Dear Members of the North Carolina General Assembly and Governor:

We, the undersigned clergy and religious leaders in North Carolina, call for the repeal of the death penalty in North Carolina.

As religious leaders from the spectrum of faith traditions in North Carolina, we approach public policies such as the death penalty in as varied ways as we approach spiritual matters. However, we share the values of respecting the sacredness of all human life and in the human capacity for change. The authority to kill prisoners is the greatest power citizens give to their governments short of sending citizens to fight in war. As such, the death penalty raises questions of the soul as well as ones of public policy. The answers to these questions must be discerned in our sanctuaries and acted upon by people of faith and good will or they will be left unanswered in our legislative chambers and courtrooms.

We agree with many people in North Carolina that our state’s death penalty is a moral and practical failure.

As pastoral leaders, we at times provide support to victims’ families in the aftermath of murder. Given this responsibility, we have a special interest in advocating for policies that serve their needs and promote healing and well-being. There is ample evidence that the death penalty does the opposite: it prolongs victims’ pain and delays healing while appeals and reversals force families to relive their trauma.

Nearly 150 people have been exonerated and freed from death row in the United States because they were innocent. Seven such men were exonerated from North Carolina’s death row, left to try to rebuild shattered lives after being wrongfully convicted, condemned to die, and imprisoned on our death row for a cumulative five decades. Racial and class bias have left grossly disproportionate numbers of minorities and poor people on North Carolina’s death row. NC courts have found intentional and systematic racial bias to have had a “persistent, persuasive and distorting role” in North Carolina’s death penalty. The death penalty annually costs North Carolina taxpayers more than $10 million per year more than life imprisonment without parole. States without the death penalty have lower homicide rates than states with the death penalty, according to government studies.

Even if these problems with the death penalty in practice could somehow be transcended we would still oppose the death penalty on moral and theological grounds. We condemn the exploitation of the death penalty for political purposes and celebrate the fact that the political return for such exploitation has been diminishing.

We call upon all legislators and the governor to repeal North Carolina’s death penalty and redirect the funds that would be saved to provide programs of support for the families of murder victims, for investigations of unsolved murders, and for programs to prevent violent crime in our communities.

We support efforts from within our faith traditions to examine and challenge the death penalty and to materially support those organizations working for its repeal.

Sincerely,