North Carolina’s governor has signed a sweeping criminal justice bill named for Iryna Zarutska, a 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee fatally stabbed on a Charlotte light-rail train in August, legislation that accelerates capital appeals and directs officials to adopt an alternative execution method if lethal injection is struck down or unavailable—opening the door to rarely used techniques in the United States. Governor Josh Stein, a Democrat, said he supports the bill’s bail and mental-health provisions but denounced the notion of resuming executions by firing squad, calling the method “barbaric” and vowing that it will not occur while he is in office.
House Bill 307—dubbed “Iryna’s Law”—passed the Republican-controlled legislature with bipartisan votes after graphic surveillance video of the Aug. 22 attack drew national attention and sharpened scrutiny of pretrial release policies in Mecklenburg County. Stein signed the measure on Oct. 3. Portions of the law take effect Dec. 1, including new rules ordering judges to scrutinize risk and mental-health concerns before setting bail in defined violent cases and an added aggravating factor that elevates punishment when a victim is attacked while using public transportation.
The law responds to the killing of Zarutska, who fled Kyiv with her mother and siblings in 2022 to escape Russia’s invasion and had been working at a Charlotte pizzeria while studying English. According to police and a federal affidavit, she boarded the Lynx Blue Line after work and sat in front of a man later identified as Decarlos Dejuan Brown Jr. Around 9:50 p.m., he rose and stabbed her three times from behind with a folding knife, including a fatal wound to the neck, before walking off the car and being arrested on the platform minutes later. She died at the scene.
Brown, 34, faces a state count of first-degree murder and a federal charge of committing an act causing death on a mass transportation system under 18 U.S.C. § 1992, an offense that can carry the death penalty. Announcing the federal complaint on Sept. 9, Russ Ferguson, the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of North Carolina, said, “This brutal attack on an innocent woman simply trying to get to her destination is an attack on the American way of life,” adding that Zarutska “deserves justice.” He remains held without bond while competence is evaluated.