Kevin Weber was sentenced to 26 years to life for stealing four chocolate chip cookies. Many of our prisons now hold double the designed capacity, and you're paying for it. Is there a better way?
Amnesty International | Posted 05.19.2009 | Politics
By Brian Evans, Death Penalty Abolition Campaigner at Amnesty International USA. Imagine a case where someone is sent to death row solely on the test...
Allison Kilkenny | Posted 05.18.2009 | Politics
Excerpt from an article I originally posted back in September: Two hours before Troy Davis was scheduled to die, the U.S. Supreme Court granted him a...
Diann Rust-Tierney | Posted 05.14.2009 | Politics
One of the many disturbing aspects of capital punishment is that it has no guarantee against mistaken convictions and executions.
Norm Stamper | Posted 04.13.2009 | Politics
Shooting an armed, hostage-holding assailant can be a life-saving act of heroism. But there's something fundamentally wrong with taking the life of someone in the state's custody.
Jim Wallis | Posted 04.09.2009 | Politics
There is a growing energy, across political boundaries and especially among people of faith, to have a new national conversation on the death penalty.
Diann Rust-Tierney | Posted 03.26.2009 | Politics
New Mexico's lawmakers concluded that they'd had enough of a system that does not deter murders, is unfairly and unequally applied, risks wrongful convictions, and diverts resources.
Huffington Post | Stuart Whatley | Posted 03.25.2009 | World
A new Al Jazeera English video reports that Iran is considering a law that would make "offensive" blogging punishable by death. The video notes an Am...
HuffingtonPost.com | Arthur Delaney | Posted 03.19.2009 | Politics
Senator Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.) reintroduced legislation Thursday to abolish the death penalty at the federal level. The "Federal Death Penalty Abolit...
Chicago Sun-Times | MAURICE POSSLEY | Posted 03.08.2009 | Chicago
No one has been put to death in this state in the decade since Kokoraleis died by lethal injection. On Thursday, death penalty opponents -- including ...
Gov. Martin O'Malley | Posted 03.02.2009 | Politics
I've asked Marylanders to urge their state senators to end capital punishment in our state. I believe we will fail our children and ourselves if we allow these executions to continue.
Claudia Ricci | Posted 02.04.2009 | Politics
If it were up to me, I would withdraw death penalty eligibility in all of the pending cases, and I would tell prosecutors never to seek the death penalty. There is the possibility of saving 49 lives.
Diann Rust-Tierney | Posted 11.22.2008 | Politics
With the current economic downturn, all government programs -- including the death penalty -- should be evaluated on whether the "benefits" they confer are worth the cost.
Harold Pollack | Posted 09.28.2008 | Chicago
I've seen nothing to suggest that we accomplish much by brutalizing the small and troubled people who commit atrocities. Killing these four gang bangers who murdered Nequiel Fowler does nothing to honor or memorialize this beautiful child.
Kirk Noble Bloodsworth | Posted 09.23.2008 | Politics
Thanks to post-conviction DNA testing, Johnnie Earl Lindsey was freed from a Texas prison on Friday after serving 26 years for a crime he didn't commit.
Anthony Papa | Posted 09.21.2008 | Politics
Sarandon: "It is deeply troubling that Georgia might proceed with this execution given the strong claims of innocence in this case."
Byron Williams | Posted 07.06.2008 | Politics
Californians must confront how badly they want to be in the execution business. Is having a death penalty worth more than investing in the state's social and economic infrastructure?
Michealene Cristini Risley | Posted 06.30.2008 | Living
Last Wednesday the Supreme Court ruled, 5 to 4, that sentencing someone to death for raping a child is unconstitutional. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy s...
AP | Posted 03.14.2008 | Politics
LONDON — U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey said Friday he hopes the men charged with participating in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks are not...
Jonathan Leigh Solomon | Posted 03.03.2008 | Politics
If capital punishment ends only because of challenges and not because of a national reckoning with its full meaning, some cases will have let our nation off the hook in a way that cheapens our claim to being a judicious people.
Flavia Colgan | Posted 01.17.2008 | Politics
How can we can consider ourselves an advanced nation when a method of execution deemed too cruel to subject dogs to is perfectly acceptable for killing humans?
Jamie Fellner | Posted 01.07.2008 | Politics
Public officials have a human rights obligation to choose the specific drugs and methods of administration that carry the least risk of pain and suffering for the condemned.
John Holdridge and Cassandra Stubbs | Posted 01.07.2008 | Politics
New reports alleging that capital punishment has a deterrent effect on homicide rates have captured widespread media attention, which in turn has accorded them a degree of unjustified legitimacy in the public arena.
Amitai Etzioni | Posted 11.19.2007 | Politics
Enter a bunch of economists with a model that, they say, shows that the death penalty deters crimes and hence saves lives. Actually the data on which this model is based are extremely thin.
Doug Bremner | Posted 11.18.2007 | Politics
Why don't you just have guys with swords stand on street corners and cut off anyone's head whom they suspect of a crime?
Long before $150,000-gate, Sarah Palin seemed to...
The Obamas dropped by the Vatican on Friday, with daughters...
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Patrick Takahashi | Posted 06.11.2009 | Politics