FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: European Embassies Join Call to End North Carolina’s Death Penalty

Raleigh, N.C., Nov. 1 – Diplomats from the European Union, Switzerland, and Norway are in North Carolina this week to add their support to ongoing calls to Governor Roy Cooper to commute North Carolina’s 137 death sentences to prison terms. Over three days, the 13-member delegation of representatives from across Europe will hold a series of private meetings with stakeholders in the North Carolina death penalty system, including the Governor’s Office, religious leaders, and family members who have lost loved ones to homicide.

On Thursday, Nov. 2, the group will co-host a public screening of the film “Love Lived on Death Row” with the Duke Human Rights Center, Center for Death Penalty Litigation, North Carolina Coalition for Alternatives to the Death Penalty and the Responsible Business Initiative for Justice. A panel discussion with local experts and advocates will follow the screening. (Information on how to attend the screening is here.)

European Union representatives say supporting efforts to stop executions is part of their mission to promote human rights around the world. 

“All 27 EU Member States have abolished the death penalty for decades, while continuing to prosecute serious crime with high effectiveness and to stand firmly by victims and their families,” European Union Ambassador to the U.S. Stavros Lambrinidis said. “We have seen in practice that the death penalty doesn’t promote public safety and that, where applied, inevitably also results in the execution of innocent people – a moral injustice that no democracy can tolerate. As America’s strongest allies, we respectfully ask Governor Cooper to exercise his powerful moral and political leadership to commute the sentences of death row inmates in North Carolina to prison terms.”

 The delegation includes representatives from Belgium, the Czech Republic, Estonia, France, Germany, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Romania, and Switzerland.

Noel Nickle, Executive Director of the North Carolina Coalition for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, said the movement for commutations has been gaining momentum in recent months.

“A large and diverse coalition has come together to call for Gov. Cooper to ensure that no more executions are carried out in North Carolina. We are thrilled that our call has not only been heard in the streets of Raleigh, but across the world. Together with our European Union allies, we ask Gov. Cooper to commute death sentences that are rooted in racism and do not make our state safer,” Nickle said.

There are 137 people currently on North Carolina’s death row. While Black people constitute just 22% of the state’s population, they make up more than half the individuals on death row. Twelve people have been exonerated after being sent to North Carolina’s death row, 11 of them men of color. 

A majority of those facing execution were sentenced in the 1990s under laws now recognized as unfair. For example, most people on death row were tried before reforms intended to prevent wrongful convictions, including laws allowing defendants to see all the evidence in the prosecutor’s file and requiring the recording of confessions.  In addition, two-thirds of those on death row were tried prior to the creation of North Carolina’s Office of Indigent Defense Services, which assures adequate representation for those facing the death penalty. 

Business leaders from across the country are also backing the effort to end capital punishment. Supported by the Responsible Business Initiative for Justice (RBIJ), an international nonprofit working with companies to champion criminal justice solutions that promote public safety and strengthen communities, more than 250 business leaders have signed a declaration calling for the end of the death penalty around the globe.

With his commutation power, Governor Cooper has the opportunity to save 137 lives, address systemic disparities in the capital punishment system, and make North Carolina stronger and more prosperous. The eyes of the international business community are on North Carolina.

“With his commutation power, Governor Cooper has the opportunity to save 137 lives, address systemic disparities in the capital punishment system, and make the state stronger and more prosperous,” Maggie O’Donnell, RBIJ’s Director of Policy & Advocacy, said. “The eyes of the international business community are on North Carolina.”

To learn more about the effort to abolish the death penalty in North Carolina, visit www.nccadp.org.

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