Marketing and Public Relations Plan

The North Carolina Coalition for a Moratorium

John Strange

June 25, 2007

Executive Summary

Recent polling in North Carolina and the country reveal three major trends in the death penalty debate:

  • The majority of North Carolinians and Americans support capital punishment.
  • However, support appears to be slipping, possibly due to widespread stories of innocents on death row, the misconduct of prosecutors and defense attorneys, and other factors in the debate.
  • Most North Carolinians and Americans support a temporary suspension of executions as some of these issues are studied and resolved.

These findings should lead the North Carolina Coalition for a Moratorium into a successful message and marketing strategy that focuses not on the death penalty per se, but on the declining confidence in the justice system. A moratorium must be positioned as a way to serve the people of North Carolina in their desire for a fair, equitable and trustworthy justice system.

Because the coalition does not have the funding available for a large advertising and public relations campaign, we suggest an event-driven plan that covers the districts of targeted House representatives. This plan is designed to drive constituents and opinion leaders to contact targeted representatives, and features free screenings in targeted districts of The Trials of Darryl Hunt, a documentary currently appearing on HBO and featuring North Carolina native Darryl Hunt, a moratorium supporter who had been incarcerated for 20 years for a murder he did not commit. The plan also features a special Moratorium Day in Raleigh, press conferences with local civic and religious leaders in targeted districts, lunches with Hunt with targeted legislators and their opinion leaders, and events at targeted churches and religious communities in which state religious leaders urge their members to contact their legislators on behalf of the moratorium.

Situation Analysis and Background

For almost 10years, a coalition of 23 North Carolinaorganizations, groups and citizens – the North Carolina Coalition for a Moratorium – has worked to bring about a two-year suspension of executions – a moratorium – to North Carolina. While executions are on hold, the state would form a blue-ribbon commission that would study the death penalty system and its various issues, especially race and its effect on sentencing, the sentencing and execution of mentally ill defendants, and the role of woefully inadequate defense attorneys and criminally incompetent prosecutors. The commission would presumablyrecommend necessary reforms to improve the state’s justice system. Executions would resume at the end of the two years; however, coalition members predictably hope that the General Assembly would abolish the death penalty after finding that the system is arbitrary, unfair, prohibitively expensive, and irreparably flawed.

According to its website, the coalition is made up of Democrats and Republicans, and pro- and anti-death penalty citizens. However, most of the coalition’s members, and certainly all of the most active and outspoken members and organizations, fully and passionately support the abolition of the death penalty in North Carolina. The full list of organizations within the coalition follows.

ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now)

African American Caucus of the North Carolina Democratic Party

ACLU of North Carolina

Amnesty International

CapeFear Citizens for a Moratorium

Capital Restorative Justice Project

Carolina JusticePolicyCenter

Center for Death Penalty Litigation

Charlotte Coalition for a Moratorium Now

Common Sense Foundation

Fair Trial Initiative

Franciscan Coalition for Justice and Peace

GastonCounty Coalition for a Moratorium

NAACP-North Carolina

National Association of Social Workers–North Carolina

North CarolinaAcademy of Trial Lawyers

North Carolina Association of Women Attorneys

North Carolina Black Leadership Caucus

North Carolina Citizens for Justice

North Carolina Council of Churches

North Carolina League of Women Voters

People of Faith Against the Death Penalty

Western Carolina Committee for Education on the Death Penalty

The past eight years have seen victories and defeats for the coalition. The highlight for the moratorium came in 2003 when the North Carolina Senate passed a moratorium bill. Sen. Eleanor Kinnaird of District 23 said the vote transcended partisan politics, and represented “extraordinary people who voted from their consciences.”[1] The House did not take up the bill during that legislative session, but the victory in the Senate attracted the attention of several national and regional foundations interested in death penalty issues. Armed with new foundation funding, coalition organizations hired new staff members, brought on two well-known lobbyists, and prepared and launched a new advertising campaign – print and radio – in targeted regions.

However, victory was only temporary. The House, newly divided nearly 50/50 and for the first time in history boasting two co-speakers from both sides of the aisle, failed to take up the bill. The bill had passed its assigned committees, and the coalition’s lobbyists had determined that the votes on the bill would have been very nearly split down the middle, or even slightly in favor of passage, but the bill died in the desk drawer of the Republican co-speaker. If the House had passed the bill in the summer of 2004, the bill would have been sent on to the governor for his signature (Gov. Michael Easley, a former prosecutor, has not supported moratorium legislation, and it is certainly possible, even likely, he would have vetoed the bill). With the death of the bill, financial support from the foundations was not continued. In time, organizations were forced to lay off staff members, and contracts for the lobbyists were not renewed.

Legislative passage of the moratorium has never been closer than the day the Senate passed the moratorium. Since the Senate’s vote, discussion for a moratorium has centered almost exclusively in the House; senators are reluctant to take the issue up again until the House votes. In recent years, coalition members have perceived the votes in the House to be close again, but not close enough. In 2005 House Speaker Jim Black, now acting as the sole speaker, appointed a House committee to study the death penalty, but the committee met infrequently and attendance was inconsistent. The committee officially disbanded January 2007 without making any recommendations to the full House.

Today, the coalition continues to work for a moratorium. There remains a moratorium bill still alive in the House. In addition, the House recently passed a “racial justice” bill, which states that a defendant cannot be sentenced to death on the basis of race, and a “proportionality review bill,” which calls the N.C. Supreme Court to measure the proportionality of the sentence, considering factually similar cases in which the sentence of life imprisonment was imposed. Both of these bills have the support of the coalition.

In the meantime, North Carolina’s justice system is working within a kind of de facto moratorium, thanks to a January 2007 decision by the North Carolina Medical Board forbidding doctors from participating in executions. State law requires the participation of doctors, and thus far there are few signs of the impasse being resolved quickly and easily.

In 2004, Doble Research Associates found that 63 percent of North Carolinians supported the moratorium.[2] Other polling finds that Americans and North Carolinians still support capital punishment, but that support is on the decline. An April 2007 poll by the Elon University Institute for Politics and Public Affairs found that 48 percent of North Carolina residents said the death penalty is the most appropriate punishment for first-degree murder, down from 61 percent in a November 2005 Elon poll.[3] On the other hand, when asked if they support or oppose the death penalty for first-degree murder, 58 percent said they support capital punishment; 31 percent oppose it.[4] “North Carolinians continue to support the death penalty, but there is some slippage in this support over time,” said Hunter Bacot, director of the Elon University Poll. “Given the number of high profile cases surrounding the death penalty and the establishment of the N.C. Innocence Commission last year, people may be questioning their own views about the death penalty." [5]

SWOT Analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats)

This growing uncertainty among Americans regarding capital punishment may be the coalition’s greatest strength and opportunity. As numbers of prisoners are exonerated from death row on an almost yearly basis, (124 since 1973),[6] as prosecutors are disciplined for misconduct and for withholding exculpatory evidence in capital cases, as America debates the wisdom in sentencing the mentally ill, the mentally handicapped, and juvenile offenders to death, Americans are more likely to question their support of capital punishment. This fact represents a large advantage for the coalition.

The North Carolina Coalition for a Moratorium has many other strengths, among them:

  • A wide variety of respected organizations participate in the coalition, including the NAACP, the ACLU of North Carolina, and Amnesty International.
  • Each organization boasts staff members who are committed to the cause and who have worked on the cause for many years.
  • The coalition maintains a strong statewide grassroots network based on churches and religious organizations, PFADP chapters and other smaller groups.
  • Most major religious denominations in North Carolina support a moratorium.
  • Some important groups, such as the North Carolina Medical Board and the North Carolina Nurses Association, have spoken out against medical professionals’ participation in executions.
  • About half of the state’s legislators are willing to support a moratorium, or at least major reforms of the death penalty system.
  • Prior successes, such as the Senate’s passage of the moratorium in 2003, add to the coalition’s reputation and respectability.

The North Carolina Coalition for a Moratorium also has many weaknesses, among them:

  • There is a lack of major funding from foundations and individuals, which strictly limits the coalition in pursuing the use of advertising, focus groups, professional lobbyists, and other public relations and strategic tools. Several of the individual organizations are struggling financially.
  • Individual organizations in the coalition compete for funding support from foundations and individuals. Progressive foundations and individuals are likely to support any one or two of the coalition members individually. Any financial support for an organization, or for the coalition as an organization, conceivably takes away support from another organization.
  • Because the coalition presents itself as representing both abolitionists and those who support the death penalty but who want to see the system improved and made more equitable, several groups, such as People of Faith Against the Death Penalty, are marginalized in the public moratorium efforts. For some time, PFADP staff members presented themselves as staff members of “North Carolina Moratorium Now!”, a “project” of PFADP. Coalition organizations and individuals that are unabashedly abolitionist sometimes find themselves downplaying their abolitionist stance, which puts them in an unintentional position of dishonesty, or at least duplicity.
  • About half of the state’s legislators are not willing to support a moratorium, or the major reforms that the coalition seeks.
  • There are several respected organizations and institutions within North Carolina which have spoken out strongly against a moratorium and reform, including the Republican Party of North Carolina, the John Locke Foundation, the North Carolina Association of District Attorneys, the North Carolina Victims Assistance Network and other victims’ groups.
  • As in many coalitions, there are issues with territory and ego. For example, organizations with strengths in grassroots organizing chafe at similar efforts from other members of the coalition.

Chief among the coalition’s opportunities are the shifting opinions of Americans and North Carolinians away from full support for capital punishment. Other opportunities include:

  • The Speaker of the House and the Senate President Pro Tempore, both Democrats, support, or at least have supported, the moratorium. Democrats outnumber the Republicans in the House 68-52, and in the Senate, 31-19. Historically, Democrats tend to support the moratorium, so this is a strong opportunity for the coalition.
  • Gov. Easley’s term is ending soon; potential Democratic candidates for governor, such as Lieutenant Governor Beverly Perdue, have indicated support for a moratorium.
  • A new Catholic bishop was named within the year for the Diocese of Raleigh. The new bishop has shown himself to be more politically active and aware than the previous bishop, and is likely willing to assist in efforts, especially among the state’s religious leaders, for a moratorium. His assistance, and that of the bishop of Charlotte, would be important especially as the visibility and number of Catholics increase in the state.
  • A new documentary currently on HBO – The Trials of Darryl Hunt – features the story of a man who spent 20 years in North Carolina’s prisons for a rape and murder he did not commit. While Hunt, a resident of Winston-Salem, was not sentenced to death (he would have been but for one juror’s reticence), his story illustrates the human imperfection, arbitrariness and occasional racism found in the justice system. Hunt is familiar with the moratorium movement, and has supported it actively for the past three years.
  • The new emphasis on lethal injection as a medical procedure in North Carolina and around the country offers an opportunity for debate and discussion during which the coalition can present its message.

The main threat to the moratorium coalition is represented in the organizations that are opposed to the moratorium, namely the Republican Party of North Carolina, the John Locke Foundation, the North Carolina Association of District Attorneys, the North Carolina Victims Assistance Network and other victims’ groups. Some of these organizations have resources and great influence on lawmakers. Other threats include:

  • Conservative and moderate Democratspossibly will not follow the leadership’s wishes on death penalty legislation.
  • Conservative religious denominations, chief among them the Southern Baptists, are likely to continue to support the death penalty and stand against a moratorium.

Problem Statement

The North Carolina Coalition for a Moratorium must determine how to bring about a legislative suspension of executions, and a positive changeto the death penalty system with few financial resources and against organized and influential opponents. In addition, the coalition must attempt to change the hearts and minds of legislators and many of their constituents.

Goal Statement

The North Carolina Coalition for a Moratorium seeks a two-year legislative suspension of executions and a study of the death penalty system, and the passage of major reforms to the death penalty system, by the end of the current legislative session.

Branding and Positioning

The North Carolina Coalition for a Moratorium presents itself as a non-partisan organization that represents pro- and anti-death penalty forces. The coalition states that both sides of the issue wish for a death penalty system that is more fair and equitable and less arbitrary. However, there is nothing in its branding or positioning that reflects that open stance. None of the listed organizations is even remotely pro-death penalty. The articles and position papers found throughout the website strongly support the abolitionist position. Indeed, legislators have said many times in the press that they see the moratorium as a thinly veiled attempt to abolish the death penalty in North Carolina. Privately, coalition members agree with their legislative critics.

The moratorium coalition must reposition itself in one of two ways: It must actively recruitand gain the support ofconservative or moderate groups or of victims’ rights groups that would support both a moratorium and the death penalty, or it must re-evaluate its position as being open to support of the death penalty. Its current position strikes legislators, a primary target audience, as duplicitous at best, and this simply cannot lead to success.

Because of the strange, two-headed nature of the current position, the brand of the coalition is weak and indistinct. The coalition’s logo is bland and technical; professional, perhaps, but devoid of emotion or any outward interest in fairness, justice, equity. The coalition’s website – – and brochure continue a look that is bland and unemotional, featuring little uncaptioned photos of courthouses and courtrooms, odd for an organization that is dealing with an issue that is often intensely emotional for most Americans and North Carolinians.