Small Town Justice
News: It's not just Berkeley and Cambridge. Now some Southern towns are joining the call for a moratorium on the death penalty.
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The rural town of Winfall, population 554, is the sort of isolated Southern community that seems frozen in the past. Located just off a state highway in the swampy northeastern corner of North Carolina, Winfall's business district consists of two aging convenience stores and a cramped eatery whose half-dozen tables fill quickly with locals at lunch hour. The nearest hotel is 17 miles away. Not that there's much of a demand for such amenities -- except for pickup trucks loaded for hunting and fishing in the nearby woods and waterways of the Great Dismal Swamp, most traffic bypasses the town to the east.
The political views and social values of people in these parts are also slow to change. Black residents in surrounding Perquimans County were effectively prevented from holding office until 1990, when they won a fight to reform the electoral system. The back roads are lined with cotton farms, chicken houses, and churches, and American flags seem to hang from every other front porch. When the town began building its first sewer system two years ago, homeowners were reluctant to give up part of their property to accommodate the pipes. "That was a big one," says Ken Rominger, a member of the Town Council who doubles as Winfall's postmaster. "People don't understand about right-of-ways."
At its monthly meeting in February, the council tackled a typical agenda of everyday issues, reviewing the town budget and approving the purchase of a new sewer truck. But then Rominger and his three fellow council members turned to an item that seemed at odds with the town's deep-seated conservatism: a resolution calling for an immediate moratorium on executions in North Carolina.
The measure condemned the state's uneven record of administering the death penalty, calling it "a haphazard maze of unfair practices with no internal consistency." It cited inadequate legal counsel provided for poor defendants, an appeals process that refuses to consider new evidence of innocence, and widespread racial discrimination. Mayor Frederick Yates, a retired Marine master sergeant and vice president of the state NAACP, told the council of his personal involvement in the case of Robert Bacon, a black inmate on death row whose case was tainted by prejudice: Jurors made racial jokes at his trial, and some later admitted that they resented Bacon's dating a white woman. Yates joined others in lobbying Governor Mike Easley, who commuted the sentence to life.
Over the past five years, more than 70 towns and cities nationwide have approved similar resolutions calling for a halt to executions. Many -- from Berkeley, California, to Cambridge, Massachusetts -- are known for their progressive politics. But no other state has passed as many moratorium resolutions as North Carolina, long a stronghold of support for the death penalty. Nineteen municipalities -- including some of the state's most conservative cities -- have demanded a stop to all executions until officials devise a fair and impartial system to administer the death penalty. In rural towns like Winfall and major cities like Charlotte, Republicans have joined Democrats and whites have joined blacks to form moratorium majorities.
The groundswell of opposition at the local level represents a significant shift in a state where even the most liberal politicians, fearing a backlash from voters, have long been reluctant to express doubts about the death penalty. As in other states, the moratorium has won support among staunch conservatives in North Carolina because it stops short of calling for outright abolition of capital punishment, insisting only that the system is so flawed that it must be put on hold and examined. “This is not a discussion about the ethics or morals or economics of the death penalty,” says Rod Autrey, who voted for the moratorium as a Republican council member in Charlotte. “It’s about whether all the people who enter the system are being treated fairly.”
AT THE RAMSHACKLE POST OFFICE in Winfall, Ken Rominger pauses from his duties to explain why he voted for the moratorium on Town Council. A grandfatherly fellow who spent 23 years in the Air Force before retiring to rural North Carolina, he greets everyone by name and knows the pulse of the town better than anyone. “I hear everything first,” he says.
Rominger believes in the death penalty for “cut and dried” cases in which the crime is especially brutal and the guilt is clear. But in recent years, as he read the news and surfed the Internet, he began to have serious reservations about how capital punishment is applied. His son, who lives in Illinois, told him about 13 men released from death row there after new evidence proved they had been wrongfully convicted. He also learned about some of the 100 death row inmates who have been exonerated nationwide, and concluded that police and prosecutors sometimes abandon ethical considerations in a rush to convict. “I can get rather passionate in disgust at how some of this happens,” he says.
There are currently more than 200 inmates on death row in North Carolina—a total surpassed only by California, Texas, Florida, and Pennsylvania—and four prisoners could be executed by year’s end. Yet in Winfall, no one has publicly criticized the council for taking a stand against the death penalty. “It’s not as if the issue went unnoticed,” Rominger says, observing that the moratorium vote received front-page coverage in the local weekly newspaper. “Obviously there was very little objection.”
Part of what has convinced so many towns to reconsider capital punishment is the widespread support of churches across the state. The moratorium resolution was drafted by an interfaith group called People of Faith Against the Death Penalty, which operates out of a small, overstuffed office in the North Carolina town of Carrboro. The organization has circulated the measure to council members statewide, along with similar resolutions signed by more than 350 congregations, civic groups, and businesses in North Carolina. “I’m not sure we’d be able to get these City Council votes without these other resolutions,” says Stephen Dear, the group’s executive director. “They create a buzz in the community.”
The goal, Dear says, is to pass enough resolutions at the local level to convince state legislators to approve a moratorium. “We’re giving politicians cover,” he says. “We have polls that show up to 70 percent support for a moratorium. The General Assembly knows that. If we can give them 40 or 50 resolutions from local governments, we’re going to make it a lot easier for them to vote our way.”
Even with the support from churches, however, the resolution has been bitterly contested in many communities. When local officials debate the moratorium, law enforcement authorities and victims advocates often pack council chambers, making emotional appeals against the measure. In Winston-Salem, home of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco, the district attorney distributed photos of murder victims to the Board of Aldermen. One side showed a smiling face, the other a brutal shot of a crime scene. Alderman Vernon Robinson warned his colleagues not to “spit on the graves” of victims. Yet the board approved the resolution by a vote of 5-3.
The debate was especially heated in Charlotte, where the council meeting was attended by scores of uniformed police officers and family members of slain cops, one of whom called the moratorium “a slap in the face.” When the parade of witnesses fin-ished, Republican council member Rod Autrey spoke in favor of the moratorium, shifting the tone of the debate. “The very foundation of our system of government really goes to the fact that justice must at all costs be blind,” he said. “We need a signifi-cant study of the entire system because there are obvious inequities.” Another Republican, Lynn Wheeler, also backed a moratorium despite her “adamant” support of capital punishment, saying the death penalty must be administered “fairly and equitably.”
Council members approved the resolution by a vote of 8-3. When the mayor later vetoed the measure, the council promptly overrode him.
THE GROWING NUMBER of resolutions in North Carolina has already caught the attention of the state’s legislators. “Over the last couple of years there has been a momentum building toward a moratorium,” says state Senator Frank Ballance, who co-chairs a legislative study committee that has recommended passage of a moratorium. Every major newspaper in the state has editorialized in favor of the measure.
Lawmakers have also observed that for local officials, opposing the death penalty no longer represents a political death sentence. In both Charlotte and Fayetteville, a military city that is home to Fort Bragg and Pope Air Force Base, politicians who backed the moratorium went on to win reelection by handy majorities. “It was almost a nonissue,” says Anne Fogleman, a Fayetteville council member who sponsored the resolution.
Supporters of the moratorium are confi-dent that their political success at the local level will persuade state officials to follow their lead. After all, they say, the fundamental issue is one that should appeal even to conservatives who back the death penalty. “Here in the South, because of our strong religious beliefs, we do believe in an eye for an eye,” Autrey, the Republican from Charlotte, told reporters after the vote. “But we also believe as strongly in fairness, equity, and justice.”
In small towns like Winfall, people put it even more plainly. “All we’re saying,” says Rominger, “is to stop and take a look at it.”
