North Carolina governor commutes 15 death row sentences on last day in office
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Roy Cooper’s historic clemency action comes a week after Biden’s resentencings shielded dozens from execution. The governor of North Carolina has granted commutations to 15 people on death row on his final day in office, changing their sentences to life without the possibility of parole.
Roy Cooper, a Democrat, announced his clemency action on New Year’s Eve, prompting praise from opponents of capital punishment, who have advocated for mass commutations to thwart executions. Cooper’s grants exclude dozens of people whose death sentences remain intact. Out of 136 people on the state’s death row, Cooper had received 89 clemency petitions, according to the governor’s office. His office said it considered the facts of the crime, input from prosecutors and victims, “credible claims of innocence”, the “potential influence of race”, prison conduct, a defendant’s age and intellectual capacity at the time of the offense and other case factors.
“After thorough review, reflection, and prayer, I concluded that the death sentence imposed on these 15 people should be commuted, while ensuring they will spend the rest of their lives in prison,” Cooper said in a statement. His action comes after Joe Biden, in his final weeks in office, commuted the sentences of 37 out of 40 people on federal death row, shielding them from execution under Donald Trump.
The American Civil Liberties Union celebrated the clemency grant to Hasson Bacote, a Black man sentenced to death in 2009. Bacote brought a lead case challenging the death penalty under the state’s Racial Justice Act (RJA). That legislation, passed in 2009, allowed challenges to death sentences if defendants could show race played a role at trial. Lawmakers repealed the RJA in 2013, but courts ruled that people with pending claims were entitled to hearings, the ACLU explained in a statement on Tuesday.
