Students and faculty gathered at N.C. Central University Sept. 29 for a press conference to urge Gov. Mike Easley to stop executions and undertake a thorough review of the system.

The students and faculty were protesting the scheduled execution of Eddie Hartman on Oct. 3. North Carolina now leads the nation in having the third highest number of executions in 2003.

“Justice and equity are calling. When sir, will you listen?” said D’Weston Haywood, president of NCCU’s chapter of the NAACP.

Hartman, a 35-year-old gay man, was executed for the 1993 Northampton County killing of Herman Smith, despite evidence that he received the death penalty due to anti-gay bias.

Prosecutor David Beard argued that evidence of sexual abuse was irrelevant because Hartman was gay.

Despite claims of innocence, prosecutorial misconduct, discrimination, biased jurors, inadequate defense attorneys and mental illness, North Carolina has executed four men over the course of five weeks .

Political Science Depart-ment Chair Jarvis Hall said North Carolina needs a death penalty moratorium.

“A call for a two-year moratorium is the least we can do,” Hall said.

Haywood pointed to a North Carolina study done by the Common Sense Found-ation, which found that a defendant who kills a white person is three and a half times more likely to be sentenced to death than a defendant who kills someone black.

“The death penalty is not a deterrent to crime,” said Charmaine Fuller, staff member to Sen. Jeanne Lucas. “It is not the answer for North Carolina.”

Fuller said that the senate overwhelmingly passed legislation to halt executions so the system could be examined, but it has not yet passed the house of representatives.

“Four executions in six weeks is alarming,” said Stephanie D. Jackson, a former student government president and intern at the Carolina Justice Policy Center. “It’s time that the governor listened to the Legislative Black Caucus and the many North Carolinians who grow increasingly concerned when this state’s death penalty is reserved for the mentally ill, the possibly innocent and those who were severely abused or neglected as children.”

Joseph Earl Bates was executed last month for a 1990 murder in Yadkin County. A severe brain injury resulting from a car accident was cited as a possible cause for his behavior. Henry Lee Hunt was executed Sept. 12 for a murder near Lumberton in 1984. He consistently maintained his innocence.

William Quentin Jones was executed Aug. 22 for a 1987 murder he committed during the robbery of a convenience store in Raleigh.

The robbery was caught on tape, but his attorneys argued that his behavior was influenced by his mental instability and his troubled childhood.