North Carolina: Death and Life at Central Prison

Who is the death penalty for?

Duke University

This project explores the past and present of the death penalty in North Carolina through changing technologies, constitutional controversies, philosophies of punishment, and social inequities. Our focus is Central Prison, the state's first prison and home of its death row. Between 1984 and 2015, the state of North Carolina executed forty-three people, but has not executed anyone since 2006. And in 2015, no one was sentanced to death. Our project seeks to place the death penalty in North Carolina in an international, intellectual, and historic context. It explains recent moratoria connected with racial inequity and constitutional questions of cruelty; reflects on the role of changing technologies in the death penalty process; and compares and contrasts imprisonment and punishment in North Carolina with punishment in Norway. Along the way it explores these basic questions: why, and how, and for whom do we administer lethal punishment?

Our Point of View

As undergraduate students at an elite southern university, we feel both separated from and implicated in the prison industrial complex, including capital punishment. Through this class we've thought about the commonplace nature of violence and our passive complicity. Many of us are interested in the role medical professionals play in keeping incarcerated people alive and administering lethal punishments, and chose to focus our project on the intersection of technology and human experience.

Wherever I go when they kill me, it got to be better than CP.

— Sammy Crystal Perkins, NC death row inmate, executed on 8 October 2004.

North Carolina: Death and Life at Central Prison Duke University

Who is the death penalty for?

North Carolina: Death and Life at Central Prison

Who is the death penalty for?

Duke University

Map that highlights the counties that have disproportionately sentenced black individuals to death since 1910. Of the 11 counties not highlighted, 5 have never sent an inmate to death row. Courtesy of: Carly Meyerson, Safiya Driskell

"My eyelids were taped open.. I saw every ugly thing about the criminal justice system.. I have an intense desire to make a change." Alan Gell, NC death row exonoree. Courtesy of: Scott Langley

In 1910, North Carolina adopted the electric chair, thought to be a more humane and technologically advanced method of execution. By 1938, over 160 inmates had been executed by electrocution. Courtesy of: North Carolina State Board of Public Welfare, Capital Punishment in North Carolina

Margie Velma Barfield was executed by lethal injection at Central Prison on November 2, 1984. As of 2015, women comprise about 2% of death row inmates in the U.S. Courtesy of: Corbis Images

Glen Edward Chapman was exonerated after serving 15 years for murders he did not commit. As of 2015, nine men have been exonerated from North Carolina's death row. Courtesy of: Edwin Tse Photography

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