07 March 2017 :

Jury in Wake County Returns 7th Consecutive Life Verdict in a Capital Trial. A Wake County jury voted to spare Nathan Holden's life, marking the seventh consecutive capital sentencing trial in the county in which juries had opted to sentence a defendant to life without parole instead of the death penalty. No jury in Wake County has imposed a death sentence since 2007. Prosecutors had sought the death penalty against Holden, Black, for murdering his ex-wife's parents and attempting to kill her in 2014. The jury convicted Holden of two counts of first-degree murder but, after being presented evidence of 39 mitigating circumstances—including that he suffered from Posttraumatic Stress Disorder as a result of chronic childhood abuse—jurors chose to sentence him to life. The ten Wake County prisoners on North Carolina's death row placed the county among the 2% of counties that accounted for 56% of all prisoners on U.S. death rows as of 2013. Wake County's experience has been typical of North Carolina, and the nation as a whole. The state has averaged fewer than two death sentences per year since 2011, with no new death sentences in 2012 and 2015. In 2016, only one of the five capital trials in the state resulted in a death sentence. By contrast, the state sent between 20 to 30 people per year to death row in the 1990s. North Carolina's last execution was in 2006.