What does North Carolina think? Depends on how you ask.

Consider the moratorium on the death penalty that has held up executions in the state for the past three years.

A recent survey by the Elon University Poll got different results on what North Carolinians think about the death penalty and the moratorium based on the question:

58.3 percent: Support the death penalty for people found guilty of first-degree murder (compared to 28.2 percent who oppose and 8.2 percent who said it depends).

47.8 percent: Think the death penalty is "the most appropriate punishment" for first-degree murder (compared to 38.9 percent who said life without parole).

46.6 percent: Agree with a moratorium while the death penalty system is reviewed (compared to 44.7 percent who disagreed).

These results could be used by either side to argue their case.

Opponents of the moratorium could note that the majority of state residents support the death penalty, while supporters could note that more residents back the moratorium than oppose it.

Hat Tip: MKleinschmidt

Sen. Phil Berger hopes to get the death penalty back on track.

The Senate Republican leader has again filed a bill that would end a de facto moratorium on capital punishment in North Carolina.

The N.C. Supreme Court is considering a case involving a Catch 22 that led to the moratorium: Doctors are required to be present at executions, but the N.C. Medical Society has objected to allowing doctors to attend.

Berger's bill would forbid any group from disciplining a doctor for attending at an execution.

He said he was not hopeful that the bill will go anywhere in the Democratic-dominated Senate unless the Supreme Court's decision forces its hand.

"What the Supreme Court says may determine whether or not there's some pressure to do something with the bill," he said. 

A death row inmate singled out by Republican gubernatorial candidate Pat McCrory has responded.

At a recent debate, the Charlotte mayor said that the moratorium on the death penalty should be lifted, noting that the convicted killer of two Queen City police officers was still on death row.

"Listen, this is personal to me," McCrory said. "Two young police officers that were shot by one man with their gun, and this man has still not been dealt with even though a jury of his peers convicted him ... There's no reason we should have the moratorium right now."

At the debate, McCrory did not name the killer, Alden J. Harden, but he did name the police officers, Andy Nobles and John Burnette. Harden was sentenced to death in August of 1994 for the killings, which took place the previous October.

Contacted by Dome at Central Prison in Raleigh, he said in a handwritten letter that Charlotte police have killed "many unarmed young black men" in recent years.

"I am being dealt with," he wrote. "The moratorium is set to help make sure that more people like you and my so called peers don't take it 'personal' as well, but rather look at the law. Because everyone has a right to fight for themselves under the law."

He wrote that "there's every reason" to have a moratorium.

The full text of McCrory's remarks and Harden's response after the jump.

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Beverly Perdue has apologized for a remark on the death penalty.

As a state senator, Perdue opposed a bill to phase out the gas chamber in state executions, according to a March 23, 1995, story in the Charlotte Observer:

Another death penalty backer, Sen. Beverly Perdue, D-Craven, suggested that doing away with the gas chamber would lessen capital punishment's deterrent value.

"I think we should make it painful and torturous," she said.

When the comment came up in a discussion on the liberal Web site BlueNC, Perdue logged on and apologized.

"I made that quote more than a decade ago, and I'm sorry," she wrote this afternoon. "I know that we must make sure that innocent people are not on death row and that's why I favor the current moratorium."

A moratorium bill didn't get any traction today, but death penalty opponents were still celebrating.

That's because two other bills that did pass the House would help death row inmates, Andrea Weigl reports.

The N.C. Racial Justice Act would allow death row inmates to use statistics to try to prove prosecutors sought the death penalty against them because of their race.

And a proportionality review bill would allow the state Supreme Court to compare their appeals with other cases in which the defendant was given a life sentence.

Currently, when the state Supreme Court reviews death row inmates' appeals, it evaluates whether the sentence was fair in comparison to other cases in which the defendant received death.

But the bill would only allow an expanded review when the defendant was convicted of felony murder, where a killing occurs during another crime. A classic example of felony murder is when a clerk is killed during a convenience store robbery.