RALEIGH, N.C. – In North Carolina, 141 men and women currently face death sentences, making the state home to the sixth-largest death row population in the country. This week, a new report from the Center for Death Penalty Litigation reveals that about three-quarters of these people were sentenced before a number of reforms were passed to ensure fairness and prevent wrongful convictions.

Gretchen Engel, the center's executive director, said the difference between then and now is significant - and frustrating.

"We know that if these crimes happened today, that most of the people would not face the death penalty at trial," she said, "and if they went to trial, would very unlikely be sentenced to death."

The report, called "Unequal Justice," found that 92 percent of people on death row were sentenced before 2008, when a package of state reforms took effect. Many were tried in the 1990s, when 25 to 35 were sentenced to death each year. Public opinion largely has shifted on capital punishment since then, although supporters of the death penalty have argued it is needed in the most heinous of crimes.

The report comes as North Carolina passed its 12th year without an execution and is on track for another year with no new death sentences. One person has received a death sentence in the last four years.

With the current knowledge of better trial practices and shifting public opinion, Engel said, the 141 cases should be reconsidered.

"Given that we have decided that the fairer way and the more reliable way of imposing the death penalty is under our current system," she said, "we have to go back and figure out a mechanism to evaluate these old cases."

Many of the reforms came after multiple exonerations in the Tar Heel State and elsewhere, where some people on death row were found to be innocent.

The report is online at cdpl.org.


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January is National Human Trafficking Awareness Month, and combating the problem is especially important in Nevada, which is home to the largest commercial sex trade per capita in the country.

More than 5,000 people, mostly women and girls, are sold for sex in Nevada each month, according to a 2019 study from Creighton University.

Melissa Holland, executive director and a cofounder at Awaken, a Reno-based nonprofit that helps survivors of sex trafficking get their lives back, said the traffickers target local teenagers.

"Over the last four years," she said, "Awaken has seen victims come out of every single high school in Reno-Sparks and most of the middle schools."

All sex trafficking is illegal, online or otherwise, in Clark and Washoe counties, which include Las Vegas and Reno. But solicitation of an adult for sex is only a misdemeanor, punishable by a $1,000 fine or up to six months in jail. Brothels are legal in certain parts of 10 other Nevada counties.

Holland said she'd like to see the sex trade banned in every county - or at least, to have the penalty raised to what's known as a gross misdemeanor.

"We have a sex tourism community here, which unfortunately means this is where traffickers come to groom girls and to traffic them," she said. "Traffickers want to come to Nevada because the laws have done half the work for them, in terms of desensitizing people to prostitution."

Awaken and other groups like it offer transitional housing, a drop-in center and counseling, and make presentations at local schools. The Nevada Attorney General's website also has links to multiple agencies and programs designed to help victims.

Survivors of human trafficking in Indiana are required to provide testimony in person during trials, but a new bill would allow young survivors to submit pre-recorded video statements. The proposal would apply to survivors who were 14 or younger at the time of their assault, as long as they're still a minor during the trial.

Rep. Wendy McNamara, R-Evansville, chair of the Indiana House Courts and Criminal Code Committee, said she wrote the bill after talking with a parent in her district.

"His daughter was victimized when she was 14 and then was forced to testify in court when she was 15," McNamara recounted. "So hopefully this would be an opportunity for kids not to have to relive this."

Per the National Human Trafficking Hotline, there were 140 reported cases of trafficking in Indiana in 2020, up from 98 in 2017. McNamara said while her bill is aimed at survivors of human trafficking, it also would cover young survivors of any violent crime.

McNamara's bill includes other provisions which she pointed out will streamline the prosecution of traffickers and increase penalties for those who pay for sexual acts from minors. She added many of those measures were designed to target the organizations behind the crime.

"It's not just one individual," McNamara explained. "It's often a very complex web of groups of people, multi-state groups, that serve as human-trafficking rings."

The proposal also will require local agencies to report human trafficking investigations to the Indiana Attorney General's office within thirty days. It will be before the Courts and Criminal Code Committee for consideration Wednesday.

Human trafficking can be reported to the National Human Trafficking hotline via the organization's website or by phone: 1-888-373-7888.

The Florida Department of Corrections now bans people in prison from receiving traditional mail, such as greeting cards and handwritten letters, requiring that it be scanned and sent electronically, with few exceptions. The department says the change was made to reduce contraband from entering facilities, but Denise Rock, executive director of Florida Cares Charity Corp., sees it as choosing to punish the estimated 80,000 people in prison for an offense that affects less than 1% of the prison population.

Rock said the department is taking away important intangibles, such as being able to hold and smell the paper a loved one has written on, "or touch the colors of the crayons that your child wrote a card to you. What we have found from talking to people that are both incarcerated or formerly incarcerated is that this stuff provided an invaluable connection back home."

Rock is urging the Department of Corrections to consider punishing only those who violate mail rules.

The new rule, finalized Nov. 29, is being phased in beginning with four state-run facilities -- the Calhoun, Lawtey, Polk and Martin Correctional Institutes - starting Jan. 18.

Florida is following in the footsteps of several states that have banned or drastically restricted mail. Texas banned greeting cards and artwork in 2020. Michigan and Indiana have taken similar steps. Rock said she believes this approach is wrong.

"The overall goal of incarceration should be that someone comes out and is well connected to their family, and able to get readjusted and reacclimated," she said, "and we feel like this just further isolates them from how the real world functions."

According to the Prison Policy Initiative, 50 years of research has found that visitation, mail, phone and other forms of contact between incarcerated people and their families has positive effects on both. Also, an investigation by the Marshall Project after Texas limited its prison mail found drugs and other contraband still were entering facilities - smuggled in by corrections officers.