Reverend says, 'Don't kill for me'

By CM Wahl | News editor

Augusta University hosted a discussion on the “Societal Impact of the Death Penalty” on Jan 29. Reverend Dr. Jack Sullivan Jr. was the featured speaker.  

Originally from Cleveland, Sullivan lives in Ohio’s capital city of Columbus and serves as the executive director of the Ohio Council of Churches. He is an active member of Journey of Hope, an anti-death penalty organization that seeks a more constructive and effective response to violent crime. 

“I am part of a demographic,” said Sullivan, “that many people think by default would be in support of capital punishment.”  

On July 30, 1997, Sullivan was at a church convention when he was notified that his younger sister Jennifer Ann McCoy had been murdered execution-style inside her home. McCoy was just 21 and left behind a 2-year-old daughter.  

Rev. Dr. Jack Sullivan Jr. speaks about the murder of his sister, Jennifer Ann McCoy, to an audience in the JSAC Ballroom on Jan. 29. (photos by CM Wahl)

“It didn’t have to take place,” remarked Sullivan. “It was not God’s will that it be done. It was a person who made a decision; an evil one, a painful one, a bad one.” 

While enduring the grieving process, Sullivan’s family had the added burden of finding a new home for his now-orphaned niece. As they worried over the child’s future expenses, friends and strangers alike gathered around them for emotional support and shared in the restoration of his family. 

“It was later,” said Sullivan, “that I discovered and heard arguments from people who thought that people like us – who have lost loved ones to murder – ought to consume ourselves with revenge.” 

Sullivan said many told his family they would be justified if they wished death upon his sister’s murderer. But Sullivan’s family wanted to look forward, not back. They intended to rely on God’s love to see them through “even the most painful moments and the most horrific of circumstances.” 

Sullivan also felt it would do no good for the state to spend untold millions on a capital case that would lead to another person’s death. He believes the death penalty does nothing to help victim’s families. 

“It does not offer us any healing, any restoration, any wholeness, any redemption,” he said, “and it definitely does not offer us any closure.” 

Sullivan stated that the best way to honor slain victims is not to invest in systems and cycles of death, but in systems and cycles of life, restoration, and hope. Once he joined Journey of Hope, he met others like him who helped him vocalize how he felt about this notion of retaliation. 

“The vocabulary I learned,” said Sullivan, “was ‘Don’t kill for me. Don’t kill for me.’ To prosecutors, to judges, to juries, to neighbors. ‘Don’t kill for me.’” 

Sullivan calls capital punishment the “hamster wheel of nowhere” because it continues the vicious cycle of death that claimed his sister and produces the same warped value system that killers use. He expects states to be better than that and to never surrender the moral and ethical high ground. 

“The answer is love and compassion for all humankind,” he said. “Not repaying evil for evil.” 

While Sullivan focuses on love and compassion, he does not think accountability should be ignored. He just wants to make sure it is not “lethal accountability.” That, he says, is how he chooses to honor his sister. 

Contact CM Wahl @cwahl@augusta.edu.