The state General Assembly should discontinue the execution of prisoners, the Durham County Board of Commissioners urged at their bi-weekly meeting Monday night.
The unusual agenda item brought a packed audience to the County Courthouse, leaving only a little standing room. The People of Faith Against the Death Penalty, easily recognizable by their "Moratorium Now!" stickers, requested that the board adopt a resolution supporting a moratorium on the death penalty in North Carolina. The group succeeded so far in getting many local governments in North Carolina to adopt the resolution, including the city councils of Durham, Raleigh and Chapel Hill.
"I encourage your support for this moratorium," said the Rev. Mel Williams, a member of the organization. "We're not asking for abolition."
Williams cited several of the group's main reasons for a moratorium. They believe the penalty is a form of arbitrary punishment due to socioeconomic and racial differences, that it is a form of state-sponsored violence, and that its use conflicts with religious morality.
Several other community leaders spoke up in favor of the resolution. Lao Rupert, executive director of the Durham-based Carolina Justice Center, said the "error rate" of capital punishment is 70 percent.
"The Durham City Council was one of the first local governments [to support the moratorium]," Rupert said. She added The Herald-Sun of Durham, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the American Bar Association, the Durham Food Co-Op, the Common Sense Fund and the Fair Trial Initiative to the list of supporters. "Please support the resolution before you tonight," she said.
James Coleman, a Duke professor of the practice of law and chair of the ABA Moratorium Implementation Project Steering Committee, said the ABA is not an abolitionist organization but is concerned about how the death penalty works in the context of the justice system. He also defended the organization's decision to support a moratorium.
"The organization had to be concerned that flaws in the system were not being addressed," Coleman said. "If we don't do something about flaws in the system, the more there will be." He added that the death penalty is an issue of defendants' rights as well as of public safety.
William Uber, a Chapel Hill resident, was the only speaker at the meeting who opposed the moratorium. He decried the desire for a moratorium and said they had eventual abolition on their agenda.
"Their stance... removes choices in sentencing from our courts when executions truly are appropriate," Uber said. "Their stance is one of absolutes." He further criticized the group for attacking the death penalty instead of "offering support or insight into methods on how to improve [the] court system."
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