Publications & Testimony

The Death Penalty Information Center’s new Religion and the Death Penalty Web page is now avail­able online. In recent years, a grow­ing num­ber of reli­gious orga­ni­za­tions have par­tic­i­pat­ed in the nation’s death penal­ty debate. The pur­pose of this new Web page is to pro­vide access to infor­ma­tion regard­ing the efforts of these faith groups and to high­light recent devel­op­ments relat­ed to reli­gion and the death penal­ty. The page fea­tures offi­cial reli­gious statements on…

MARYLAND GOVERNORS CALL FOR ABOLITION OF…

The Third World Congress Against the Death Penalty took place in Paris from February 1 – 3, 2007. During this time, Paris wel­comed hun­dreds of death penal­ty experts and activists from around the world, includ­ing numer­ous U.S. rep­re­sen­ta­tives who pro­vid­ed a broad overview of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment trends in the U.S. Among the American pan­elists who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the…

In a posi­tion paper issued this month dur­ing the World Congress Against the Death Penalty in Paris, the Vatican said that the death penalty ​“is not only a refusal of the right to life, but it also is an affront to human dig­ni­ty.” Echoing the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the paper not­ed that while gov­ern­ments have an oblig­a­tion to pro­tect their cit­i­zens,​“today it tru­ly is dif­fi­cult to jus­ti­fy” using capital…

Former Connecticut state pros­e­cu­tor and legal ana­lyst Susan Filan recent­ly stat­ed that the death penal­ty is not an appro­pri­ate sen­tence, par­tic­u­lar­ly when the crime appears to be a heinous vio­la­tion of the sanc­ti­ty of life . In her com­men­tary posted on…

by Vicki Schieber and Carolyn Leming Feb. 16, 2007 The GazetteWe write as moth­ers who have been scarred by the death penal­ty.Our sto­ries are very dif­fer­ent, but they are both sto­ries of jus­tice gone wrong. They are sto­ries that con­vince us the cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment sys­tem in Maryland and across the coun­try is broken…

The New Mexico House of Representatives has approved leg­is­la­tion that would repeal the death penal­ty and replace it with a sen­tence of life with­out parole. Supporters of the mea­sure say that it will save tax­pay­ers an esti­mat­ed $3 mil­lion a year, mon­ey they con­tend would be bet­ter spent on help­ing vic­tims’ fam­i­lies. They also note that cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment could result in an inno­cent per­son being exe­cut­ed, does not deter mur­der, and is unfairly…

A new report issued by Amnesty International focus­es on the case of Georgia death row inmate Troy Davis to illus­trate the issue of inno­cence and the legal hur­dles that death row inmates face in seek­ing judi­cial relief. The report — ​‘Where is the jus­tice for me?’ The case of Troy Davis, Facing Execution in Georgia — notes that Davis has been on death row for 15 years for a mur­der that he main­tains he did not com­mit. Many of the state’s wit­ness­es against Davis…

Christopher Scott Emmett could face exe­cu­tion in Virginia before the end of the year despite the fact that his legal rep­re­sen­ta­tion fell short of decades-old American Bar Association stan­dards, accord­ing to an inves­ti­ga­tion by McClatchy Newspapers reporter Stephen Henderson. Emmett was sen­tenced to death in 2001, and his sto­ry was among the 73 cas­es reviewed recent­ly in the McClatchy series. During the…

A recent Kansas poll found that near­ly two-thirds of respon­dents said they pre­fer a sen­tence of life in prison with­out parole in which the offend­ers would work in prison to pay resti­tu­tion to the vic­tims’ fam­i­lies as an alter­na­tive to the death penal­ty. The poll also revealed that many Kansans think cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment is hand­ed out unfair­ly. Fifty-sev­en per­cent of respon­dents said they believe that some peo­ple are exe­cut­ed while oth­ers serve prison time for…