"I just met this person, and the state wants to kill him." That’s what Gretchen Engel was thinking the first time she met a death row inmate, as an intern at the Alabama Resource Center. Gretchen would eventually move to North Carolina and join the Center for Death Penalty Litigation in 1992. After 33 years, including a dozen as the CDPL’s executive director, she retired this summer. Gretchen reflects on victories and setbacks in this conversation with Amber Nimocks. And she looks ahead, suggesting that the state may be moving toward slowly abolishing the death penalty.

🎙️ Featured Guest 🎙️

Name: Gretchen Engel

💡 Episode Highlights 💡

[02:44] Motivation: Gretchen explains how her interest in race and poverty led her to death penalty work, first in Alabama and eventually in North Carolina.

[06:00] Clemency Campaign: Gretchen details the CDPL’s six-month campaign that led former Governor Easley to grant clemency to a Black man sentenced to death by all-white juries.

[10:05] Changing the Narrative: In 2000, the CDPL worked with reporters from the “Charlotte Observer” on a series that exposed the inexperienced lawyers and sham trials of death row defendants. “It helped to start the public really thinking about how these cases are tried,” Gretchen recalls.

[13:13] Successes: Gretchen highlights the CDPL’s successes over the years, including the creation of the Indigent Defense System and the state’s ban on executing people with intellectual disabilities.

[16:09] Racial Justice Act: Four people have been removed from death row through this law that created a record of racism in jury selection across North Carolina.

[18:30] HB 307: This legislation, recently enacted, is committed to speeding up death penalty cases and exploring “increasingly barbaric methods of punishment,” Gretchen says.

[21:28] “Pure Demagoguery”: Gretchen discusses how politicians capitalize on “fear and hatred” to push forward legislation in the aftermath of particularly brutal crimes.

[24:50] Clemency: On December 31, 2024, North Carolina Governor Cooper commuted a record number of death penalty sentences – 15. Eleven were represented by the CDPL.

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