NC Coalition for Alternatives to the Death Penalty’s Noel Nickle on their new plea to Gov. Cooper

News & Views

Noel Nickle, executive director of the North Carolina Coalition for Alternatives to the Death Penalty

It’s been 18 years now since North Carolina last put a person to death as punishment for a crime – a time period in which a fast-growing number of states and countries have abolished the death penalty. Nonetheless, the death penalty remains on the state’s statute books and 136 people still reside on Death Row. And that fact continues to spur an active and growing movement of activists who say the time has long since passed for the state to end what they argue is a barbaric and obsolete punishment.

Right now, the group’s efforts revolve around calling on Gov. Roy Cooper to use his constitutional power to commute the sentences of those 136 individuals to life in prison before he leaves office at the end of the year, and recently we got a chance to learn more about these efforts in a conversation with the director of the North Carolina Coalition for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, Noel Nickle.