|
The Problem The way the Supreme Court actually conducts this review eliminates the majority of “similar cases” from consideration. The Court ignores the 97% of homicide cases that do not result in death sentences. By looking at such a narrow slice of the picture, the Court’s perception of how one case relates to another is skewed. The Court relies on the same cases again and again, including some cases in which the death penalty has been overturned. In the past 28 years, over 400 death sentences have come before the Supreme Court. Only eight were found to be disproportionate. Since 2002, the Court hasn’t overturned a single death sentence based on its proportionality review.The Solution House Bill 341 has been introduced in the General Assembly to fix this problem. By requiring the North Carolina Supreme Court to consider both cases that resulted in death sentences and death-eligible cases that resulted in life sentences, this bill would help to make certain that capital punishment is administered fairly. House Bill 341The bill would clarify the existing law to ensure that the North Carolina Supreme Court takes into account all of the most extreme murder cases—those resulting in sentences of death or life imprisonment with or without the possibility of parole—when conducting its proportionality review. The bill would affect all future cases, and all cases that have not yet been decided by the Supreme Court on their first appeal after conviction. As before, if the Court found that a death sentence was disproportionate, the defendant would be sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. |