Former North Carolina Judge Tom Ross is urging state lawmakers to enact legislation that would impose a two-year moratorium on executions, a step he says is necessary in order to prevent an innocent person from being executed in the state. During his career, Ross served as a Superior Court Judge for 18 years, as the chair of the North Carolina Sentencing Commission, and as director of the Administrative Office of the Courts. He is currently the executive director of the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation. In a “Point of View” column in The News & Observer, Ross stated:

There are things we can do to make our system better. I applaud our chief justice of the state Supreme Court for his creation of the Innocence Commission, of which I am a member. I endorse the bill recommended by the Commission to create a permanent body to examine cases of innocence; however, that commission would not deal with many of the problems facing our capital punishment system, such as inadequate counsel, prosecutorial misconduct, and racial disparity.

The bill in the legislature for a death penalty moratorium does not stop capital trials. It does not mean that anyone already sentenced to death will not ultimately be executed. What it does mean is that our state has the courage to stop executions for a two-year period to allow the system to be closely studied and see if there are improvements that can be recommended that can insure that we, not as Republicans or Democrats, but as human beings, don’t make the ultimate mistake and allow an innocent person to be executed.

We should pause and be certain that everything possible is done to insure that the system works fairly and accurately in every case. As a person of faith living in a civilized society, I don’t see how we can do otherwise. (The News & Observer, June 16, 2005).

See New Voices, Innocence, and Recent Legislative Activity.