Coalition Members

Partnering with ACLU affiliates in death penalty states and with coalition partners nationally, CPP promotes both abolition and systemic reform of the death penalty process in the following ways:

Direct Representation: CPP takes on direct representation in cases that exemplify the inherent unfairness in capital cases. We work primarily in the courts of the South, in states that have historically been discriminatory or reluctant to provide adequate resources for indigent clients facing the death penalty.

Strategic Litigation: CPP is currently involved in capital litigation in courts throughout the country, including the United States Supreme Court. In general, its litigation focuses on: (1) innocent persons; (2) severely mentally ill persons; (3) persons who face execution because of abysmal legal representation; (4) persons who face execution because of systemic discrimination; and (5) improving the fairness of capital trials and appeals.

Systemic Reform: CPP works to reform the capital punishment process. In general, its initiatives focus on improving the quality of legal representation, enhancing the fairness of capital trials and appeals, and reducing the number of defendants who face the death penalty.

Public Education and Advocacy: CPP is actively engaged in repeal and moratorium efforts in a number of states. Elsewhere, CPP is working to curtail the use of the death penalty and oppose recent efforts to expand its use through public education and other advocacy efforts.

The ACLU of North Carolina is working with communities across North Carolina to stop racially biased policing and dramatically shift our broken criminal justice system so that law enforcement is accountable and transparent, fewer people are wrongfully arrested and incarcerated, and when someone does end up in jail or prison, they are treated with respect and given an opportunity to successfully return to their communities.

We are also working to end the death penalty and solitary confinement, reform the use of body cameras, empower community oversight of law enforcement, and uncover and combat excessive court fees that have created modern-day debtors prisons in which the poor receive harsher, longer punishments for committing the same crimes as the rich, simply because they are poor.

Ultimately, we are working toward a North Carolina where every person is treated fairly, where communities are empowered, and where justice is guaranteed for all.

Amnesty International is a global grassroots movement demanding human rights for all people. As members of Amnesty International, we believe the death penalty is a gross violation of human rights. Specifically, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states all people have a right to life and the right to be free from cruel, inhuman, and degrading punishment, both of which are violated by the death penalty.

We as members of Amnesty International Local Group 213, stand in direct opposition to the death penalty. Over the years, some of our members have stood vigil outside of The Central Prison on every Monday afternoon for over a decade to call attention to the death row that now has 135 people on it. Some members have also participated in pen-pal programs with people on death row and participated in demonstrations to abolish the state and national death penalty. We would like to be a part of the effort to end this inhumane practice in our state and are hopeful that together we can accomplish this goal.

Beloved is strongly committed to respecting the dignity and worth of all people, while affirming the enormous, often unrealized potential of all people and social groups- all in the spirit of love and of non-violence. Since its origin more than 250 young people have learned or worked with Beloved. Many have gone on to to play important roles in various social change organizations and movements across the nation.

Beloved is currently working with others to launch a North Carolina Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission Initiative that will be rooted in grassroots communities in all regions of the state. Restorative justice on all levels, especially abolition of the archaic death penalty, will be an important component of that work.

WHO WE ARE

We are Victims’ Advocates, Clergy, Concerned Citizens, Mothers, Fathers, Ex-Offenders, Capital Attorneys, Mitigation Specialists, Sisters, Brothers, Friends, Activists, and People of Faith who actively promote healing and understanding while seeking an alternative to violence.

OUR HISTORY

In December 2002, Ernest Basden was executed by the State of NC during the infamous ice storm that caused NC to declare a state of emergency. A few days later, Desmond Carter was executed. Both men had families who loved them, strong community support, and dedicated legal teams. One lawyer of Mr. Basden–who had at that time seen three clients executed and who is married to a family member of a murder victim–and Mr. Basden’s family committed themselves to creating good out of their pain.

Desiring to comprehensively address their needs, a group of those affected by murder and executions came together in 2003 to discuss how to address their pain and the pain of hundreds of others in similar circumstances.

CJJ is a grassroots network committed to creating a more just, fair, and compassionate North Carolina. We build relationships where people help each other because individuals have a profound responsibility for the well-being of the whole.

Founded in March 2013, Carolina Jews for Justice combines advocacy and education to organize a non-partisan Jewish voice for justice in North Carolina. We work to influence policy at the local and state levels and encourage individuals and Jewish institutions to take a stand on important issues in our community.

Catholics for Abolition in North Carolina is a grassroots all-volunteer
movement of Catholics from the Diocese of Raleigh. Founded in
early 2022, we volunteer our time and talent, striving to be the hands
and feet of our Lord, Jesus Christ, in unity with the Father, through the
Holy Spirit. We exist to answer the Gospel call to recognize the sanctity
of life and abolish the death penalty in North Carolina. Our mission is
upheld by the four pillars of prayer, education and formation,
connection with our public officials, and pastoral care for those persons
on death row as well as for abolitionists.

We will work until capital punishment forever remains a memory in the
history of North Carolina; then we will uphold others still in the fight,
until Death Rows around the United States are closed permanently.
As prayer is the number one foundation of what we do, we commit to
praying daily for the men and women on death row and for an end to the
death penalty throughout the US. Please join us, via Zoom, at 12 Noon in
a 15-minute prayer vigil on the third Tuesday of each month to end the
death penalty in North Carolina. We also hold an online Divine Mercy
Chaplet prayer group during the 3:00 hour on the day of executions in
the US.

We are available to lead parish-wide, small-group book studies on the
death penalty and its evolution within the Catholic Church. Through
education, it is our hope to create a culture of life for all people and to
encourage the formation of advocates and abolitionists.
We believe that all are children of God – formed in God’s own Image and
Likeness – no greater and no less than those whose lives we work to save
on Death Row.

Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty is a network of political and social conservatives who question the alignment of capital punishment with conservative principles and values. We are a project of Equal Justice USA, a national organization working to transform the justice system by promoting responses to violence that break cycles of trauma.

The mounting evidence of waste, inaccuracy, and bias has shattered public confidence in the criminal justice system. Death sentences are at an all-time low, and public support for the death penalty has dropped in favor of life without parole. More and more of us are questioning the death penalty and realizing that it does not square with our conservative ideology.

Catholic Mobilizing Network is a national organization that mobilizes Catholics and all people of goodwill to value life over death, to end the use of the death penalty, to transform the U.S. criminal justice system from punitive to restorative, and to build capacity in U.S. society to engage in restorative practices. Through education, advocacy, and prayer, and based on the Gospel value that every human is created in the image and likeness of God, CMN expresses the fundamental belief that all those who have caused or been impacted by crime should be treated with dignity. 

CMN works in close collaboration with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and is a founding member of the Congregation of St. Joseph Mission Network. 

CDPL is a non-profit law firm that provides direct representation to people on death row, as well as consulting with and training attorneys who practice capital litigation across the state. CDPL’s commitment to representing indigent and disadvantaged defendants just as vigorously as corporate lawyers defend their highest-paying clients has saved the lives of many who faced execution.

Over the last several decades, CDPL has successfully halted dozens of wrongful executions, helped free innocent people from death row, and secured life sentences in cases that otherwise would have resulted in unjust executions. CDPL has also spearheaded litigation that has prevented North Carolina from carrying out any executions since 2006, and played a key role in educating the public about the state’s arbitrary and unfair capital punishment system.

Our Collective: Hidden Voices is a radically inclusive, participatory, and co-creative collective committed to creating just, compassionate, and sustainable relationships. This network of relationships connects communities across difference and provides pathways for global change.

Our Vision and Values: All lives have meaning. All stories matter. At Hidden Voices our mission is to challenge, strengthen, and connect our diverse communities through the transformative power of the individual voice.

Our Work:  Encourages deep listening; expansive dialogue, and inspired action.  Since 2003, Hidden Voices has collaborated with underrepresented communities to create award-winning works that combine narrative, mapping, performance, music, digital media, animation, and interactive exhibits to engage audiences and participants in explorations of difficult issues. Hidden Voices creates venues where stories from those rarely seen and heard by mainstream society take center stage. These life-changing stories provide insight about identity, place, and access. They help us understand the unrecognized, the unfamiliar, and displaced among us. They help restore our souls.

Our Process:  The Hidden Voices process– engage, empower, envision, enhance –facilitates a dynamic exchange between documentary, art, and community that allows for a multiplicity of voices and a multiplexity of understandings. By the close of a Hidden Voices project, between 15,000 and 20,000 individuals have engaged the work through interviews, workshops, exhibits, media, and performances.

Your Invitation: Real change begins where fear and separation end. It begins every time we connect authentically across difficulty and division. Facts and evidence rarely change anyone’s mind, but stories open a door into unexplored worlds. Stories are an invitation to enter and experience. Stories create pathways. They open minds and inspire action. Stories make change possible.  This work has always been essential. In the weeks and months ahead it will be even more so. The homeless, the incarcerated and those living on death row, school kids and administrators bucking the school to prison pipeline, survivors of sexual violence, corrections officers, undocumented workers, military service members and their families, black and Latinx youth … to experience the stories that shape their lives is the first step in this journey toward shifting public opinion and generating the civic will to address our profound mutual needs. Join us.

Hidden Voices is a registered 501 (c) 3 non-profit, with more than 100 volunteers and contributing professionals developing two to three projects annually.  Hidden Voices invests in the deep listening that produces effective, community-based action. Our projects extend over many years as we work with communities to facilitate conversations and, from those, the artistic material that illuminates the complexity of these issues.

Equal Justice USA is a national organization that works to transform the justice system by promoting responses to violence that break cycles of trauma. They work at the intersection of criminal justice, public health, and racial justice to elevate healing over retribution, meet the needs of survivors, advance racial equity, and build community safety. EJUSA includes a program dedicated to death penalty abolition as well as The Evangelical Network and their new Restorative Justice Project. 

Emancipate NC was founded on the knowledge that mass incarceration and structural racism harm all of us. Prison is state-sponsored violence. We are all complicit in its harms. As an organization, we are dedicated to shifting the narrative on racialized mass incarceration through community education and mobilization. The mainstream narrative that criminalizes Black and Brown people must be transformed—so that we can all get free.

Emancipate NC is a project of the Carolina Justice Policy Center; the focus areas include subverting structural racism and creating restorative justice alternatives:

Subverting Structural Racism
Structural racism is the systematic distribution of resources, power, and opportunity in our society to the benefit of people who are white and the exclusion of people of color. It is not the same as individual bigotry or racial bias. The legacy of slavery and Jim Crow persist. American history continues to privilege “whiteness” in terms of access to quality education, decent jobs, liveable wages, homeownership, retirement benefits, and wealth. Black youth are criminalized and dehumanized through over-policing and zero-tolerance school policies. Capital punishment and solitary confinement are disproportionately conferred on Black bodies. Cash bail means that poor people—usually people of color—can’t buy their freedom, even when white people get out of jail. Through community education, we work to subvert structural racism, especially as it relates to the criminal legal system.

Restorative Justice
In our community education work, we collaborate with Black communities that are suffering from criminalization, incarceration, and structural racism. Their neighborhoods are over-policed and their members are over-arrested. Magistrates set high cash bail for the simplest crimes. Then they are coerced into pleading guilty so they can secure freedom from jail. They are also disproportionately punished with harsh sentences, and they are displaced from their friends, families, children, jobs, and homes. They are traumatized in body and in mind. Prison is state violence and it magnifies pain for all parties. Through restorative justice education, we are committed to replacing criminalization and incarceration with alternative approaches that address violence and repair harm.

Fayetteville PACT’s mission is to create a police-community taskforce of civilians for civilian oversight entities that seek to make local law enforcement agencies transparent, accountable, and responsible to the communities they serve. Fayetteville PACT will address all injustices and encourage equality no matter race, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, religious, and national origin representation. Fayetteville PACT works to end mass incarceration, racial profiling, selective enforcement & use of excessive force in policing.

Forward justice is a nonpartisan law, policy, and strategy center dedicated to advancing racial, social, and economic justice in the U.S. South.

We serve as a strategic partner for nonprofit organizations, coalitions, and networks at the forefront of movements organizing for a more just, equitable, and free South. Our work catalyzes success for movements and expands democratic opportunities for people affected by injustice. The victories we achieve together accelerate national change.

Forward Justice is committed to three interconnected theories of change:

1. Social movements create transformative change.
2. Some of our most potent social movements were birthed in the South.
3. Social movements have directly impacted leadership at the moral center.

The National Association of Social Workers North Carolina Chapter (NASW-NC) is a membership organization devoted to the social work profession. NASW-NC promotes, develops, and protects the practice of social work and social workers. NASW-NC also seeks to enhance the well-being of individuals, families, and communities through its advocacy. Capital punishment and the death penalty undermine the ability of professional social workers working within the criminal justice system to enhance a client’s capacity and opportunity for ongoing change. NASW-NC believes in the inherent dignity and worth of every individual. NASW-NC supports the abolition of the death penalty and an immediate moratorium on executions for those already sentenced. NASW-NC supports restorative justice programs that support the belief in the possibility for change and an option for rehabilitation and restoration.

The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival is organizing around the nation. We are challenging systemic racism, poverty, ecological devastation, the war economy and militarism, and our nation’s distorted moral narrative. We are demanding a moral agenda to address these issues because we refuse to give up on the heart and soul of this democracy and our world. We are people who challenge the false moral narrative of religious and Christian nationalism and who are lifting up a moral vision of justice and love and care for the poor, the stranger, the sick, and the least of these as a guiding moral framework for addressing public policy.

The North Carolina Council of Churches was founded in 1935. Our membership is composed of 26 distinct judicatories from 18 denominations. Among them are congregations large and small, urban and rural, black, brown, and white from the entirety of the state. We have a proven record of moving ahead of the curve on the social issues of its day even when our position was not popular among the churches or the culture. While the issues we address mirror the attitude of most progressive organizations around us, we have a singular starting place. We refract everything through the prophetic witness of the Old Testament and the gospel message of the New Testament. This starting place offers a different tenor to the conversation and leads to conclusions grounded in God’s intention for the flourishing of all creation.

The Council enables denominations, congregations, and people of faith to impact our state on issues such as economic justice and development, human well-being, equality, compassion and peace, following the example and mission of Jesus Christ.

The North Carolina Justice’s mission is to eliminate poverty in North Carolina by ensuring that every household in the state has access to the resources, services, and fair treatment it needs to achieve economic security. The Fair Chance Criminal Justice Project, one of the eight issue areas of the Justice Center, is dedicated to identifying the ways the criminal legal system perpetuates poverty in the state, and working with directly impacted people, concerned residents and decision makers to change unfair practices and policies. Our mission is to make the criminal legal system more fair from arrest to reentry by (1) creating fair chance opportunities, (2) expanding access to and eligibility for criminal record relief, (3) combatting race and class discrimination in the criminal legal system, and (4) ensuring access to needed resources and opportunities that promote successful reentry.

RedressNC is an initiative designed to reflect a community-wide determination to unwind decades of retributive policies and to refocus criminal justice administration to prioritize public safety, accountability, racial equity, and restoration of community.  Retribution and fear as underpinnings of our criminal justice system share an ugly legacy with our nation’s original sin — racism and the systematic oppression of African Americans. Through collaborations with District Attorneys, faith communities and civic and fraternal organizations, RedressNC seeks to unwind this history.

The Religious Coalition for a Nonviolent Durham (RCND) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization comprised of individuals, who as an expression of their faith and goodwill, come alongside neighbors most impacted by our community violence and criminal legal system. We do this through vigil ministry among homicide survivors, support circles for citizens returning from incarceration, and restorative justice practices that seek to repair the harm caused by wrongdoing. In all these practices of proximity and repair, we affirm the truth of beloved community and bear witness to a Durham framed by boundless belonging.

The Southern Coalition for Social Justice is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization founded in August 2007 in Durham, North Carolina by a multidisciplinary group, predominantly people of color, who believe that families and communities engaged in social justice struggles need a team of lawyers, social scientists, community organizers and media specialists to support them in their efforts to dismantle structural racism and oppression.

The Southern Coalition for Social Justice partners with communities of color and economically disadvantaged communities in the south to defend and advance their political, social and economic rights through the combination of legal advocacy, research, organizing and communications.

We Sisters of Mercy believe in the inherent dignity of the person and a preferential option for the poor–that is, a call to create conditions for marginalized voices to be heard and the defenseless to be defended. You put those two things together, and how can we not demand an end to the death penalty? The poorest people, the most disenfranchised, they are the people on death row. –Sister Rose Marie.

Inspired by the Gospel and by the example of our founder Catherine McAuley, we Sisters of Mercy envision a just world for people who are poor, sick and uneducated. We commit to serving, advocating for and praying with those in need around the world.

We work passionately to reduce poverty, violence, and racism as well as the widespread denial of human rights, the degradation of Earth, the continued oppression of women, the abuse of children, the mistreatment of immigrants and the lack of solidarity among people and nations. We examine the root causes of these issues and promote systemic change in the communities in which we minister.

The Unitarian Universalist Justice Ministry of North Carolina joyfully organizes UUs to co-create a transformative movement for justice through spiritual grounding, collaboration, and imagination. They live into this mission by deepening relationships among UU congregations and individuals in NC to both cultivate a network of support and harness their power as 5,000+ UUs in the state, working in close relationship with justice partners in NC who are aligned with UU values and doing transformative work in our state, and moving in alignment with their larger faith. This includes participating in national UU justice campaigns and educational opportunities to deepen faith, knowledge, and skills.