The North Carolina Supreme Court ruling in Conner, et al v. NC Council of State is available in Adobe .pdf format.
"N.C. high court rules with state on death penalty," is the initial AP filing, written by Tom Breen. It's via the Greensboro News-Record.
The North Carolina Supreme Court has ruled that state officials acted properly when approving new capital punishment guidelines four years ago.
In a ruling published today, the court found that the Council of State did nothing wrong in 2007 when it signed off on a new protocol for lethal injection developed by the Department of Correction.
Lawyers for five death row inmates had argued the council, which consists of statewide elected officeholders, violated a law regulating the way state agencies approve policies.
David Weiss of the Center for Death Penalty Litigation says the court's ruling is unlikely to mean that executions will immediately resume in North Carolina. Weiss says other court challenges to capital punishment are pending.
Ann Blythe posts, "State court: Death penalty policies don't need public meetings," at the Raleigh News & Observer.
The State Supreme Court issued a ruling today that essentially gives the Council of State, the 10 statewide elected officials, authority to continue setting execution protocol for death row inmates without publicly meeting.
The decision has little impact on the de facto moratorium on executions that has been in place since 2007, when a group of inmates challenged execution methods at the time as cruel and unusual punishment.
The case decided this week by the state's highest court focused on a procedural point — whether Administrative Law Judge Fred Morrision had jurisdiction to order the Council of State to revise its execution protocol as he tried to do more than four years ago.
Lawyers for death row inmates argued that the council failed to follow state statutes when members signed off on new execution procedures in February 2007. The state Department of Corrections announced new procedures two weeks prior to that Council of State meeting, but a judge almost immediately put a halt on several executions, citing a century-old law that requires the governor, lieutenant governor and other top department heads to consider any new death penalty protocols.
"Death penalty ruling," is the title of Mark Binker's Capital Beat post at the Greensboro News-Record.
One of the odder impediments that has been part of North Carolina's logjam over the death penalty has apparently been removed by the state's Supreme Court today.
Back in 2007, death penalty opponents pointed out that state law requires that the Council of State approve North Carolina's death penalty protocol. The council of state is a 10-member panel chaired by the governor and made up of statewide elected officers such as the Insurance Commissioner and Commissioner of Agriculture. Generally, the council deals with bond issuance, land purchases and other fiscal matters.
And:
After the Council of State approved the protocol, death penalty advocates sued, saying that the council did not use proper procedure when reviewing the case. In particular, they argued the council of state should have allowed public comment, as prescribed under the APA, administrative procedures act.
The court rejected that notion in a ruling released today. Justice Barbara Jackson wrote for the majority:Accordingly, we hold that the process by which the Council approves or disapproves the DOC's lethal injection protocol is not subject to the APA, and petitioners cannot challenge it by going through the Office of Administrative Hearings through the APA. Instead, any issue petitioners have with the protocol rests with the General Court of Justice or the federal courts.This does not end the legal stalemate over executions in this state.
Earlier coverage of lethal injection issues in North Carolina begins at the link. The state's last execution was in 2006. Also in play in North Carolina death penalty cases is the state's Racial Justice Act.
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