For Mark Elliott, Executive Director of Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (FADP), it was the killing of a Jewish prisoner by the state that put him on the road to abolish capital punishment. Read More
Will Georgia execute a man who has been found to have an intellectual disability by every single doctor who has examined him? That is the disturbing question in the case of Warren Hill, who faces execution on Monday, July 15. Read More
In an interview published earlier this year by the evangelical magazine, Sojourners, Richard Viguerie explains how his political conservative philosophy and Christian faith inform his opposition to capital punishment. Read More
The National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty established Rachel’s Fund in the memory of Rachel King, a leading abolitionist. Rachel, through her writing and advocacy, sought to create a better understanding of the needs of families of murder victims and families of people on death row. It is Rachel’s vision of communities coming together to promote healing and to change public policy on the death penalty that our Rachel’s Fund program is intended to promote. See these materials for state affiliates. Read More
The Catholic Mobilizing Network to End Use of the Death Penalty (CMN) has done a great service by creating this two page resource for the faith community. Read More
Parallel Justice for Victims of Crime (2012, National Center for Victims of Crime) by Susan Herman presents a new framework for delivering justice to victims. Herman, who has more than 30 years of criminal justice experience, including eight years as executive director of the National Center for Victims of Crime, offers the metaphor of two ladders of justice—one for offenders and one for victims—with separate paths and responses. The criminal justice system controls the path for offenders—which includes apprehension, persecution, sanctioning, and eventual reintegration into society. Yet, the path to justice for victims “at every level—individual, community, and governmental—is ineffective, fragmented, and dismissive.” Read More
Each April since 1981, the Office of Victims of Crime has helped to mobilize communities throughout the country in their annual observances of National Crime Victims’ Rights Week (NCVRW) by advancing victims’ rights and honoring crime victims and those who advocate on their behalf. Read More
In 2006, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia wrote a dissenting opinion that there was not “a single case, not one, in which it is clear that a person was executed for a crime he did not commit.” This assertion outraged many in the death penalty abolition movement whose experience told them otherwise. Read More
St. Louis University Professor Tobias Winright uses a literary vignette from The Lord of the Rings as a jumping off point for a powerful reflection on Christian faith and the death penalty in his article, “Gandalf, Gollum, and the Death Penalty,” published in the January 2013 edition of Sojourners Magazine. Read More
In 1976 the Supreme Court upheld one of the country’s most controversial practices — capital punishment. Since then, over 1,300 Americans have been executed by the state. Read More
While running errands last week, the marquee of a local Catholic church reminded me that Ash Wednesday was Feb. 13 and that the Lenten Season and Easter would soon be upon us. Read More
With a death penalty repeal bill sponsored by Governor O’Malley and more than enough votes to pass it in both the House and the Senate, Maryland stands ready to become the 18th state without the death penalty. Read More
A few days ago on January 21, 2013, we celebrated the legacy and memory of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. There is incredible synchronicity in the unfolding events in just these first few weeks of the New Year. Read More
In 2010, a 20-20 tie vote in the State Senate stalled the efforts to repeal the death penalty in Kansas. But that hasn’t stopped Kansas! Read More