The National Latino Evangelical Coalition (NaLEC), a coalition of over 3,000 Hispanic evangelical churches, released a call yesterday for “Hispanic evangelical leaders to closely examine their stance on capital punishment and mass incarceration.”
President of NaLEC, Rev. Gabriel Salguero, says that the death penalty is “too broken to ensure that innocent persons are not executed.” He also sees how the system can “disproportionately and negatively impact people based on race, color and economics.”
EJUSA has been working together with NaLEC to sponsor more national conversations on the death penalty amongst Latino and faith communities. Last year, Rev. Salguero, joined 27 prominent evangelicals and Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty in raising concern around fair sentencing hearings in a capital punishment case in Texas.
NaLEC’s announcement comes on the heels of an op-ed by Sam Rodriguez, another major, national evangelical leader (Rodriguez was nominated by Time Magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in America) calling for dialog on the death penalty among Evangelicals and expressing horror at Oklahoma’s recent botched execution.
