Death penalty may be on trial with accused

RALEIGH -- Lauren Redman looked up at one of her killers and asked him to put the knife down. She was going to die anyway, bleeding from two dozen wounds.

"I got to, Ma," one of the accused men, Byron Lamar Waring, 20, told her, according to a taped confession to police. He responded to Redman by using slang he called all women.

Today, Waring will face a jury that may hear a plea to spare his life.

Waring's lawyers will try to defend him in an atmosphere of uncertainty about whether the death penalty will continue as a punishment option in North Carolina.

It will be the first capital trial in Wake County and the Triangle since a Wake Superior Court judge in January suspended the executions of several men, setting off a round of legal challenges that led to a halt in executions in the state.

Waring's calm recollection of the Nov. 8, 2005, slaying of Redman, a 22-year-old research assistant, was caught in a 16-minute taped confession. It's likely to be played for Wake jurors this week. The evidence portion of Waring's first-degree murder trial begins today. If he is convicted, prosecutors will ask the jury to sentence him to death.

A Wake jury hasn't sentenced anyone to death since 2001, despite several trials where prosecutors have sought the death penalty. The last capital trial was in November, when Ezavia Allen was sentenced to life in prison for shooting retired schoolteacher Shirley Newkirk in her driveway.

Colon Willoughby, Wake's elected district attorney, said he isn't surprised by juries' reticence about giving the harshest sentence.

"Jurors are very cautious about it," he said.

But Willoughby said he will continue to ask for the death penalty in cases that he and his office find are particularly heinous and fit the criteria outlined by law.

"This is a case that the community needs to decide," he said.

Waring, if convicted, will be the fifth defendant this year for whom North Carolina prosecutors have asked juries to return death verdicts, said Bob Hurley, North Carolina's capital defender.

The only one to receive the punishment was Eugene Johnny Williams, convicted in May in Cumberland County of killing two men over a dispute involving a stolen motorcycle.

Defense lawyers in the other cases have noticed more potential jurors stating an opposition to the death penalty.

Jay Vannoy, a North Wilkesboro defense attorney who tried a capital case in February in Wilkes County, said he was taken aback by the number of people who said they were opposed in an area of the state he described as conservative.

"There were more jurors who were opposed to the death penalty than I anticipated," he said. He suspects the current climate of ambivalence "had to have an effect."

His client was given a sentence of life without parole.

Executions on hold

The atmosphere surrounding the death penalty was altered in January when Wake Senior Resident Superior Court Judge Donald Stephens delayed several executions amid legal challenges to the state's method of execution.

The N.C. Medical Board, in turn, said its doctors could not actively participate in executions, and the Council of State and state legislature have yet to take any action to resolve the divide.

The U.S. Supreme Court in early June -- while jurors were being selected for Waring's case -- issued a ruling that death penalty opponents fear will mean less diverse, more conservative juries in capital cases. The 5-4 opinion in Uttecht v. Brown gave greater discretion to trial judges to remove those with significant moral qualms about capital punishment from juries.