North Carolina State Senator Ellie Kinnaird was born in 1931 in Rochester, Minn. She has served in the North Carolina Senate since 1997, serving as co-chair of both the Appropriations on Justice and Public Safety Committee and the Mental Health/Youth Services Committee. Before being elected to the Senate, she was mayor of Carrboro, N.C., 1987-1996. The collection contains items chiefly related to Ellie Kinnaird's opposition to the death penalty. Included are letters of thanks for her support of a death penalty moratorium bill; files on people executed in North Carolina between 1999 and 2003; speeches and writings by Daniel H. Pollitt, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Law School professor emeritus, concerning his legal and personal objections to the death penalty; information about the efforts of the children of Elias Syriani to get their father's death sentence commuted to life in prison after he killed their mother; programs and organizational emails, primarily written by Chapel Hill lawyer Marilyn Ozer about vigils held by the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Congregations for the Abolition of Capital Punishment; informational papers from People of Faith Against the Death Penalty; and assorted papers, publications, fact sheets, and newspaper clippings against the death penalty. Some materials deal with discrimination in capital punishment and others deal with capital punishment and people with mental disabilities. The Addition of April 2013 is Kinnaird's website, consisting of biographical information, publicity materials, statements of achievements and goals, outreach and fundraising materials, and endorsements.
