A North Carolina inmate whose “Satanic beliefs,”  prosecutors say,  drove him to kill his great aunt in order to “get in good graces” with the “Lord of Darkness” has had his death sentence commuted as part of a raft of controversial commutations by the Tar Heel State’s governor. 

On his last day in office on Tuesday, North Carolina’s outgoing Democratic governor, Roy Cooper, commuted the sentences of 15 murderers on death row. Thirteen of these inmates are Black men —  whose death sentences were under scrutiny amid allegations of racial bias — and a 14th inmate is Native American. Only the unusual case of the only white man to receive a commutation, Timothy White, now 47, stands out due to Satan worship being a major factor in his 2000 death sentence, and in his appeals.   

“These reviews are among the most difficult decisions a Governor can make and the death penalty is the most severe sentence that the state can impose,” Mr. Cooper said on Tuesday. “After thorough review, reflection, and prayer, I concluded that the death sentence imposed on these 15 people should be commuted, while ensuring they will spend the rest of their lives in prison.” 

Mr. Cooper, 67, who was on Vice President Harris’ short list for a running mate and is leaving the governorship due to term limits,  is the subject of speculation about a potential 2026 Senate run or 2028 presidential run. He said in his farewell address that he’s “not done,” and told the New York Times that “it’s hard for me to believe” that he wouldn’t seek public office again. “Everything is on the table for me,” he said of his political future.

While he’s known as a moderate Democrat, Mr. Cooper courted controversy in 2023 when he vetoed a trio of child safety bills that banned “gender treatments” for minors; placed restrictions on transgender participation in school sports; and limited classroom instruction on gender and sexuality. The state legislature’s then-Republican supermajority overrode his vetoes. 

Mr. Cooper is also courting controversy with Tuesday’s commutations, which are being condemned by victims’ families in denunciations similar to those leveled at President Biden when he recently commuted most of the death sentences on federal death row. While issuing the commutations, Mr. Cooper — who only reduced his state’s death row population by 10 percent — said he considered a variety of factors including whether the murder was “particularly heinous and cruel,” the defendant’s conduct in prison, and input from victims’ family members.

White, who will now serve out a sentence of life without parole, lived in a mobile home with his parents at Forsyth County in the state’s northwest Piedmont. In July 1999, he stole four guns from his father, court documents indicate. He took one of the firearms, a .22 caliber handgun, and walked next door, where his great aunt — a 72-year-old woman who was also a grandmother — lived, and shot her. After she fell to the floor and he attempted to shoot her a second time before his pistol jammed, he “stomp[ed] her in the head until he thought she was dead,” filings indicate.

He then stole money and car keys for her Cadillac and drove it to West Virginia, where he traded the guns for drugs with a man known as “Lefty” who stole the Cadillac. White stole another car and made for  New Orleans, where he was arrested and sent back to North Carolina. 

White pled guilty, and so his trial only had a penalty phase, where a jury decided he should be condemned. In appeals, his defense team argued that the trial court had erred in allowing evidence of his “purported satanic beliefs to establish defendant’s motive for the murder,” but the Supreme Court of North Carolina disagreed, ruling that Satanism was a reasonable issue to raise. 

During his initial sentencing hearing, White had argued that the state should not be allowed to introduce “items of physical evidence suggesting that the defendant engaged in satanic practices” obtained from his bedroom. He also sought to preclude testimony from a witness, Jeffrey Nash, who had been incarcerated with White — as well as from Detective Elizabeth Culbreth, who had interviewed Nash, who told her the defendant had talked to him about murdering “to get in good graces with his lord, the Lord of Darkness.”

Nash also testified that White told him that “the police had the motive all wrong,” since “they thought he did it to rob the lady but instead he was doing it as a service to his higher power.” He also allegedly performed a “satanic ritual,” although the court documents did not specify what the ritual was. 

More specifically, though, the lower court did not allow evidence to be admitted divulging White’s “rejection of the Christian faith, his involvement in and acceptance of the skinhead society, or his professed allegiance to Satan as the lord of the underworld” to avoid “undue prejudice,” the state supreme court noted in denying one of White’s appeals.

White has also contested testimony during his initial trial about his “fascination with the movie ‘Natural Born Killers’,” filings indicate. The defendant’s girlfriend, Billie Johnson, testified that White would sign many letters “from Mickey,” in reference to the antihero of the controversial 1994 Oliver Stone film, which was believed to have inspired multiple murders.

When commuting White’s death sentence to life without parole, Mr. Cooper did not expand on specific reasons for the decision but said that it “has been made to appear to me that this case is one fit for a Commutation.”