Execution
On September 8, 1983, a new execution date was set for January 13, 1984. On January 6, leading up to his execution, James Hutchins chose lethal injection as his means of execution. Hutchins was ultimately executed in North Carolina on March 16, 1984.
Charges of political overtones in the execution: Leading up to the execution in 1984, the then-NC Governor, James B. Hunt, a popular 2-term democrat was locked in a bitter US Senate election bid against conservative icon NC Senator Jesse Helms, the famous Republican incumbent. Some charged that Hunt used his powers as governor to expedite Hutchins' execution to occur prior to the fall election, in order to project himself as a hard-on-crime/pro-police, law-and-order conservative democrat, to offset charges from Helms that he was too liberal for North Carolina. Because Hutchins had killed 3 lawmen and was poor and white, some argued he was the perfect political "poster-boy" to execute, arguing that if he was black, public outcry from the traditionally democratic black electorat would have prevented Hunt from allowing his execution. Public opinion polls indicated there was overwhelminigly support for the execution of Hutchins and the execution did occur prior to the 1984 fall election, Governor Hunt still lost by a substantial margin to Helms in the same year that Ronald Reagan won a landslide reelection as President over former Vice President Walter Mondale. Jesse Helms went on to serve 2 more terms in a 24-year senate career, while Hunt would later again be reelected as governor and serve 24 years as governor, a state record. Hunt would later comment that executing Hutchins was a proud moment of his political legacy and the "right thing to do".
Read more about this topic: James W. Hutchins
Famous quotes containing the word execution:
“It is clear that in a monarchy, where he who commands the exceution of the laws generally thinks himself above them, there is less need of virtue than in a popular government, where the person entrusted with the execution of the laws is sensible of his being subject to their direction.”
—Charles Louis de Secondat Montesquieu (1689–1755)
“My weakness has always been to prefer the large intention of an unskilful artist to the trivial intention of an accomplished one: in other words, I am more interested in the high ideas of a feeble executant than in the high execution of a feeble thinker.”
—Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)
“I will soon be going out to shape all the singing tomorrows.”
—Gabriel Péri, French Communist leader. Letter, July 1942, written shortly before his execution by the Germans. Quoted in New York Times (April 11, 1943)