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RALEIGH (AP) — Two decades after Blanche Moore was sent to death row for the fatal poisoning of a former boyfriend, her pathway to the execution chamber has been diverted again.

The 77-year-old white woman is among dozens of capital convicts in North Carolina this week who have alleged racial bias in sentencing. Some observers think the argument could upend the state's system of capital punishment — a program that already faces a series of other lingering questions, including the use of lethal injection, the role of medical personnel and a century-old law on who crafts the execution protocol.

North Carolina hasn't executed a convict since 2006. It's not clear when, or if, another will happen as officials try to untangle what former Gov. Mike Easley once described as a "Gordian knot."

"You can try to untie it, but it's seemingly impossible," said Stephen Dear, executive director of People of Faith Against the Death Penalty. "You can never make (the death penalty) perfect."

Opponents of the death penalty have successfully worked for years to stall executions. A debate over the state's lethal injection procedure — specifically what role a doctor should have — first brought capital punishment to a halt in 2007 when the North Carolina Medical Board threatening to discipline any doctor who "engages in any verbal or physical activity ... that facilitates the execution."

To overcome that threat, state officials tried to amend the execution protocol to say that a nurse and a medical technician — not a doctor — would monitor the inmate's vital signs. But a judge later determined that the Council of State must approve those changes. Officials have since approved changes and the Supreme Court ruled that the medical board overstepped its authority.

Ken Rose, a staff attorney at the nonprofit Center for Death Penalty Litigation, believes two issues are still blocking executions. Lawyers have argued before the courts that officials did not allow proper public input before changing the state's execution protocol. They are also raising questions about the constitutionality of lethal injection — an argument raised in other states as experts question whether convicts can be executed without suffering pain.

The office of North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper said Tuesday that 119 of the state's 159 death row convicts have filed claims under the new Racial Justice Act and that more were expected. That law allows them to argue that racial bias influenced their sentencing. Republican state Sen. Phil Berger said he believes the law was designed to extend the state's unofficial moratorium on the death penalty.

"As a practical matter, the death penalty does not exist in North Carolina at this time," he said.

About half the prisoners on death row are black, even though black people make up less than a quarter of the state's population. And researchers recently concluded that convicted killer is three times more likely to get a death sentence in North Carolina if the victim is white rather than black.

Many of the Racial Justice Act claims, however, aren't based on the race of the convict or victim but rather the diversity of the jury. Along with Moore, who was also suspected in other poisonings, the claimants include inmates convicted in these notorious cases:

• Tilmon Golphin, who was convicted of killing a state trooper and a Cumberland County sheriff's deputy in September 1997.
• Henry Louis Wallace, who was considered one of North Carolina's worst serial killers after he was convicted of raping and killing nine black Charlotte women in the early 1990s.

Tom Bennett, executive director of the North Carolina Victim Assistance Network, said he was concerned from the start that the new law passed last year was not going to be used as a safeguard for racial justice but used to make the death penalty unenforceable.

"The fact that so many death row inmates, including white offenders, are seeking to exploit the law shows that our fears were justified," he said.