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RESOLUTION TO REPEAL THE DEATH PENALTY AND USE THE SAVINGS TO ASSIST <br /> MURDER VICTIMS' FAMILIES AND HELP PREVENT VIOLENT CRIME <br /> WHEREAS, our community upholds the values of fairness and due process for all <br /> people; and <br /> WHEREAS, the criminal justice system, including the death penalty, starts at the local <br /> level, with local tax dollars and local employees used to enforce the law; and <br /> WHEREAS, the administration of the death penalty affects all of our community's <br /> residents as victims and victims' family members, as offenders and offenders' family members, <br /> and the community at large; and <br /> WHEREAS, a fair criminal justice system benefits the entire community; and <br /> WHEREAS, more than 140 innocent people in the United States since 1973 have been <br /> exonerated and released from death row after having been wrongfully convicted and spending <br /> a combined more than four centuries on death row (www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/innocence-list- <br /> those-freed-death-row); and <br /> WHEREAS, North Carolina's death penalty has led to seven innocent people being <br /> condemned to die in the modern era before they were exonerated <br /> (www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/innocence-and-death-penalty#inn-st); and <br /> WHEREAS, intentional and systematic racial bias has been shown to have a <br /> "persistent, persuasive and distorting role" in North Carolina's death penalty (North Carolina v. <br /> Robinson, 2012; Michigan State University, 2010; UNC, 2000); and <br /> WHEREAS, less than one percent of murders lead to death sentences and rarely <br /> involve "the worst of the worst" defendants (www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/arbitrariness); and <br /> WHEREAS, states without the death penalty have had consistently lower murder rates <br /> (www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/facts-about-deterrence-and-death-penalty); and <br /> WHEREAS, North Carolina statutes already involve life imprisonment without the <br /> possibility of parole as an alternative to the death penalty; and <br /> WHEREAS, the death penalty in North Carolina annually costs more than 10 million <br /> taxpayer dollars per year more than life imprisonment without parole (Duke University, 2009); <br /> and <br /> WHEREAS, millions of North Carolina taxpayers' dollars spent on the death penalty <br /> every decade could be used for crime prevention and programs to offer assistance to murder <br /> victims' families; <br /> NOW THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED the Orange County Board of Commissioners <br /> calls on the Governor of North Carolina and our Legislators in the N.C. General Assembly, the <br /> President of the United States, and our Representatives and Senators in the United States <br />