Vigil calls for North Carolina governor to reduce prison population

BY MICHAEL HYLAND | UPDATED NOVEMBER 21, 2023 6:22 AM

RALEIGH, N.C. (WNCN) – Advocates for criminal justice reform on Monday called on Gov. Roy Cooper (D) to take further steps to reduce the state’s prison population, beginning a month-long vigil outside the Executive Mansion. 

“As he begins to pardon turkeys, we would like for him to remember there are over 30,000 people incarcerated in North Carolina prisons that desperately need his attention,” said Kristie Puckett, senior project manager for Forward Justice. 

The Decarcerate Now NC coalition sent Cooper a letter calling for the immediate release of certain prisoners including those who are elderly, ill, in prison for “technical parole violations” and those who were convicted as children. They also called on him to commute all death sentences. 

Throughout the month, the group will hold marches and demonstrations highlighting issues such as racial disparities of those incarcerated in the state’s prisons. 

Puckett urged Gov. Cooper to use his clemency power to release more people from prison and to grant pardons. 

Groups involved in the vigil over the next several weeks began holding these events in 2020 after Cooper won re-election. At the time, Cooper had never exercised his power to commute sentences or pardon people. 

In late 2020, he issued pardons of innocence to five people who were convicted of crimes they did not commit. More recently at the end of 2022, Cooper in one day commuted sentences for six people and issued four pardons of forgiveness. 

His office noted two of those commutations stemmed from recommendations by the Juvenile Sentence Review Board, which Cooper established to look at cases of people sentenced to prison when they were minors. 

Read more at: https://myfox8.com/news/politics/nc/vigil-calls-for-north-carolina-governor-to-reduce-prison-population/