A Wake County jury has sentenced Byron Lamar Waring to death for killing former N.C. State student, Lauren Redman.

Waring is the first person sentenced to death in Wake County since 2001.

He received the death penalty on July 9, a month after the same jury convicted him of first-degree murder.

Waring was charged with the Nov. 8, 2005, murder of Redman. He confessed to police that he and accomplice Joseph Sanderlin entered the West Raleigh apartment of the 22-year-old to collect money they said she owed for drugs, according to the News and Observer. They proceeded to attack her, stabbing her dozens of times — to the point that her intestines were exposed.

During the sentencing trial, Waring’s attorneys argued that his low IQ and troubled upbringing led him to be easily influenced by Sanderlin.

Brittany Farrell, a senior in economics and political science and chairman of N.C. State’s College Republicans, agreed with the jury’s decision, saying that Waring’s confession does not match the statement that he did not understand his crime.

“It is so disheartening that so commonly in court there’s a rush to paint a person’s crime as not their fault,” Farrell said. “I believe that very few people in the world would truly not know that murdering someone — stabbing someone dozens of times — is wrong.”

Some members of the jury agreed that Waring was mentally challenged and not fully capable of understanding his crime. Jurors decided those issues weren’t enough to keep him away from a death sentence.

After two hours of deliberation, the jury decided that death was the proper punishment for Waring.

The brutality of the murder was key in the jurors’ decision for the death penalty instead of the alternative: life in prison without parole.

Farrell said she believes the sentence was proper for this particular case.

“The jury had to sit through the accounts of the absolute violence and maliciousness,” she said. “I have faith in the jury and the court that they made the appropriate sentencing after sitting through the trial.”

Sanderlin, Waring’s accomplice, has been charged with first-degree murder and rape. He is awaiting trial and could also face the death penalty.

Farrell said she thinks Sanderlin will receive the same sentence as Waring, but she also realizes that he will have his own trial with his own jury.

“The jury in Waring’s trial did not seem excited to hand out a death sentence, though they did come to that decision,” she said. “A jury could go either way.”

Waring now joins 166 other inmates in North Carolina’s death row. The last death penalty sentence in Wake County was given six years ago.

Jeremy Collins, president of the North Carolina Coalition for a Moratorium, said the small number of death sentences recently is due to the public’s shifting opinion of capital punishment.

“There are far fewer executions now in the U.S. than there have been in the past,” Collins said. “People are starting to see that executing people — killing people — is unnecessary, cruel and unusual.”

State executions are on hold indefinitely following a challenge from the N.C. Medical Board regarding doctors’ participation in the process of lethal injections. Collins said doctors participating in executions are in violation of the board’s code of ethics.

“The American Medical Association, as well as the North Carolina Medical Board, did not want doctors to actively participate in executions because it’s against the basic principle that doctors should do no harm,” Collins said.

But, state law requires doctors to be present to monitor executions to warn the prison warden of complications if they arise.

Last year, in response to the dispute, Gov. Mike Easley ordered a moratorium on lethal injections until the issue is resolved.

Since the moratorium, several executions have been delayed indefinitely due to the continuing litigation about the role of doctors in executions.

Collins said that the day-to-day lives of the prisoners on death row have not changed since the moratorium. Waring and the rest of death row will wait until the moratorium is lifted for their executions.

“If and when the moratorium will be lifted is certainly in question and unknown,” Collins said. “One thing is for sure: the death penalty system will be far different if the moratorium is ever lifted.”