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Gaston County District Attorney Locke Bell
Even the death penalty’s biggest supporters are beginning to see its waste and inefficacy. Last week, as North Carolina neared a decade without an execution, Gaston County District Attorney Locke Bell said he would no longer pursue the ultimate punishment because it is too difficult to carry out and is a drain on court resources.
“If they’re not going to carry it out, it’s a tremendous waste of time and energy,” said Bell, who has fought for several death sentences as district attorney.
Bell joins a chorus of prosectors and judges who are questioning the usefulness, and sometimes the fairness, of the death penalty:
- In May, the Republican former Chief Justice of the N.C. Supreme Court said he believes the death penalty is fundamentally unfair and likely unconstitutional.
- In February, after a Wake County jury rejected the death penalty for the sixth time in a row, Wake DA Lorrin Freeman said she would reconsider seeking death in future cases.
- In December, a former prosecutor who sent five people to death row announced that he now opposes the death penalty.
- And in September 2014, shortly after the shocking exonerations of Henry McCollum and Leon Brown, Robeson DA Johnson Britt said the legislature should “re-examine” the need for the death penalty.
Bell said that, in one capital case his office pursued, an assistant district attorney spent 1,500 hours to fight for a death sentence that was later overturned. According to a Duke University study, death penalty trials cost more than five times as much as non-capital trials.
Bell says he still supports the death penalty, and that his decision is merely pragmatic. He seems frustrated that North Carolina’s juries and courts have lost their appetite for executions.
However, from where we sit, it’s easy to understand why death sentences aren’t being carried out. Innocent people on death row. Tainted evidence in capital trials. Racial bias in the jury box. Botched executions conducted with secret drug combinations.
Considering capital punishment’s track record, it’s hard to imagine why any prosecutor in North Carolina is still fighting for executions.
The post Gaston DA says he’s done with death penalty appeared first on NC Coalition for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.
