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The editorial boards of Oklahoma’s two major newspapers and the leadership of the Oklahoma Conference of Churches are all urging voters to vote no on State Question 776, which would enshrine the death penalty in the Oklahoma constitution and remove from state courts the power to declare the death penalty cruel and unusual punishment. The Oklahoman called SQ 776 “unnecesary,” saying it, “should be rejected by Oklahoma voters on Nov. 8.” The Tulsa World also encouraged a no vote on 776, saying…

Newspaper editorial boards in California are overwhelmingly supporting a November ballot initiative to abolish the state’s death penalty and replace it with life without parole plus restitution, and are uniformly rejecting an opposing initiative that purports to speed up the appeals process. At least eight California newspapers have published editorials supporting Proposition 62 and opposing Proposition 66, and Ballotpedia reports that it is aware of no editorial boards that have supported…

Weighing in on California’s competing death penalty ballot initiatives, the San Jose Mercury News editorial board urged voters to support repeal of capital punishment and reject a proposal to speed up executions. The editorial called California’s death penalty system, “a failure on every level,” noting that the state has spent $4 billion to carry out just 13 executions and the $150 million annual savings the independent Legislative Analysts Office says death penalty abolition would achieve…

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 Kentucky’s…

Several newspapers across the country featured themes from DPIC’s 2015 Year End Report in editorials and opinion pieces at the end of December: “Once broadly accepted, capital punishment is increasingly a fringe practice. A handful of states conduct nearly all executions. Four — Texas, Missouri, Georgia and Florida — carried out 93 percent of them in 2015. Sixty-three percent of new death sentences came from a mere 2 percent of U.S. counties, a group with a history of disproportionately using…

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 mental illness. In an op-ed in The…

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 the new law…

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” and said, “[t]he death penalty has not worked, and never…

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 team, most…

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 blocking any doctors from participating in…