NORTH CAROLINA

New execution date - Hunt execution date set for Sept. 12

Henry Lee Hunt, whose appeal of the short-form indictment to the state Supreme Court could have emptied North Carolina's death row, was given a new execution date Friday.

Hunt is to be executed at 2 a.m. Sept. 12 at Central Prison, the state Department of Correction said.

Hunt was convicted of a murder-for-hire and the killing of a witness in Robeson County in 1984. He came within 35 hours of being executed Jan. 22 before the state Supreme Court agreed to hear his appeal.

Last month, the court refused to overturn Hunt's conviction, saying the "short-form" indictment that listed charges against him, but not the aggravating factors that warranted the death penalty, was fair.

His lawyers argued in April that failure to include aggravating factors is a violation of the due process clause of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

But the court said the short-form indictments have served for more than a century "as a valid method for charging capital defendants with the crime of 1st-degree murder," Justice Edward Brady wrote.

All of the more than 200 prisoners on the state's death row were convicted and sentenced on short-form indictments.