After nearly 30 years on death row, he’s fighting for NC to give him a basic education
Marcus Mitchell is on death row at North Carolina’s Central Prison. Convicted of a triple murder, he’s been there for 27 years. And he’s likely never getting out.
But he doesn’t believe that means people like him can’t seek self-improvement. To him, “education is the key to rehabilitation” — even for those without a release date.
When Mitchell had nowhere else to turn, education kept him afloat. Family and friends sent him books so he could study on his own.
“Constantly reading, constantly learning; exploring education was my way out,” Mitchell told The News & Observer over the phone, a convenience Central Prison has only afforded individuals on death row since 2016.
Mitchell has advocated for access to a high school equivalency (HSE) program for people on death row in North Carolina for nearly 20 years.
For over a decade, he said his efforts, mostly taking the form of handwritten appeals, led to little action from prison officials.
“They said that death row was not put here to be rehabilitated,” Mitchell said.
Frustrated, he decided to go to the top: He wrote to then-Gov. Roy Cooper in June 2023. He had no reason to expect a different response from his earlier efforts.
Then, one day a few months later, he was summoned to the sergeant’s office. He had guests.
‘Example of change’
In North Carolina, incarcerated people in the general population without a high school diploma or HSE diploma “who function below the tenth-grade achievement level” are required to enroll in an HSE program for a minimum of six months under the state’s mandatory education policy.
Wake Technical Community College provides this HSE program at Central Prison. Those under 17 years old must also participate in the program. But that policy does not apply to people on death row.
Individuals on death row can take self-paced correspondence courses, but they must pay for these courses — and can only take one course at a time.
Mitchell, born in Zebulon, never finished ninth grade. On death row, he said he clings to education because it is the only thing he has control over.
“Through self-education, doors constantly open for me, even if it was just in my mind,” Mitchell said. “You know, I could be anything. I could pursue anything.”
His advocacy for access to educational programming began after his close friend Eric Queen, at just 28 years old, died by suicide in 2007 on death row. Queen’s body was found in a janitor’s closet.
Queen and Mitchell entered death row when they were just 19 years old.
“I felt the same strings tugging at him — only it didn’t pull me to ultimately what he did,” Mitchell said, referencing his own thoughts of suicide.
Mitchell was convicted of three counts of first-degree murder, including a 14-year-old, in a house in Zebulon. He was one of several teenagers charged in the crime.
Queen’s death pushed Mitchell to fight his suicidal thoughts. He believed education was the key to finding purpose.
“If I can get an education here, I know I can help not just myself but these other guys who have given up,” he said.
Mitchell also became an orderly, a role in which he does general duties for the other men on death row, and he organizes basketball and cornhole tournaments.
“For these guys in here who are lost, I can be the example of change,” he said. “I will be the change that I speak of. I have changed in every sense of who I am.”
Mitchell has spent many of his 27 years on death row writing. In addition to writing to officials asking for access to education, he finds solace through pen pals.
That’s how he met his wife, Heather. The two fell in love through letters and over the phone.
They married at the end of January. The ceremony, held in Central Prison, was the first time in nearly three decades that Mitchell was able to touch a loved one.
“It was over so quick,” Heather Mitchell said. “But it puts it in perspective because the norm for me was always being without that. I was used to the glass, and then to be able to hold him and touch him and kiss him and love him, to walk away from that was tough.”
An HSE program on death row
It was a normal morning in 2023 when Mitchell was called down to the sergeant’s office.
Brooke Wheeler, the superintendent of the corrections department’s Education Services, and several people representing Wake Tech entered the room.
Wheeler told Mitchell that Cooper had read his letter and agreed with him, Mitchell said. He was told that the corrections department was working to bring an HSE program to death row.
Wheeler said, in an October 2023 email obtained by The N&O, that the department would contract with Wake Tech to teach an HSE class for the men on death row. She said computers would be provided to those interested in taking classes virtually, as well as calculators, books and pencils.
Wheeler declined to comment, as did a spokesperson for Cooper, deferring to the corrections department.
Keith Acree, communications director for the Department of Adult Correction, confirmed the department has been “working in earnest to bring a high school equivalency program to death row” in a statement.
That effort hit an obstacle in December 2023 when Wake Tech notified the department that it could not offer an HSE program on death row due to federal regulations.
Wake Tech uses Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act funds to educate incarcerated people in North Carolina. The federal law was designed to help job seekers access “employment, education, training, and support services,” according to the U.S. Department of Labor.
Under Title II of the law, incarcerated people who are likely to be released within five years of participation in the program should be prioritized to receive federal funds.
Laurie Clowers, vice president of communications and marketing at Wake Tech, said in a statement that Wake Tech has not “set aside funding to offer educational services to inmates with no prospect of employment outside of the immured setting.”
In other words, people on death row don’t meet the requirements because they don’t have a release date.
Without Wake Tech, Acree said the department provided “materials and tutors to assist the men on death row in learning HSE content” independently.
The men on death row could access self-paced HSE prep programs on electronic tablets, which Central Prison gained in 2022, Acree said. And they received HSE study books in 2024, Mitchell said.
On March 2, 2025, Mitchell and the other men on Central Prison’s death row received a memo that these tutors would begin visiting them on Wednesday and Friday afternoons.
Acree did not confirm or deny if this was in response to Mitchell’s requests, though he did say the “NCDAC Education Services coordinated with Central Prison’s warden, Duke University and others to provide a number of tutors to begin working with the men on death row.”
But these tutors are students, not HSE instructors. Mitchell said the tutors don’t have a curriculum. And while the men on death row can study, they cannot take the GED assessment until the prison finds a proctor, exam administrator, space and material for the test.
“I’m hoping that once guys are caught up or whatever, through using the tutor, they would actually start the (HSE) classes,” Mitchell said.
‘A matter of hope’
In 2023, Mitchell began a study group to prepare for the day when the men on North Carolina’s death row would be able to gain their HSE. The group studies math, science, writing and history for an hour every weekday morning. The men help each other learn.
There are 121 people on death row in North Carolina, according to the Department of Adult Correction. The majority of them are men at Central Prison. The two women on death row are at the North Carolina Correctional Institution for Women.
More than 30 death row inmates hoped to enroll in the HSE program. When Cooper commuted the death sentences of 15 men on death row to life in prison without parole at the end of his tenure as governor, that left about 20 people remaining.
The men with commuted sentences can access an HSE program in the general prison population.
Since 1977, 295 people have been removed from death row, according to the NCDAC. More than 70% of those individuals had their death sentence overturned and resentenced to a lesser penalty. Six of those removed from North Carolina’s death row were found not guilty or given pardons of innocence. Mitchell’s case is still under appeal.
It is more likely that an individual will transfer to the general population than be executed. If a death row inmate’s overturned sentence results in life without parole or a lesser sentence, they will be placed in the regular prison population, where they would be required to take part in an HSE program if they do not have a high school diploma or HSE diploma and function below the 10th-grade achievement level.
“Why provide it to just part of the prison?” Heather Mitchell said.
Ben Finholt, the director of the Just Sentencing Project, said that offering an HSE program to incarcerated people without release dates “makes them better citizens of the world, makes them better citizens of the cell block, and makes them better neighbors if they do get released.”
The sentencing project is housed at the Wilson Center for Science and Justice at Duke University School of Law.
He added that access to educational programming would help reduce problems inside the prison facilities because “for the folks inside, it is a matter of hope.”
“If you tell people that they are not deserving of any education in any future, what you’re going to get are folks who are more likely to be violent in prison or refuse to follow the rules,” Finholt said.
Mitchell, who has not had an infraction in nearly 20 years, said he found education to be that hope.
A few of those remaining on death row are becoming discouraged and “sinking back into their old routine,” Mitchell said.
But he isn’t deterred. With the support of his wife, he will continue to advocate for an education.
This story was originally published March 18, 2025 at 5:00 AM with the headline "After nearly 30 years on death row, he’s fighting for NC to give him a basic education."
