North Carolina's three executions in recent weeks have obscured a trend in the opposite direction: The death penalty is on a downswing.

A decade ago, North Carolina juries typically handed down 25 to 30 death sentences a year. In recent years, that figure has dipped into the single digits.

As recently as 2001, prosecutors in North Carolina sought the death penalty in 50 cases. This year, they have brought just 20 cases. As of Nov. 29, there were six convictions.

Other states show similar patterns. Nationwide, death sentences have dropped by 54 percent and executions by 40 percent since 1999, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, a Washington-based nonprofit group.

Changing public attitudes about the death penalty and new state laws have contributed to a steep decline in the number of people sentenced to die, said Ken Rose, director of the Center for Death Penalty Litigation, a legal organization in Durham.

"People are now less willing to take a chance on the government getting these cases right," Rose said. "They are more critical of both the prosecution and the police, at least in terms of whether the person should be executed."

New laws in the past decade have provided assurance to jurors who wanted to be certain that the killers they convicted would never walk free.

Knowing that a convicted murderer will die behind bars, jurors are less likely to vote for death, Rose said.

Before 1994 in North Carolina, people sentenced to life in prison were eligible for parole and could, conceivably, leave prison one day.

The Structured Sentencing Act of 1993 abolished parole for anyone sentenced after Oct. 1, 1994. Now, "life in prison" means just that.

Then in 2001, district attorneys gained the option to pursue a first-degree murder conviction without seeking the death penalty.

Before then, prosecutors and defense attorneys would cut deals in which defendants would plead guilty to second-degree murder and sometimes other charges that would result in what amounted to a life sentence.

"District attorneys and citizens have been concerned that if they didn't give a death sentence that the person would get out of prison. Now we have a mechanism that that doesn't happen," Rose said.

"Life now means life without parole. We now have a way to tell people: If you choose life, that person's going to die in prison."

Finally, a state law enacted in 2001 created Indigent Defense Services to represent poor defendants -- taking the job of selecting lawyers out of the hands of chief judges.

Charlotte death-penalty defense lawyer Jim Cooney said having an independent, nonpartisan agency picking defense lawyers for capital cases has done more to ensure the accused have competent representation with the experts and resources to mount a case on a level playing field with prosecutors.

"IDS did a lot to clean up the capital defense list," said Cooney, who has worked on death-penalty cases for 20 years. "A lot of people on that list had no business trying capital cases."

Second thoughts

Since 1976, when the U.S. Supreme Court allowed capital punishment to resume, four innocent people have been freed from North Carolina's death row. The most recent was Alan Gell, who was acquitted in a 2004 retrial.

"Those are all people who were tried, convicted and sentenced to death -- and they just didn't do it," Cooney said. "I think that gives jurors pause, and they're just not willing to jump when the prosecutor asks for death."

Dozens more have been exonerated nationwide, which, he said, also undermines confidence in the system.

"When it comes to the death penalty, you've got to get things 100 percent right. Especially in cases where there's not strong [DNA evidence], people aren't willing to go along like they were in the 1990s," he said.

"District attorneys are making an effort to see that when they seek the death penalty, it really is the worst of the worst -- not the 19-year-old who holds up a convenience store, gets scared and shoots the clerk on the way out."

How sentences stack up

There are 174 people on death row in North Carolina, 18 of them convicted by Triangle juries: 11 in Wake County, six in Johnston and one in Durham. No one currently facing execution was sentenced in Orange or Chatham counties.

Colon Willoughby, district attorney in Wake County since 1986, said his office has historically tried few capital cases and goes after life in prison more often -- even when the circumstances would allow him to pursue the death penalty.

"We probably try a lot more cases as first-degree murder now that we have the discretion to pursue life in prison," he said. "Six or eight years ago, we may have been reluctant because we would have had to try it capitally."

Capital convictions are so infrequent that Willoughby said he couldn't remember offhand the last person sentenced to death in Wake.

That person, Fernando Garcia, in 2001 was sentenced to die. He was convicted of fatally beating a North Raleigh woman who fought off his attempt to rape her.

"Our jurors in Wake County have been cautious in imposing capital punishment," Willoughby said.

Wake juries have been less likely to vote for death for "two drug dealers shooting at each other" or in a domestic violence situation, he said, but much more likely when the victim is innocent, randomly selected or the killer is a "threat to the community."

In recent high-profile capital cases, Wake juries returned sentences of life in prison for Timothy Johnson, who shot and killed two men at an N.C. State football tailgating gathering, and Matthew Grant, who killed a Wake sheriff's deputy with a shotgun.

Durham county's top prosecutor didn't seek the death penalty in 2003 against Durham novelist Mike Peterson in the death of his wife.

And this year's murder case against Dennis Lamonte Hargrove was Durham County's first death penalty case in several years. Prosecutors accuse Hargrove of killing a woman and wounding another woman and two children in an apartment where Hargrove had gone with other men to collect a drug debt in 2003. Jury selection began in October, but the case has been postponed until next year.

As the district attorney of Orange and Chatham counties for two decades, Carl Fox brought about three dozen capital cases, and not one resulted in a death sentence.

"I consider it highly, highly unlikely in Orange or Chatham," said Fox, who became a judge this year. He also said that the votes for life in prison were unanimous except for one -- a 9-3 vote by a Chatham jury in favor of death, the closest he ever got.

Former Durham District Attorney Jim Hardin, who also became a judge this year, had several of the death sentences imposed during his 11 years as the lead prosecutor overturned.

Willoughby in Wake and Tom Lock in the district that includes Johnston, Harnett and Lee counties, go after the death penalty more often, but juries that convict have been less and less willing to go that final step.

View on death penalty

The Gallup organization has been asking Americans about the death penalty since the 1930s. Support for the death penalty peaked at 80 percent in 1994, but has decreased to 64 percent today.

All of this easing away from the death penalty has ignited a new resolve in capital punishment opponents who say the trend is fueling the need for a moratorium on North Carolina's death penalty.

"If you believe in the death penalty, you need to support a moratorium. Our juries are more or less imposing their own moratorium. They're refusing to give the death penalty," Cooney said, citing overturned death sentences, new trials and death sentences commuted to life in prison as possible explanations.

"Ultimately, it's bad for the system if the public doesn't have any confidence in it. I think the best thing that can happen for everyone is for us to shine a light on the system and fix it."