Controversies

Public Access
Until about a hundred years ago, executions in North Carolina were very public affairs. Newspaper accounts from the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early-twentieth centuries describe large crowds of spectators at executions...[Read on]

Method
State and local jurisdictions have changed execution methods over the years. These shifts have involved perceptions of public sensibilities, as well as legal and political considerations...[Read on]

Race
Race has always been a significant aspect of any serious discussion of the fairness and appropriateness of capital punishment in North Carolina and the American South. The nature and intensity...[Read on]

Victims' Rights
Every capital crime, of course, has a victim or victims, and deep sympathy for these individuals is virtually universal. But opinions vary greatly on how support for victims should be officially expressed...[Read on]

Politics
A 2004 Harris poll asked respondents, "Do you believe in capital punishment, that is, the death penalty, or are you opposed to it?" Of those polled, 69% indicated that they believed in it, 22% said that they opposed it...[Read on]

Legality
Perhaps the most basic legal question concerning the death penalty is defining, by law, which crimes will be punishable by death — which criminals will be legally subject to this form of punishment...[Read on]

Religion
Genesis 9:6 reads, "Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made man." In Matthew 5:38-39, Jesus says...[Read on]