Death penalty law changes aim to restart NC executions

ASHEVILLE – For Asheville businessman George Lane, any development that might bring about the execution of his son's killer is good news.

That's why Lane enthusiastically supported state lawmakers' approval earlier this month of the Restoring Proper Justice Act. The new law amends the state's capital punishment procedures with the aim of restarting executions in North Carolina after a nine-year hiatus.

Lane, the 79-year-old owner of Leicester Pawn & Gun, still tears up when he talks about his son, Mark, who was 22 when he was shot and killed during a robbery at the store on Aug. 14, 1991. Mark, a state champion wrestler his senior year at Erwin High, was Lane's youngest son.

"The horrible thing for my family is that one minute I've got a son, and the next minute I don't," Lane said.

Mark Lane's killer, Edward Earl Davis, has been on death row since 1992.

"I hope to be able to hang on until they kill him," said Lane, who turns 80 in December.

The Restoring Proper Justice Act passed with easy majorities in the House and Senate and was signed into law by Gov. Pat McCrory on Aug. 5. It removes some of the impediments to executions, including dropping the requirement that a licensed physician be present during an execution.

Doctors had been reluctant to participate because such an action violates their medical ethics. The revision allows other medical professionals, not just doctors, to oversee an execution.

The new law also allows the state to exempt information about drugs used in lethal injections and the companies that manufacture them from public records laws. Drug manufacturers and pharmacies have shied away from providing drugs for executions because of bad publicity, and some states including Oklahoma have procured experimental drugs.

North Carolina is one of 31 states with a death penalty, but because of legal challenges no executions have been carried out in the state since 2006.

"Currently, North Carolina has the death penalty, but there has been some difficulty carrying out those punishments," said Rep. Brian Turner, a Democrat from Biltmore Forest who joined with Republicans in passing the legislation. "This change will allow these sentences to be carried out the way the courts intended."

But death penalty opponents and proponents alike say the law changes likely won't jumpstart executions anytime soon because of ongoing legal challenges.

"I don't think this is going to lead to a rash of executions," Turner said. "I don't think this law will turn North Carolina into Texas."

David Weiss, an attorney with the Center for Death Penalty Litigation, an anti-capital punishment nonprofit that provides legal services to about a third of the state's 148 death row inmates, agreed.

"I think that's what they are trying to do (resume executions), but as a practical matter that's not what it's going to accomplish," Weiss said. "There are still a lot of thorny problems the courts are trying to figure out."

Legal questions

Courts are still wrangling with the question of whether North Carolina's lethal injection procedure constitutes cruel and unusual punishment, which the U.S. Constitution prohibits.

Weiss pointed to botched executions in Ohio, Oklahoma and Arizona in 2014, with the condemned man in each case appearing to writhe in pain and the process taking much longer than planned. In the Oklahoma execution, experimental drugs were used.

"The courts have an obligation to review the execution procedure to make sure what's proposed doesn't violate that (cruel and unusual punishment) rule," Weiss said.

The second thread of legal challenges surrounds Racial Justice Act cases in which defendants are raising questions about whether racial bias played a role in a conviction and death sentence. The issue doesn't always depend on the race of the defendant or victim but can involve the racial makeup of juries. Death penalty opponents say prosecutors have excluded African-American jurors in some cases.

Nationally, botched executions and recent exonerations of death row inmates, including Henry McCollum last year in North Carolina, have eroded public support for executions, and the number of executions has dropped, Weiss said.

Since 1973, 150 people have been exonerated and freed from death row in 26 states, including nine in North Carolina, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

McCollum, North Carolina's longest serving death row inmate, was freed last year after three decades because of new DNA evidence that showed he was innocent of the 1983 rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl.

Since 1977, when a 10-year national moratorium on executions ended, 1,413 people have been put to death in the U.S., according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Of that, 528 were in Texas. Nationally, the number of executions gradually increased from 1977 to a peak in 1999, when there were 98 executions, and gradually decreased since then. So far in 2015, 19 people have been executed.

Weiss said the Restoring Proper Justice Act "really increases the chance that an execution could be botched and for an execution to be cruel and unusual punishment. It seems like we should be increasing the safeguards instead of taking them away. Just as a matter of basic human decency, we should have safeguards to ensure it's done predictably."

Closure for Lane

George Lane has heard the arguments against the death penalty, but he still believes with all his heart that Edward Davis should pay the ultimate price for killing his son.

Davis had been a menace to society for years before he killed Mark Lane, George Lane said. He was convicted of murder in the 1975 stabbing death of a 60-year-old man in Columbus, Ohio. He was paroled the year before he killed Mark Lane.

As part of a crime spree that included the Leicester robbery, Davis and another man carried out armed robberies at a McDonald's in Canton, as well as others in Georgia and Tennessee. Davis had escaped jail in Tennessee, where he was being held on a robbery charge, before the Lane murder.

"They let out a criminal and thought he was rehabilitated, but right away he was out robbing and killing," Lane said. "He deserves what he gets."

Twenty-four years after his son's murder, he said Davis' execution, if it ever happens, "will bring closure. I wouldn't have to think about it anymore."

Buncombe death row inmates

People convicted of murder and sentenced to death from Buncombe County, along with the date they were sentenced:

Edward E. Davis, March 12, 1992

Randy L. Atkins, Dec. 8, 1993

Leslie Warren, Oct. 6, 1995

Jamie L. Smith, May 10, 1996

James F. Davis, Oct. 2, 1996

Phillip Davis, Aug. 22, 1997

Lyle May, March 18, 1999

James Morgan, July 8, 1999

Terry A. Hyatt, Feb. 7, 2000

Source: N.C. Department of Public Safety

History of executions in NC

Public hangings were common in North Carolina until the state took over administration of the death penalty in 1910.

Since 1910, the state has executed 404 people. After a moratorium on executions from 1962 to 1984, North Carolina put 43 people to death between 1984 and 2006. One Buncombe resident was among those inmates — Zane Hill — who was executed on Aug. 14, 1998.

Since 1910, there have been three methods to carry out executions, all at Central Prison in Raleigh. For the first 28 years, the state used the electric chair. In 1936, the state first used the gas chamber. In 1983, inmates waiting for execution were allowed to choose lethal injection or the gas chamber. In 1998, lethal injection became the state's only method of execution.

Currently, 148 people are on death row in North Carolina, including two women. Of that total, Buncombe has the third highest number from among the state's 100 counties, with nine, trailing only Forsyth (14) and Wake (10), according to N.C. Department of Public Safety records.

Executions by decade:

1910-20 — 50

1921-30 — 58

1931-40 — 130

1941-50 — 108

1951-61 — 15

1962-84 — 0

1985-2006 — 43

2007-present - 0

Source: N.C. Department of Public Safety