As executions have resumed in South Carolina, on Thursday in North Carolina death penalty opponents will begin a 136-mile walk across the state to bring attention to those on death row here.
The march participants will walk a mile for each of the state’s 136 death row inmates. Noel Nickle is executive director of the North Carolina Coalition for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. She says the march will begin at the Forsyth County Courthouse and end Oct. 10 outside the Central Prison in Raleigh.
“We are beginning in Winston-Salem and ending in Raleigh because Forsyth County and Wake County disproportionately sentence people to death, more than any prosecutorial districts in the state," Nickle said.
According to Nickle, there are 12 death row inmates in Forsyth County and 10 in Wake County. She says 60% of them are African Americans and that half were found guilty by all-white juries. Nickle says they want to bring attention to those disparities through discussions and programs throughout the walk.
The names of death row inmates from the places where they make stops and those who have been executed in the state will be read. There have not been any executions in North Carolina since 2006, but Nickle says that could quickly change.
“It’s not a matter of if executions resume in North Carolina but when they resume," Nickle said. "Litigation issues that have prevented executions, we believe are going to fall away. Racial justice litigation and lethal injection litigation will no longer prevent executions in the future at some point and we will be like our neighbor, South Carolina."
Freddie Owens was executed on Sept. 20 after a 13-year suspension in executions because South Carolina officials could not get the drugs for lethal injections. Owens was convicted of the 1997 convenience store fatal shooting of Irene Granger, a mother of three. Five other executions are being scheduled.
Death row inmates in South Carolina are given a choice of lethal injection — now that the companies who supply the drugs are not named — firing squad or the electric chair.
Nickle’s group is asking North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper to commute the death sentences of all inmates.
