Feb. 27, 2003 Online Since 1996 Vol 77 No. 38
Moratorium on NC death penalty passes
Senate approves moratorium support 30-17-5
David Forbes
SGA Beat

James Nix | The Appalachian
Off-campus senator Justin W. Moore speaks against a resolution to support a moratorium on the death penalty at the SGA meeting Tuesday.
     A resolution of support for a moratorium on the death penalty in North Carolina passed the Student Government Association after heated debate Tuesday night.
    The bill, which passed 30-17 with 5 abstentions, declares the SGA’s support for a moratorium on the death penalty in North Carolina on grounds of the current system being racially biased, not giving defendants enough representation and having a high error rate.
   “North Carolina has one of the strongest moratorium movements in the entire country,” Ian A. Mance, off-campus senator and one of the authors of the bill, said Tuesday. “It’s no more important that we do it than any other organization, but it’s not unprecedented.”
    Student governments at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina State University and University of North Carolina at Charlotte have already passed similar resolutions.
    “I think that focusing on national issues is sometimes a good thing for a university because it promotes dialogue on campus about those issues, it leads to better educated voters and citizens,” off-campus senator Paul A. Funderburk, another author of the bill, said Tuesday.
    Dr. Matt Robinson, who teaches the Death Penalty class in the department of political science, spoke to the senate to offer a non-biased perspective on the issue.
    Mance said he was contacted by the groups People of Faith Against the Death Penalty and North Carolina Moratorium Now, which are trying to get businesses, newspapers, student governments and other organizations to declare support for a moratorium.
    “Rather you’re for or against the death penalty doesn’t affect a position on the moratorium, you should be against killing innocent people, against making sure people are properly convicted. I can’t see how one could vote against making the process more fair,” H. Dustin Bayard, off-campus senator and one of the authors of the bill, said.
    Some senators objected to the bill just as strongly. Before the meeting a flier was passed out urging senators to vote against the bill. The flier quoted an article from the Mountain Times about Daniel Lee, a man who raped and murdered Appalachian student Jeni Gray in the fall of 1989 and currently sits on death row.
    “Send a message to admitted rapist murderers like Daniel Lee,” the flier read. “Vote No on the moratorium.”
    “I support the death penalty, a lot of students do. I don’t believe us signing a bill with all the names of these students, saying they support this moratorium is right,” off-campus senator Aaron M. Whitener said.
    Other senators felt the moratorium was not a student issue.
    “Are there no other issues like fee increases or class size that we could be dealing with; I thought we had issues with fee increases and over-crowding,” John C. McDonald, senator from Gardner Residence hall, said. “This is not relevant to the university, we elect people to Raleigh to deal with this.”
    While the bill passed, several senators chose to abstain from the vote.
    “I realize it’s a senator’s duty to find out what constituents think, and I feel that was not done with this bill,” Emily McDermott, a senator from White residence hall who abstained, said.		  

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