Some of North Carolina's leading jurists and law enforcement...

Some of North Carolina's leading jurists and law enforcement administrators voiced their concerns about capital punishment in their state."The state should not execute another person without testing for DNA, if DNA testing is possible," said Tom Ross, Director of the state Administrative Office of the Courts and former state Superior Court judge. (Ross emphasized that he was speaking personally and not as a AOC director.) Former N.C. Chief Justice, James Exum, said any death penalty law written by humankind "forever and always will be insufficient to decide who should live or who should die.... No matter how we try to dress it up -- doing it by lethal injection and very early in the morning -- it's still the ultimate, brutal act." Guilford County District Attorney Jim Kimel stated that death penalty cases strain the justice system. They make up less than 1% of his caseload, but devour 1/3 of its resources. "They are all consuming," he said. "They demand not just due process, but super due process." "I really question whether the death penalty is worth having in terms of time and money," said former Chief Justice Burley Mitchell, a long time death penalty supporter. "It has warped our court system. I think the time has come to decide whether it's worth the cost."