Death Penalty News

On Nov. 7, 1960, William Tines was electrocuted in the Tennessee electric chair.  The next execution in Tennessee was Robert Glen Coe in 2000.  During this 40- year period, Tennessee continued its historical trend of executing fewer citizens than any other Southern state. From 2000-2017 the slow pace of executions continued with six people killed by the state. Then in 2018 and 2019, three men each year were executed, moving Tennessee from having one of the least-used death chambers to one of the most. Three more executions are scheduled for February, June and August this year with more to come from the Tennessee Supreme Court. At a crossroads once again The state is at a crossroads on this matter.  The last time we reached such a  situation was in the 1980’s. U.S. District Judge John Nixon intervened when the condemned petitioned for relief due to inadequate prison conditions and lack of mental health treatment.  The railroad train to the ...

A petition urging the reintroduction of the death penalty in the UK poses some pertinent questions for Christianity The recent launch of a petition urging parliament to consider the restoration of the death penalty will not make for a completely dispiriting episode if it gives us pause to revisit the punishment's long relationship with Christianity, an alliance that was formally ratified when Henry I reinstated state-sanctioned execution in 1108. This was an age in which the biblical warrants for capital punishment re-established themselves in the penal "philosophy" of the nation, and in which the Christian religion, in all its sanguinary imaginings, really was religious. The biblical warrants themselves are numerous: the Old Testament enthusiastically identifies 36 offences that are punishable by death (these include being rude about mum and dad and, if you are a woman, getting married while no longer a virgin), while the New Testament, supposedly the most enlightened...

We lifelong conservatives and Tea Party supporters recently urged the death sentence for Teresa Lewis in Virginia be commuted to life in prison without parole instead. We are among a growing number of conservatives who have questions and reservations about the death penalty, believe it is no longer a necessary form of punishment based on either Lockean or biblical principles, or oppose it outright. Around the country death sentences are dropping, and support for the death penalty is waning. This trend is not limited to bleeding-heart liberals and criminal coddlers. We urge our fellow conservatives to at least consider some issues when contemplating the death penalty. The Old Testament required the death penalty for certain sins and a litany of offenses. In John 8 of the New Testament, the Pharisees confronted Jesus about a woman ready to be stoned for adultery. Jesus, sensing a trap they laid on a conflict between the Old Testament and Roman law, said: Let him who is...