A new bill under consideration in the North Carolina House could increase felony charges for individuals unlawfully present in the United States, particularly illegal immigrants with prior federal immigration convictions.
Outgoing President Joe Biden has commuted the death sentences of 37 federal inmates, including Anthony Battle, convicted of stabbing his wife to death in her barracks at Camp Lejeune. Meantime, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper is under pressure from activists to commute all state death penalty sentences as he prepares to leave office.
Outgoing state Supreme Court Justice Michael Morgan delivered a 183-page ruling upholding a death penalty verdict, dissented in a case involving the castle doctrine, and joined Republican colleagues to uphold a mining quarry’s challenged environmental permit during his last day on the bench.
“I just think it’s B.S,” Al Lowry said of ads portraying Beasley as pro law enforcement. “She’s for the criminals and not for the law officers, which my brother was one of them that got killed."
Terry Stoops on legislative education reform ideas; Thom Goolsby on restarting executions; John Hood on Charlotte's gold rush; John Hubisz on basics of energy; Jon Ham on recent media narrative about guns and food
For many North Carolinians opposed to the death penalty, the Racial Justice Act’s obvious logical and legal flaws were quite beside the point.
Anti-death penalty activists like to tell themselves that the policy debate over capital punishment is over. They are wrong.
Whatever discontent there may be among liberal Democrats, they are going to turn out in 2012 for President Obama. Most will vote for Perdue. Her real problem is among swing voters.
There is no evidence that, all other factors being equal, blacks are more likely to be executed than whites.
Advocates of a death-penalty moratorium may fall short of enough House votes to pass their bill. Now a Chapel Hill Democrat is offering a compromise that won’t stop all executions during a study of the justice system.
It was a do-or-die day for many bills at the General Assembly -- or so the rules said -- and for the most part the results were friendly to liberty and good government.
