Christians opposed to the death penalty but unsure how to effectively challenge it can begin by educating themselves about the practice, civil rights activist Joia Erin Thornton said during a webinar hosted by Equal Justice USA. As founder and executive…
Global condemnation falls on Alabama for experimental capital punishment method
Alabama joined a lineup of the world’s most notorious human rights violators by being the first state to use nitrogen gas to execute a condemned prisoner who suffered intense pain before dying. “The death penalty is a violation of human…
Condemning Alabama for using an experimental drug to execute a prisoner misses the point, author warns
Justified condemnations of Alabama’s plan to execute a convicted killer Jan. 25 using an untested gas serve as a distraction from the ultimate need to end the death penalty altogether, Katie Owens-Murphy said during a webinar hosted by Equal Justice…
Evangelical leaders condemn DeSantis for politicizing state executions
The presidential aspirations of Gov. Ron DeSantis have exacerbated the challenges facing Florida’s Death Row inmates and the activists trying to help them, said one of the state’s leading opponents of capital punishment. “Florida is a very dark place for…
It would be ‘pro-life’ to commute Louisiana’s 56 Death Row sentences to life without parole, advocates urge
Granting clemency to Death Row inmates would show the nation Louisiana is the staunchly pro-life state many claim it to be, death penalty abolitionists said during an Aug. 15 news conference. The group of faith leaders, activists and relatives of…
He Called Me Sister — an unlikely story of an inmate, a family and grace on Death Row
Suzanne and Alan Robertson and their daughters found grace, compassion and hope in one of the last places most people would think to look: Death Row. Suzanne Craig Robertson recounts their discovery — and how it touched their lives —…
Capital punishment continues America’s history of lynching, panelists say
Capital punishment in the United States continues a system of lynchings used to terrorize and subjugate Black people in the 19th and early 20th centuries, a panel of death penalty abolitionists said during a recent webinar. “The mistake people sometimes…
He was wrongly put on Death Row and believes you could be too
When the state of Florida could muster no evidence to convict Ron Wright in a double homicide case, it succeeded by spinning an elaborate narrative about him in court, the 2017 death row exoneree said. “Mine was a ‘wholly circumstantial’…
Tennessee representative who proposed execution by ‘hanging by a tree’ needs a history lesson
There’s more than the usual political craziness attached to the recent remark by Tennessee Rep. Paul Sherrell to bring back “hanging by a tree” as an amendment to a firing squad bill. There’s a denial of horrible history. This is…