Vernetta Alston

Vernetta (she/her) was born in Durham, NC and has spent her entire life in the Triangle. She and her wife, Courtney, are raising their children, Reese and Davis, in southwest Durham. When she is not chasing small kids around, Vernetta enjoys running, watching sports, and traveling. In 2004, Vernetta received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science from North Carolina State University. Five years later, she completed her law degree at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Vernetta’s first job out of law school was as a staff attorney for the Racial Justice Act Study following the passage of the Racial Justice Act in the fall of 2009. The RJA gave death row inmates a chance to have their sentences reduced based on statistical evidence of racial bias in the death penalty. Vernetta spent the next several years of her practice working at the Center for Death Penalty Litigation. There she represented death row inmates in a variety of appellate court cases and educated North Carolinians across the state about flaws in our criminal justice system. In 2014, through the work of the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission, one of Vernetta’s clients was exonerated and released from Death Row. In 2017, Vernetta continued her public service on the Durham City Council, where she served for two years. In 2020, Governor Roy Cooper appointed Vernetta to the North Carolina House of Representatives. She was elected to her first full term in the same year. As a member of the North Carolina House, Vernetta has built bipartisan coalitions and she continues to work toward long-term policy changes that will support her constituents.