NC Senate bill would prioritize use of the death penalty

NORTH CAROLINA GENERAL ASSEMBLY

The North Carolina Senate approved a criminal justice overhaul bill that includes a return to state-sanctioned capital punishment.

A North Carolina bill originally touted as criminal justice reform includes returning capital punishment as a key cornerstone.

The Republican-controlled state Senate on Monday passed House Bill 307, or Iryna’s Law, which includes a measure to revive the death penalty as part of the package by removing barriers that have prevented executions. The bill, named after Iryna Zarutska, who was stabbed to death in Charlotte on a Lynx Blue Line train, would require the review of death penalty appeals within two years of filing, and bar continuances unless a judge declares extenuating circumstances in a case. 

Any appeal or motion filed more than two years ago must be scheduled for hearing by December 2026, and the hearing must take play by December 2027. Hearings related to a death penalty case would be required to be held in the county where the defendant was convicted.

North Carolina has 122 inmates on death row.

“For nearly two decades, judicial and administrative roadblocks have stopped true justice for victims, and it's time for that to end,” Senate Leader Phil Berger (R-Rockingham) said in a statement. “During my time in the Senate, I’ve worked to find ways to restart the death penalty, but judges, activist doctors, and weak-on-crime politicians have placed hurdle after hurdle in the way.” 

Samuel Flippen was the last person executed in North Carolina when he was put to death by lethal injection on Aug. 18, 2006, at Central Prison in Raleigh. Since then, litigation over execution procedures and the Racial Justice Act put executions on hold. There is, however, no official moratorium on executions in the state.

Research shows that juries – especially all-white panels – are more likely to convict and sentence defendants in capital trials to death, including people later found to be innocent. At least 12 people have been exonerated in North Carolina, including 11 men who are Black, Hispanic or indigenous. North Carolina has the fifth-largest death row in the United States and nearly half were sentenced by predominantly white juries.

Former Gov. Roy Cooper – who is running for North Carolina’s open U.S. Senate seat in 2026 – commuted 15 death sentences on his last day in office in 2024, which resulted in life sentences without parole. Those commutations were triple the number granted since passage of the state’s death penalty law in 1976. Those five inmates all were declared shortly before execution of sentence and no previous governor commuted more than two.

The Senate bill includes a Berger proposal that would establish lethal injection as the default method of execution and instructs the Department of Adult Correction to adopt alternative methods of execution in the event a court or administrator blocks its use. The amendment stipulates that any case where a trial declares a method of execution unconstitutional is directly appealed to the state Supreme Court. 

Every Senate Democrat opposed the amended bill, criticizing it as death penalty overreach after most walked out of the chamber. Republicans and Democrats last week pledged a bipartisan bill to overhaul pretrial release for violent offenders, strengthen sentencing protections, and improve staffing and resources for prosecutors.

“Unfortunately, the Senate floor amendment changed this bill,” said Sen. Caleb Theodros of Charlotte. “Instead of keeping the focus on victims and public safety, it added sweeping new provisions on the death penalty. These provisions revive archaic execution methods, including the firing squad, the electric chair, and completely ignore what is truly needed for public safety.”

The bill would also:

• Clarify that a judge or magistrate must review and consider a defendant’s criminal history before setting pretrial release.  

• Require written findings that explain why a judicial official determined the conditions of release. 

• Allows the removal of judges or magistrates who failure to make findings for release.  

• Allow the state Supreme Court’s chief justice or the chief District Court judge to initiate suspension proceedings for magistrates. 

• Require a study of the intersection of mental health and the justice system for both adults and juveniles, as well as the availability of house arrest as a condition of pretrial release as well as alternative methods.

As a lawmaker, Berger, a death penalty proponent, voted against the Racial Justice Act as well as a bill to repeal the once Republicans gained a majority in the General Assembly in 2010. The RJA, a state law that was in effect from 2009-13, gives people sentenced to death an opportunity to be resentenced to life without parole if they can prove racial discrimination played a role in their case. The law has been seldom used since 2020, when the state Supreme Court ruled that all RJA claims remain valid despite the law’s repeal in 2013.

“The real challenges our justice system faces are court backlogs, shortages of prosecutors, and gaps in victim services,” Theodros said. “Those are the issues that deserve attention, not whether the state should bring back execution methods from another era.”

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