02 May 2025 :
April 29, 2025 - North Carolina. House committee approves HB 270 on death penalty.
On April 29 afternoon lawmakers voted in favor of a bill that would once again allow for death by firing squad and electric chair in North Carolina with the aim of resuming death row executions that have been under effective moratorium since 2006.
The Judiciary 2 Committee advanced a proposal with the goal of bypassing the 2-decade pause on executions in North Carolina, allowing death row inmates a choice between a firing squad, electrocution, and chemical injection.
House Bill 270 would repeal a section of the law abolishing the use of the electric chair and again make this the default method of execution in North Carolina, with inmates having the option to request one of the other 2 methods instead. The state banned the use of electrocution for capital punishment in 1998, and has executed no one since 2006, with the use of the death penalty postponed by lawsuits over the method of execution as well as racial bias in sentencing.
The proposal comes 4 years after South Carolina passed a similar bill reviving the use of the electric chair and firing squad, citing an inability for prisons to obtain the chemicals used for lethal injection. While that bill led to further legal challenges over whether these two methods of execution constituted cruel and unusual punishment, the South Carolina Supreme Court ultimately upheld their use in 2024, allowing executions to resume after a decade-plus pause.
