George Orwell himself could not have come up with a more deviously named piece of legislation than Florida's ill-advised Timely Justice Act. In the world of doublespeak, it conveys the image of efficiency, effectiveness and fairness, while doing exactly the opposite. Surely, its sponsors wanted to misrepresent and...

The followings are remarks I gave on May 4 at the kickoff rally of the Philadelphia Moratorium Campaign at the First United Methodist Church of Germantown:

Witness to Innocence is a national organization originally founded as a project of Sister Helen Prejean of the...

In the past four decades, 142 men and women were liberated from death row because they were innocent. Given that 1,328 people have been executed in the U.S. since 1976, when the death penalty was reinstated, it means that there is one death row survivor for...

The following are excerpts of a presentation I made at the Amnesty International USA Human Rights Conference in Washington on March 23, 2013. I spoke on a panel called "Abolishing the Death Penalty in Our Lifetime."

It is a pleasure to be here, and I want to thank...

So, what do you make of a country where a third grader brings a gun to school to ward off bullies?

In Inkster, Mich., an eight-year-old boy brought a nine-mm semiautomatic handgun to his elementary school two days in a row for protection, and to...

With the death penalty a hot topic of discussion in Maryland these days, lawmakers in that state have a golden opportunity to repeal an outdated, cruel and unjust practice.

Death penalty repeal is in the air. At the urging of the NAACP, Maryland CASE and others, Gov....

Proposition 34, the important ballot initiative in California, would eliminate the death penalty in that state. With 725 people on death row, including 19 women, California has the most death row prisoners in the nation, and one quarter of America's...

When Common Pleas Court Judge M. Teresa Sarmina stayed the execution of Terry Williams, she dealt a blow to the death penalty in Pennsylvania. Now the public has caught a glimpse of prosecutorial misconduct and evidence suppression in the application of the death penalty, and it isn't pretty.

There's an execution planned in Pennsylvania, the first one in thirteen years. Gov. Tom Corbett signed a death warrant for Terrance "Terry" Williams. Barring intervention from the Governor, the Pennsylvania Board of Pardons, or the Philadelphia District Attorney, Williams will be executed on October 3.

But the execution should...

Georgia may be about to execute a mentally disabled man in possible violation of the U.S. Constitution.

Unless the U.S. Supreme Court intervenes, the state of Georgia will execute a man that everyone agrees is mentally retarded. A state court determined that a decade ago. The execution would

It was a good day at the United Nations. On July 3, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on member states to abolish the death penalty. And he called for a universal moratorium on the death penalty by 2015.

"The taking of life is too absolute, too...

June 29 marks the 40th anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court case Furman v. Georgia. In Furman, the high court abolished the death penalty on the grounds that it violated the Eighth Amendment prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. The decision also barred the use of capital punishment...

People are losing faith in a number of America's institutions because these institutions are failing miserably.

For example, take the U.S. criminal justice system. In one week we learned two things: First, Columbia law professor James Liebman and his students revealed that Texas executed an innocent man named

There's a buzz about the death penalty in America these days. And nearly all of the conversation focuses not on how to maintain the practice, but rather on abolition.

Connecticut just decided to repeal the death penalty, following the lead of Illinois, New Mexico and New Jersey in recent years....

Are we witnessing the beginning of the end of the death penalty in America? All of it might come down to a basic issue of supply.

So, what do you do if you are a hangman who runs out of rope? To put it in more conventional terms, suppose you...

Rush Limbaugh's years of bullying may have finally caught up with him. His vicious attack on Sandra Fluke, a Georgetown University law student, was over the top even by Limbaugh's standards. Calling the young woman a "slut" and a "prostitute" for supporting health insurance coverage for contraception has cost the...

The case of Reggie Clemons represents everything that is wrong with the death penalty and the U.S. criminal justice system.

His case reminds us of Troy Davis, a black man who was executed by the state of Georgia in September, despite strong evidence of innocence, no physical evidence, another...

As the U.S. observes the eighty-third birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., this is a perfect time to reflect on the slain civil rights leader, Nobel laureate and death penalty opponent.

Much is known of the Montgomery bus boycott that he led in the 1950s. He fought for economic...

The American South can't seem to shake off the Civil War. Or Jim Crow. And yet, that region of the U.S. is undergoing some dramatic changes. How the South responds to these changes will determine how easily it will enter the modern world and usher out the racial demons of...

They say you're judged by the company you keep. And the countries that execute the most people are members of quite a club.

According to Amnesty International, two-thirds of the nations of the world have abolished the death penalty, including 30 countries over the past decade. Only...