May 18, 2013
North Carolina is on track to not send any new inmates to death row for the first time since its current death penalty law took effect in 1977.
The Fayetteville Observer (http://bit.ly/TV2RW3 ) reports the state also hasn't executed anyone since 2006, and won't any time soon because of an unofficial moratorium on executions over what the role of doctors should be in administering lethal injections. The lawsuit remains unresolved.
North Carolina hasn't always been so ambivalent about executions. Juries in the state have sent 400 people to death row since the state's most recent death penalty law was passed in 1977. Forty-three of those people have been executed.
But the pace of new death sentences has slowed considerably. In 1999, 24 people were sentenced to death across North Carolina.
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