Crime bill passes NC legislature, would make changes to death penalty, bail and more

A new effort to restart the death penalty in North Carolina, enact stricter rules for bail and ramp up monitoring of alleged criminals with mental health problems passed the state House of Representatives Tuesday.

The bill passed the state House by a vote of 82 to 30 on Tuesday, a day after clearing the Senate. The bill now goes to Democratic Gov. Josh Stein’s desk for him to sign, veto or let become law without his signature.

The legislation is a response to the killing of Iryna Zarutska in Charlotte last month. The 23-year-old had fled to North Carolina from war-torn Ukraine and was stabbed to death in a seemingly random attack on a commuter train. Her alleged killer is a homeless man who has since been sent for psychiatric evaluation to see if he’s mentally fit to stand trial.

The bill and its numerous changes to state criminal laws and pretrial procedures passed the state Senate Monday in a 28-8 vote after most Democrats walked out in protest. The Democrats who stayed behind voted against it. The bill had previously enjoyed bipartisan support — until Senate leader Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, made a surprise, last-minute amendment to restart executions of prisoners.

The death penalty has been paused in North Carolina since 2006, due in part to legal challenges against the practice. Berger’s proposal aims to bring it back, perhaps by using firing squads instead of lethal injections, which is the state's main method of execution.

Berger later said that even though his amendment was a surprise to Democratic lawmakers, House Republicans knew about it in advance and had agreed to sign off.

House Majority Leader Rep. Brenden Jones, R-Columbus, said he thinks people will be in favor of restarting executions of convicted killers.

"You've got children? Swap places for one moment," Jones said. "Think about your child looking up in those murderous eyes. Her last vision is a guy taking her away from everything, her family, her home, her boyfriend, the future she was going to build."

A lawyer for Decarlos Brown, the man charged in Zarutska's death, didn't respond to a request for comment.

The debate in the House on Tuesday was emotional and politically charged. Republicans accused Democrats of being soft on crime. Democrats accused Republicans of being unserious in their concerns and proposed solutions, and unwilling to pay for the mental health and law enforcement services that would be needed to fix the problems.

Several lawmakers from the Charlotte area were among those sparring over the bill Tuesday.

"This heinous act was preventable and is a direct result of judicial officials being too soft on crime, and allowing too many criminals to have a revolving door that come into our neighborhoods and into our communities," said Rep. Tricia Cotham, R-Mecklenburg.

Rep. Laura Budd, D-Mecklenburg, said Republican state lawmakers never appeared to notice Zarutska's killing — and never bothered proposing these changes that they now say are crucial for public safety — until her death went viral on social media and Republican President Donald Trump commented on it, weeks after the fact.

"I was aware it had happened," Budd said. "The North Carolina General Assembly did nothing. It was not until the video was released by CATS, and it went viral, and the White House noticed that suddenly, suddenly we gave a damn. And now here we are."

Rep. Carla Cunningham, D-Mecklenburg, spoke about her own struggles with trying to get mental health care for her son in Charlotte — similar to how the mother of Zarutska's alleged killer has also said she struggled with getting her son mental health treatment.

Cunningham recounted the first time her son was involuntarily committed, when he was 14 and she was summoned to his school for an emergency meeting.

"They started to ask my son questions, and the first one was, 'Are you thinking about hurting yourself?' And he said no," Cunningham said. "The second question was, 'Are you thinking about hurting someone else?' And I was sitting right next to him, and he looked at me and said 'yes.' And they asked him who? He said 'her.' And that 'her' was me."

For years now, Cunningham said, she has struggled to get him help. She said local magistrates wouldn't commit him involuntarily at times. When she brought him to a mental hospital herself, he'd be let out once he learned how to correctly answer the intake questions. But if she didn't keep bringing him, she was told, the state could charge her with abandonment.

So Cunningham indicated that she agreed with the bill's attempts to take a closer look at the mental health system in the state. But she said she also deeply opposes its efforts to bring back the death penalty. And in the end, she said, the kind of change that's needed might be bigger than what legislation can handle.

"There's something going on in society," Cunningham said. "We are not in social norms right now. Everybody's got a gun. People can't control themselves. We're living in a totally different world today because nobody knows what a norm is anymore. It doesn't exist. Social norms don't exist."

The only former judge serving in the legislature, Rep. Marcia Morey criticized Republican lawmakers for not working with her or any other Democrats on what to put on the bill, even after they sent GOP leadership a long list of suggestions.

Morey, D-Durham, laid out some of her and other Democrats' suggestions during the House debate Tuesday, including funding for more GPS ankle monitors, better lighting in public transit locations, and more oversight of people with mental health issues. Those suggestions were quickly dismissed again by Jones, the majority leader, who said Morey was "ridiculous" to ask lawmakers to focus on facts rather than emotion.

"We heard some legalese. ‘Facts.’ Here's a fact: She's dead," Jones said, adding: "We owe it to this child. We owe it to the people in this state to do the right thing."

Death penalty debate

Stein supported the death penalty as attorney general, and his office argued many appeals on behalf of the state to keep convicted killers on death row. But he never oversaw any executions, and Berger’s proposal would make the governor's administration decide the best strategy for restarting executions — whether to use firing squads, the electric chair or some other method.

Berger didn’t name Stein directly when speaking with reporters after the bill passed, but he indicated his bill purposefully put the onus on Stein to be the one to make the call on how people should be executed.

“There are some folks who are out there, perfectly fine with us having the death penalty on the books, but not having a death penalty that actually gets implemented,” Berger said.

Spokespeople for Stein haven’t responded to requests for comment on the new death penalty provision. The governor previously said he wanted to see lawmakers give magistrates — the court officials who set bail amounts and make other decisions — more training and oversight, and to make it easier for people to be involuntarily committed to mental hospitals if they pose a threat to themselves or others.

The bill puts more political oversight on magistrates, but Republicans in the Senate shot down Democrats’ request Monday to also give them more training, including on how to handle people with mental health issues who are arrested and brought before them. The bill also makes it more likely that people with mental health issues could be involuntarily committed to mental health facilities after being arrested for a crime, but wouldn’t make any changes to get them help, treatment or hospitalization prior to committing crimes.

Republicans told Democrats Monday they were trying not to spend any money in the bill, beyond the dollars set aside to hire 10 new prosecutors in Charlotte.