For the first time since 2016, the state of North Carolina has sentenced another person to the death penalty. The latest indictment of Chauncy Askew reinforces our state’s position as having the sixth-largest death row in the nation. Although no executions have been performed in the state since 2006, this position is a moral blemish on our state.

North Carolina has a long history of capital punishment, going all the way back to 1910 when the power to execute criminals was placed in the hands of the state. All executions in the state have taken place right underneath our noses, just two miles away at the Central Prison in Raleigh.

The death penalty itself is inherently flawed because it offers no recourse in the case of a false positive. A grim, yet illuminating 2013 study released by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S. (PNAS) found that conservative estimates would suggest that at least 1 in 25 (4.1 percent) of death-sentenced defendants between 1973 and 2004 were innocent.

On the contrary, the rate at which death-sentenced defendants were exonerated was found to lag behind, at 1.6 percent. The only logical conclusion of what happens to the leftover 2.5 percent is the reason why the death penalty should be abolished: a number of potentially innocent people may have been wrongfully executed.

North Carolina has exonerated nine innocent men that the state placed on death row. Between the nine of them, they had served a total of 112 years in prison for crimes they were wrongfully accused of.

Each of them has a harrowing story about the haphazard nature of their due process and the sheer luck of their exonerations coming before the execution. The tales of these survivors leads one to wonder just how many innocent people’s stories end on the opposite side.

Take the latest case of Askew, for example. Askew has been charged with an utterly heinous and unforgivable crime in the shooting of State Trooper Kevin Conner. With this being said, Askew’s attorney has argued that his client is incompetent to stand trial. Askew scored a 52 on an IQ test he took earlier in January and a 56 on a test he took in 2015. Both scores are well within the range of how an intellectual disability is defined.

This brings up yet another problem of the death penalty: Is our criminal justice system properly equipped to determine if someone is eligible to live? Our current justice system has a number of flaws within it, including the mishandling of mentally ill patients and the over-prosecution of people of color. Because of this, these two groups disproportionately make up our incarcerated population and thus, our death row population as well.

The Washington Post reports that 43 percent of inmates executed between 2000 and 2015 had been diagnosed with some type of mental illness, and estimates that around 20 percent had a personality disorder. Many of these mental illnesses are debilitating disorders that co-occur with patterns of impairment and brain dysfunction.

In North Carolina, about 53 percent of the 144 people on death row are black, despite only composing 22 percent of our state’s population. The way in which sentencing occurs is also racially biased, with the race of both the victim and perpetrator greatly influencing the likelihood of death penalty sentencing. 22 percent of black defendants who killed white victims are given the death sentence, while only a mere 3 percent of white defendants who killed black victims are sentenced.

None of this is meant to be interpreted as a vindication for perpetrators of some of the most serious crimes; however, it should serve as an indictment on a system that executes some of its most vulnerable people. The people who are guilty of such vile crimes should face punishment, but it should take into consideration the social contexts of these people.

Raleigh cannot and should not stand idly by as people undeserving of death are still being sentenced to executions. Although we greatly need comprehensive criminal justice reform, lawmakers should at least strive to abolish the death penalty. The difference, in this case, is quite literally a life-or-death matter for those who are innocent.