Before Senate GOP leader Phil Berger unveiled an amendment calling for additional death penalty execution methods, Iryna’s Law appeared likely to pass the General Assembly with broad bipartisan support. Democrats believed Gov. Josh Stein would sign the crime bill, according to legislative sources. At least half of state Senate Democrats planned to back the bill, as did many House Democrats.
But after Republicans passed the amendment, most Senate Dems walked off the floor, and those who remained voted against the bill. The next day, House Democrats faced a dilemma. Stein’s office didn’t tell them whether his plans had changed, several Democrats said.
Ultimately, 17 Democrats voted for the bill. Most came from Mecklenburg County (where Iryna Zarutska was killed on a Charlotte light rail train), Wake County (whose district attorney, Lorrin Freeman, lobbied for the bill before Berger added his amendment), or competitive districts (Democratic leaders told them to “vote for the bill so as to be seen as tough on crime,” one source said).
Robert Reives, the House’s Democratic leader, also voted for it, though he called Berger’s amendment “cynical. … It makes me wonder who we are as a government.”
Senate Republicans have a veto-proof supermajority. In the House, Democrats can sustain a veto—but only if all of them show up and vote together. With 17 defections, it seemed likely that a veto would be easily overridden. Stein’s decision to sign Iryna’s Law—or allow it to become law without his signature—was seen as a fait accompli.
But perhaps not. According to multiple sources familiar with the situation, Reives’ office believed his caucus would have sustained a veto—at least in the short term. Over time, that might get dicier, and Republicans could have called an override vote at any point before the end of next year. A member might also miss a vote due to illness.
Senate Democrats sent Stein a letter imploring him to veto a bill they called “fundamentally flawed, legally questionable, and morally wrong,” according to a draft obtained by The Assembly. (A Senate Dem said Stein was “pissed” when he received it.)
Instead, Stein signed the legislation, despite saying it lacked “ambition or vision” and contained a “barbaric” death penalty provision. His decision left some Democrats and their allies fuming.
“Governor Stein chose cruelty over justice,” Deborah Dicks Maxwell, president of the North Carolina NAACP, said in a statement.
The governor’s loudest Democratic critic—publicly, anyway—has been Sen. Graig Meyer of Orange County. Stein’s “decision and his statement on it are such a terrible example of what happens when you abandon principle,” Meyer posted on Substack.
In an interview, Meyer said this episode was indicative of Stein’s term so far. “He won’t touch anything that is an ambitious issue,” he said. “He thinks about what he’s afraid of, what he doesn’t want to touch, and he works backward from there.”
The governor’s office did not respond to The Assembly’s questions about the politics of Iryna’s Law.
Stein’s Death Penalty Backlash
