Who is on death row in North Carolina?

(WGHP) – More than 100 people are awaiting execution in North Carolina, some of them for decades.

In North Carolina, a total of 136 people are on death row. All but two are men.

According to a demographic summary from the North Carolina Department of Public Safety, 75 of the residents are black, 51 are white, six are American Indian or Alaska Native, and four are Asian or Asian American.

Forsyth County has the most death row inmates with 12, followed by Wake County with 10 and Buncombe County with 7. There are 44 counties with no death row inmates.

Wayne Alan Laws, now 62, has been on death row longer than anyone else on the list. According to the legal database Justia, he is accused of killing two men with a claw hammer in Davidson County in 1985. Laws was found guilty of two counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of 35-year-old Ronnie Waddell and 57-year-old James Kepley after the two were found bludgeoned to death. Several items of Laws’ clothing were found covered in blood and human remains in a dumpster at the apartment complex where he lived.

The two women – Blanche Moore and Carlette Parker – have been on the list since the 1990s.

Moore, now 91, was convicted of first-degree murder in Forsyth County in 1990. The Oxygen network’s true-crime show “Snapped” examined her case in a 2020 episode, and actress Elizabeth Montgomery played Moore in a TV movie called “The Black Widow Murders.”

Moore was convicted of poisoning her longtime boyfriend Raymond Reid with arsenic in 1986. News & Record She was reportedly “the suspected perpetrator of a series of arsenic poisonings – some of them fatal – that investigators, prosecutors and family members believe began in 1966.” The alleged victims include her father, mother-in-law, sister-in-law and her first husband. Her second husband, Rev. Dwight Moore, survived and testified against her.

Parker, now 59, was convicted of first-degree kidnapping and murder in 1999. Prosecutors said Parker drowned 86-year-old Alice Covington after Covington discovered Parker had stolen her money, according to WRAL. Covington’s body was found in her car, which was parked in a wooded area in Morrisville.

Of the 136 inmates on death row, about 90% were sentenced before 2010. some died on death row before they were even executedThe total number of death sentences has fallen dramatically since the 1990s.

Two men were sentenced to death in 2023. James McKamey was convicted on January 26, 2023 in Columbus County for the murder of Carol Greer in 2016. According to The news reporterMcKamey stabbed Greer to death in a shed behind her house before taking her car and driving to Brunswick County, where he was caught. He also stabbed Greer’s neighbor and attempted to kill him.

Wisezah Buckman was convicted on November 2, 2023, in connection with four murders in Dare County. He was one of four defendants in a failed 2017 prison break that left maintenance mechanic Geoffrey Howe and correctional officers Veronica Darden, Wendy Shannon and Justin Smith dead, according to The Coastland Times. About a dozen other employees and inmates were injured. He received a life sentence for Darden’s murder and death sentences for the murders of Howe, Shannon and Smith.

Buckman’s co-defendant Mikel Edward Brady II was sentenced to death in 2019, and Jonathan Monk and Seth Frazier are awaiting trial.

Samuel R. Flippenfrom Forsyth County was the last convict executed in North CarolinaHis execution took place on August 18, 2006. Since Flippen’s execution, legal challenges to the death penalty in North Carolina have led to a stay of executions.

Below is a complete list of all those sentenced to death in North Carolina as of July 6.