of Human Services, found homelessness is up by 24% compared to 2021.

Providing jobs such as trash cleanup for homeless individuals, and managing public spaces, are effective - said Lisel Petis, senior fellow at the R Street Institute.

She said in several states local organizations are working with businesses to create safe designated places for people living in cars to go at night.

"One that I've spoken with where they have seen success in working with businesses and using parking lots and giving people some privacy," said Petis, "so that they can transition from their car back into houses."

According to the state report, nearly 60% of individuals experiencing homelessness were male, and nearly half were between the ages of 25 and 44.

Thirteen percent identified themselves as Black or African American.

Petis added that while encampment sweeps reduce the spread of disease and reduce pollution, they can also displace people without offering viable alternatives and destroy personal belongings and important documents - increasing barriers to long-term stability for unhoused people.

She said she believes the surge of anti-camping laws popping up across the nation is a knee-jerk reaction to a complex and long-simmering problem.

"Homelessness across the nation has been growing year over year since about 2016," said Petis, "so we know that just by kind of slapping a band aid on isn't going to stop this growing issue."

According to a 2019 report from the National Homelessness Law Center, 72% of the 187 cities surveyed had at least one law enforcing public camping bans, a 92% increase from 2006.




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New federal data show aggravated assaults are up in Kentucky by 7.2%, but other types of violent crime have gone down.

Overall, violent crime in Kentucky remains much lower compared to the nation as a whole, said Ashley Spalding, research director at the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy.

"When you compare 2023 to that 2021 peak for violent crime," she said, "we see it's come down significantly since then."

A 2022 Bureau of Justice Statistics survey found younger people and people with lower incomes are far more likely to report being the victim of a violent crime than are higher-income people.

Spalding said laws such as House Bill 5, which lawmakers passed earlier this year, will drive up the number of people in the state's prisons and jails without addressing the root cause of crime.

"High rates of incarceration in communities are associated with higher rates of overdose deaths," she said. "The more that states make harsher criminal penalties for opioids like fentanyl, can put communities more at risk."

She said the policies in the bill are expected to cost the state an estimated $1 billion over the next decade. That money, she contended, could go toward health care, shelters and other resources that help communities.

"It would be the wrong direction for Kentucky to pass more harmful, harsh, regressive criminal legal system policies in 2025," she said.

According to the Pew Research Center, at least 60% of U.S. adults have said they believe there is more crime nationally than there was the year before, despite an ongoing downward trend in crime rates.

Hundreds of people from across Michigan gathered in Lansing this week, urging House Speaker Joe Tate, D-Detroit and Senate Majority Leader Winnie Brinks, D-Grand Rapids, to advance the Second Look Sentencing Act to improve prison safety. The legislation allows people serving long sentences to have their cases reviewed for possible sentence reductions based on factors such as rehabilitation. The crowd included formerly incarcerated people who've turned their lives around and their families, victims of crime, prison staff and lawmakers.

Chuck Warpehoski, projects director with Michigan Collaborative to End Mass Incarceration, warned there is a prison staffing crisis in Michigan.

"We're seeing it in nursing, we're seeing it in child care, we're seeing it on the shop floor, we're seeing it with baristas. When it happens in a prison and people are forced to work mandatory double shifts, they're tired, they're not seeing their family -- it creates unsafe conditions for everyone," he said.

Warpehoski added they're urging lawmakers to pass the Second Look Act during this lame-duck session before they go home for the holidays.

He also pointed out the high costs of incarcerating people -- up to $48,000 per year, per person. He added that with the failed pay incentives to attract more staff, he believes it's clear a different solution is needed. Warpehoski shared some of the feedback they received.

"A lot of legislators and their staff said, hey, this makes sense -- and so it was a really, really positive response from not every office, but from a large number of offices we had meetings with," he continued.

Warpehoski stressed that Second Look legislation focuses on fairness by offering the possibility of release for individuals who have rehabilitated and are no longer a threat to society.