Rev. Dr. Jennifer Copeland delivered the following remarks at a press conference on April 14, 2023, calling on Governor Roy Cooper to commute all death sentences in North Carolina. Click here to view the press conference.
My name is Jennifer Copeland. I’m the Executive Director of the N.C. Council of Churches. I am joined today by our colleagues from the N.C. Coalition for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, and we are honored to stand with faith leaders from several traditions and many locations across North Carolina.
We chose this moment because many of us here today are in the midst of some of the holiest days of our faith traditions. These are the days when our scriptures and traditions remind us who we are and how that should shape what we do. What we have done is write a letter to Governor Cooper asking him to commute the death sentences of the 137 people on North Carolina’s death row to prison terms. Our chorus is joined by over 300 faith leaders who have signed this letter to Governor Cooper. Let me tell you why I am doing this.
When I was in college, I started paying attention to the death penalty. Before that, it was just a thing I knew about in a very simple way. People did very bad things, a fairly short list of things, and were executed. But in an ethics class I took as a college junior, I chose the death penalty as the topic for my term paper. As students are expected to do when writing a term paper, I learned a lot. My head was suddenly full of reasons the death penalty is wrong. Facts like Black people and poor people are disproportionately sentenced to death. Facts like innocent people are sentenced to death and sometimes executed before their innocence is discovered.
After college, I went to seminary to prepare for the ministry. And that’s when my heart became full of reasons the death penalty is wrong. I speak today as a person of faith, a leader of the Christian faith in the Methodist tradition, and the Executive Director of the N.C. Council of Churches, whose membership includes 18 denominations across North Carolina, in every corner of the state; large and small; urban and rural; black, brown, and white. Many of the Council’s denominational leaders and their clergy have signed this letter.
The heart of my faith is the belief that every person is created in the image of God. God grants to each of us the possibility of redemption and reconciliation. The death penalty denies that possibility. My faith teaches that we should work for rehabilitation rather than punishment. We should seek restitution rather than retribution. With both my head and my heart, I believe the death penalty is wrong.
The North Carolina Council of Churches first spoke out against the death penalty in 1970, citing many of the same reasons we mentioned today. We are only the most recent gathering of faith leaders standing in opposition and we will continue to stand together until the death penalty is abolished. In the meantime, we’re asking Gov. Cooper, a person of faith himself, to use his power to commute the 137 death sentences to prison terms. We’re asking Gov. Cooper to lead North Carolina to a new vision of justice that includes possibility and hope.