Will NC allow firing squad, electric chair after bill misses key deadline?
A bill that would authorize North Carolina to use the electric chair for the first time in decades and introduce another controversial execution method, the firing squad, failed to clear a key legislative deadline last week.
But the bill sponsor, Rep. David Willis, is still working to move it forward, and says he believes that there is enough support in the Republican-controlled General Assembly for it to advance this session.
Lawmakers advanced a flurry of bills out of the House and Senate ahead of last Thursday’s crossover deadline, but House Bill 270 was not one of them. The bill would approve the use of electrocution and firing squads in addition to lethal injection, the only execution method currently allowed under state law, and one that has been challenged in court. It’s an attempt to resume executions that have not taken place in the state in nearly 20 years.
Critics have said the proposed options could lead to “gruesome” deaths and harm officers at state prisons by forcing them to carry out “violent” and “brutal” executions.
It was filed in March but only started moving forward in the week before that deadline for lawmakers to pass most legislation they want taken up out of one chamber so it can be considered by the other chamber as well. After clearing the House Rules Committee, it was ultimately not taken up for a vote on the House floor.
Willis, a Union County Republican who is one of the bill’s primary sponsors, told The News & Observer on Tuesday that the bill wasn’t taken up to allow for more conversation among House Republicans, and to make sure the bill they are proposing is aligned with what Senate Republicans would support as well.
Willis said he’s aware of some concerns within the House GOP caucus over the bill, in particular over the alternative methods the bill proposes allowing.
Executions in North Carolina have been halted since 2006 as a result of legal challenges over the use of lethal injection.
Besides the issues surrounding lethal injection — the constitutionality of the method, the supply of drugs and the participation of doctors — more than 100 of the 121 people currently on death row are challenging their death sentences with claims of racial bias during jury selection or sentencing in their trials. These claims are allowed under the Racial Justice Act, a state law that was passed by Democrats in the General Assembly in 2009.
North Carolina hasn’t used the electric chair for several decades, according to the Department of Adult Correction, and in the hundred-plus years since the state took over the responsibility of carrying out capital punishment from the counties in 1910, has never allowed the use of firing squads.
That method of execution was recently adopted in South Carolina, and carried out there earlier this year, for the first time anywhere in the country in 15 years, according to the Associated Press. Firing squads had previously been used only four times in the decades following the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in 1976 reinstating the death penalty; all four instances were in Utah, the AP reported.
Willis said he and other sponsors of the bill modeled their legislation after the bill that was adopted in South Carolina. He said he would be open to considering other methods that could be considered more “humane.”
“There’s been some conversation about that,” Willis told The N&O, regarding concerns within the caucus about the methods the bill proposes authorizing. “I think there’s certainly room for discussion about how we do that, and what’s deemed the most humane method of moving forward.”
Willis said his bill isn’t so much about authorizing any particular method of execution as it is about “just moving the death penalty itself forward because it’s been tied up for the last 19 years, and it’s just not an option right now for any of our (district attorneys) across the state.”
Bills that don’t clear one chamber by crossover can still be taken up later in session, either by being added into the state budget, which in addition to containing spending allocations has been used to adopt policy, or by being substituted for other legislation.
Willis said he expects the bill to move forward in the next couple of weeks, and expects lawmakers to pass it before this year’s session adjourns. He said that as of now, lawmakers are “optimistically” aiming to conclude business before the Fourth of July.
One option to move the bill forward now that the crossover deadline has passed, Willis said, would be to add a funding component to it. Bills containing appropriations are exempt from the deadline.
Asked about the bill on Wednesday, House Speaker Destin Hall said that with the crossover deadline last week and House Republicans finalizing their budget proposal, which will start being unveiled in budget committees on Thursday, the death penalty bill is “not something that’s being heavily discussed in caucus right now.”
Hall said the House GOP Caucus “generally agrees that when a jury hands out a sentence like that in a heinous case where somebody has committed a heinous crime, that the jury’s will should be carried out.”
At the same time, Hall reiterated that Republicans want to know that the state’s executive branch will carry out executions if lawmakers end up authorizing alternative methods.
“As to when and whether we end up taking that bill or a similar bill up, I don’t know yet,” Hall said. “It’s just too early to tell, but I know that a number of members continue to work on it.”
This story was originally published May 15, 2025 at 6:00 AM with the headline "Will NC allow firing squad, electric chair after bill misses key deadline?."
