1,000 Faith Leaders Call for End to the Death Penalty

As the 1,000^th exe­cu­tion approach­es, over 1,000 reli­gious lead­ers from more than a dozen reli­gious faiths have issued an open let­ter call­ing for an end to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the United States. The let­ter reaf­firms the lead­ers’ moral oppo­si­tion to the death penal­ty and reit­er­ates the groups’ belief in the sacred­ness of life and the human capac­i­ty for change. The faith lead­ers called on pub­lic offi­cials to reex­am­ine cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and to seek bet­ter ways to help com­mu­ni­ties heal from vio­lence. The letter states:

We join with many Americans in ques­tion­ing the need for the death penal­ty in our mod­ern soci­ety and in chal­leng­ing the effec­tive­ness of this pun­ish­ment, which has con­sis­tent­ly been shown to be inef­fec­tive, unfair, and inac­cu­rate. The death penal­ty not only applies dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly to the poor and to peo­ple of col­or, but also con­tin­ues to make fatal mis­takes, with 122 peo­ple now freed from death rows across the coun­try due to evi­dence of wrong­ful con­vic­tion. As the num­ber of exe­cu­tions increas­es, the like­li­hood that we have, or that we will, exe­cute an inno­cent per­son becomes a near cer­tain­ty.
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The United States con­tin­ues to be one of the top exe­cut­ing nations in the world and is out of step with the major­i­ty of its glob­al allies on this issue. We would be a bet­ter soci­ety by join­ing the many nations that have already abol­ished the death penal­ty.

The views of the letter’s sig­na­to­ries are shared by faith groups around the nation. For exam­ple, hun­dreds of church­es nation­wide are plan­ning to mark the 1,000^th exe­cu­tion by hold­ing vig­ils and tolling bells in mem­o­ry of all mur­der vic­tims, and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops recent­ly approved new, stronger lan­guage aimed at end­ing the death penal­ty in the U.S. The 1,000^th exe­cu­tion is cur­rent­ly sched­uled to take place on December 2, 2005. (United Methodist Church General Board of Church and Society Press Release, ​“1,000 Religious Leaders Renew Call for Death Penalty Abolition As 1,000^th Execution Approaches,” November 28, 2005) Read the let­ter and the press release. See New Voices and Executions.