NC May Execute 1000th
Source: The News & Observer, via Topix.net 27601
North Carolina is set to have the distinction of executing the 1,000th person in the United States since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty almost 20 years ago.
On Tuesday evening, Virginia Gov. Mark Warner granted clemency to a convicted killer scheduled for execution Wednesday. That means the execution of North Carolina death row inmate Kenneth Lee Boyd may become that milestone. Boyd is set to die by lethal injection at 2 a.m. Friday at Raleigh’s Central Prison.
Boyd, 57, was convicted in the 1988 shootings of his estranged wife, Julie Boyd, and her father, Thomas Dillard Curry, in their Rockingham County home. [Text continued at site.]
First, a humorous nitpick: I’m sure all the people who were born in 1976 (and are getting ready to start turning 30 beginning in January) will be interested in hearing that a penalty reinstated the year they were born was only restarted 20 years ago. I have clear memories of news coverage of North Carolina’s first execution following the reinstatement: we talked about it in my fourth-grade class, and well, I don’t like to admit it, but I was in fourth grade more than twenty years ago.
In all seriousness, though, reading this article makes me ashamed to be a North Carolinian. It was working for this state’s own Division of Prisons that my views on capital punishment crystallized, and I lived within easy walking distance of Central Prison for almost three years. North Carolina is unusual in that it executes murders inmates at such an odd hour, and many wonder if that’s because the citizens would rather not face the issue squarely. I admit that I’ve often been among that many. It’s certainly not as easy to stage a protest at 2:00 a.m. as it is at, say, 6:00 p.m.
That doesn’t mean it won’t be done, though, and Raleigh is only about four hours from Richmond. The protesters planning to go to Richmond may likely not have to go further in order to change their plans. There are also plenty of protesters right here in Raleigh and elsewhere in the state. I sincerely hope the Division of Prisons is prepared.