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The 1,000th execution occurred amid national debate over capital punishment. Fewer killers are being sentenced to death and fewer are being executed. Some states have been roiled by evidence that innocents end up on death row.

"Jurors are starting to question the death penalty," Boyd's lawyer, Thomas Maher of Chapel Hill, told those gathered Thursday evening.

By 2001, a slim majority of Americans -- 53 percent of people questioned in a Gallup poll -- said they supported a moratorium until the administration of the death penalty could be evaluated.

Illinois passed a moratorium on the death penalty in 2000 after 13 convicted men were exonerated. For several years, North Carolina has been debating a two-year moratorium on executions.

That campaign has so far faltered. The state Senate approved a moratorium in 2003, but it never came up in the House. This summer, a moratorium bill again failed to get a vote on the House floor.

Instead, House Speaker Jim Black, a Democrat from the Charlotte area, appointed a 22-member committee to consider whether the death penalty is being applied fairly in North Carolina. It meets for the first time Dec. 19.

"My hope is to recommend some changes in the law to make the capital punishment process more fair, minimize the chances of any innocent person getting caught up in it and look at issues of proportionality and racial discrimination," said Rep. Joe Hackney, a Chapel Hill Democrat and committee co-chairman.

Branny Vickory, president of the N.C. Conference of District Attorneys, which opposed the select committee's creation, questions what more needs to be studied. Vickory points out that prosecutors supported past changes to the system -- outlawing the death penalty for the mentally retarded and having prosecutors agree to share all their evidence and open their files to defense lawyers before trial.

"We're running around in a lot of different directions, looking at the procedures, when the real issue is whether we want a death penalty," said Vickory, the prosecutor in Wayne County.

The General Assembly will take up the committee's recommendations when it reconvenes in spring.

Meanwhile, the United states will leave Boyd's landmark death behind quickly.

The 1,001st execution is set today in South Carolina. Shawn Humphries, who killed a store clerk, is scheduled to die at 6 p.m.

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