WINDSOR -- People pushing for a moratorium on executions in North Carolina are rallying around the acquittal of former death row inmate Alan Gell.

Gell was retried after spending more than four years on death row. Within minutes of a Bertie County jury's not-guilty verdict Wednesday, the Raleigh organization N.C. Coalition for a Moratorium issued a statement saying that the case provided "the latest powerful evidence that North Carolina needs a moratorium on executions."

Less than an hour later, the Carrboro-based People of Faith Against the Death Penalty said, "Alan Gell's acquittal today shows how urgently North Carolina needs an immediate moratorium on executions."

But it's not clear whether Gell's case will have any effect on the General Assembly. A moratorium bill that passed the state Senate last year faces a tougher battle in the House of Representatives. And Gov. Mike Easley opposes it.

Advocates of the bill hope Gell's case will help persuade state lawmakers to stop executions for two years while they study the death penalty issue and fix any flaws.

They note that the Gell verdict comes less than two weeks after Darryl Hunt of Winston-Salem was cleared of raping and killing a woman after spending 19 years in prison following a conviction for the crime.

"This is just fuel for our fire," said state Rep. Paul Luebke of Durham, a Democrat sponsoring the moratorium bill in the House. "The Gell and Hunt cases place the burden on Gov. Easley and other opponents of the moratorium to explain how they would correct the death penalty system without a moratorium."

Gell had been convicted and sentenced to death in 1998 for the shotgun slaying of retired truck driver Allen Ray Jenkins in Aulander in 1995. A judge overturned the conviction in 2002 and ordered a new trial because prosecutors had illegally withheld evidence of Gell's innocence in the first trial.

Opponents of the moratorium, such as Republican state Rep. Rick Eddins of Raleigh, say there's no reason people who want to change the state's death penalty procedures can't propose them without a moratorium.

Gell's acquittal only shows that the system works, Eddins said.

"We still have confidence in the system," Eddins said of moratorium opponents. "I don't believe [Gell's case] is going to change people's minds. Those of us who were against the moratorium are still against it."

The real goal of most moratorium supporters, Eddins argued, is to abolish the death penalty.

"I still think the moratorium issue is a smokescreen," he said.

Some supporters of the moratorium say the real aim of opponents is to scuttle meaningful reforms.

"No one can ever claim that 'the system worked' when an innocent man has been condemned to death," said Stephen Dear, executive director of People of Faith Against the Death Penalty.

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