Innocent on death row
Two memoirs by men who endured decades of criminal injustice before being exonerated
death penalty
When mercy and justice meet
As we make laws and try to adjudicate justice, we often lose sight of the human faces affected.
Balance the scales
We can no longer pretend that the scales of justice in America are fair and balanced.
Last Tuesday, the Supreme Court ruled that Florida’s death penalty sentencing violates the Sixth Amendment. Tomorrow, the court will consider whether to hear a death-row petition based on the Eighth. The first is comparatively narrow in scope: Florida has to stop sending people to its rather bustling death row unless that decision is made by a real live jury. The second, however, could be quite sweeping.
The state killed Kelly Gissendaner despite the evidence of a changed life. This points to a desire for retribution rather than reformation.
It feels to me like evil is hovering over the prison in the form of a government ready to kill a woman who prayed with me when my father was dying of cancer. There isn't a thing I can do about it except pray this psalm and damn if we can't get it right.
I was trying to write a provocative article for a readership that includes many people who a) oppose the death penalty for faith-based reasons, and b) take for granted that replacing it with LWOP is a fairly straightforward good. But I should have done more to anticipate how others might see a one-sided article where I saw a narrowly focused one.
The death penalty is undergoing a welcome decline in the U.S. But the policy that's replacing it isn't much better.