Articles
Items: 21 — 30
Mar 08, 2016
EDITORIALS: Kentucky Newspaper Reverses Position on the Death Penalty
The Lexington Herald-Leader, Kentucky’s second-largest newspaper, announced it was ending its long-held support for the death penalty, and now believes the state legislature should abolish capital punishment. Describing its previous position as “keep it but fix it,” the editors stated, “we must now concede that the death penalty is not going to be fixed and, in fact, probably cannot be fixed at any defensible cost to taxpayers.” Citing the 2011 American Bar Association assessment of…
Read MoreJan 04, 2016
EDITORIALS: Newspapers Stress Findings from DPIC’s 2015 Year End Report
Several newspapers across the country featured themes from DPIC’s 2015 Year End Report in editorials and opinion pieces at the end of…
Read MoreSep 21, 2015
Conservative Commentator, Texas Editorial Urge End to Death Penalty for Mentally Ill
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit will hear arguments on September 23 regarding Scott Panetti’s competency to be executed. Panetti is a severely mentally ill man who represented himself at his trial wearing a cowboy costume, and attempted to subpoena the Pope, John F. Kennedy, and Jesus Christ. As the court prepares to hear Panetti’s case, opinion pieces in two Texas newspapers used it to illustrate larger problems with the death penalty and…
Read MoreAug 14, 2015
EDITORIALS: North Carolina Newspapers Critique Execution Secrecy Law
On August 6, North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory signed a law that removed the requirement that a physician be present at executions and shrouded in secrecy many elements of the lethal injection process, including the specific drugs to be used and the suppliers of those drugs. By eliminating the physician-participation requirement, the law attempted to remove a legal hurdle that has halted executions in North Carolina since 2006. Two major state newspapers sharply criticized…
Read MoreJun 23, 2015
Editorials in Major Death Penalty States Call for Its Abolition
Recent editorials from leading newspapers in three of the largest death row states critique flaws in the death penalty and call for its abolition. The Sacramento Bee quoted federal district court judge Cormac Carney’s recent ruling finding California’s death penalty unconstitutional because executions are so rare that they “serve no retributive or deterrent purpose.” The Bee called the state’s capital punishment system “an abject failure”…
Read MoreMay 13, 2015
EDITORIALS: USA Today Urges Life Without Parole for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev
On May 12, the editorial board of USA Today affirmed its opposition to the death penalty in an editorial urging that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev be sentenced to life without parole, rather than the death penalty, for his role in the Boston marathon bombing. “Laws aren’t written for a single individual, and the death penalty applies to many people,” the editorial said. “Tsarnaev and other infamous defendants … demonstrate the penalty’s arbitrary nature. While Tsarnaev has a superb legal…
Read MoreMay 12, 2015
EDITORIALS: Restarting North Carolina Executions Would Be “Unjust”
A recent editorial in The News & Observer (Raleigh, NC) has criticized legislative efforts to restart North Carolina’s death penalty as “retrogressive” and “macabre.” The editorial opposes a bill that would allow executions to resume in North Carolina by “expanding the list of medical personnel who can monitor executions.” In 2007, the North Carolina Medical Board said that doctor participation in executions violates professional ethics, effectively…
Read MoreApr 14, 2015
EDITORIALS: New York Times Sees “Alarming” Link Between Official Misconduct and Death Penalty Mistakes
In an editorial on April 13, the New York Times described the death penalty as “cruel, immoral, and ineffective at reducing crime” and called it “so riddled with error that no civilized nation should tolerate its use.” The Times described how prosecutorial misconduct and an “all-too-common mind-set to win at all costs” played a substantial role in the convictions of many of the 152 innocent men and women who have been…
Read MoreMar 06, 2015
EDITORIALS: Four National Catholic Journals Urge End to Capital Punishment
In an unusual joint editorial on March 5, four national Catholic publications called for an end to the death penalty in the U.S. The editors of America, National Catholic Register, National Catholic Reporter, and Our Sunday Visitor urged “the readers of our diverse publications and the whole U.S. Catholic community and all people of faith to stand with us and say, ‘Capital punishment must end.’ ” Citing opposition to the…
Read MoreFeb 12, 2015
STUDIES: Lynchings in America Related to Racial Bias in Death Penalty
A new report from the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) of Alabama has documented more lynchings in American history than previously reported, particularly of African Americans in the South, and has drawn parallels between this practice and the modern death…
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