Death Penalty News

“People say that executing criminals does not take away from their dignity – if it is done with dignity. But the fact of the matter is that whether you’re waiting to die by lethal injection – waiting ... for the poison to flow down your veins – or waiting for a bullet, or waiting for a rope, or waiting for gas, or waiting for the electric current – there is no difference: there is no lesser or greater dignity in dying. The practice of the death penalty is the practice of torture. And by the time people I have been with finally climb into the chair to be killed, they have died a thousand times already because of their anticipation of the final horror.” – Helen Prejean, author of the book “Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States.” _____________________________________________________________________ Twitter/X   |  Instagram   |  Telegram   | Contact Us "One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have c...

Food for thought... The Animals Sick of the Plague The sorest ill that Heaven hath Sent on this lower world in wrath,-- The plague (to call it by its name,) One single day of which Would Pluto's ferryman enrich,-- Waged war on beasts, both wild and tame. They died not all, but all were sick: No hunting now, by force or trick, To save what might so soon expire. No food excited their desire; Nor wolf nor fox now watch'd to slay The innocent and tender prey. The turtles fled; So love and therefore joy were dead. The lion council held, and said: 'My friends, I do believe This awful scourge, for which we grieve, Is for our sins a punishment Most righteously by Heaven sent. Let us our guiltiest beast resign, A sacrifice to wrath divine. Perhaps this offering, truly small, May gain the life and health of all. By history we find it noted That lives have been just so devoted. Then let us all turn eyes within, And ferret out the hidden sin. Himself le...

"Suffering is one very long moment. We cannot divide it by seasons. We can only record its moods, and chronicle their return. With us time itself does not progress. It revolves. It seems to circle round one centre of pain. The paralysing immobility of a life every circumstance of which is regulated after an unchangeable pattern, so that we eat and drink and lie down and pray, or kneel at least for prayer, according to the inflexible laws of an iron formula: this immobile quality, that makes each dreadful day in the very minutest detail like its brother, seems to communicate itself to those external forces the very essence of whose existence is ceaseless change. Of seed−time or harvest, of the reapers bending over the corn, or the grape gatherers threading through the vines, of the grass in the orchard made white with broken blossoms or strewn with fallen fruit: of these we know nothing and can know nothing. "For us there is only one season, the season of sorrow. The ve...

"There’s no fixing the death penalty. It can’t be patched or mended or rebalanced or glued together, it can’t be made to be one hundred percent fair and one hundred percent reliable and one hundred percent capable of delivering justice, because at the heart of it is us: frail, flawed, complex, messy humans. We have a justice system built on beautiful ideals but practiced amidst a gumbo of ignorance, fear, ambition, prejudices, and passions. We’ve got no business being in the killing business." - Sister Helen Prejean , CSJ, on Richard Glossip's scheduled Oklahoma execution, Sept. 30, 2015. Report an error, an omission: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com

Tennessee death chamber NASHVILLE — The Tennessee Department of Corrections will not say if it has the chemicals needed to execute inmates via lethal injection. Attorneys for inmates challenging the state's protocol say the drugs are not on hand. And an opportunity for the attorneys to ask prison supervisors about the drug supply did not take place as planned Friday because of a canceled court hearing . As an increasing number of national medical organizations oppose participation in the controversial executions, it could be a challenge for Tennessee to find the drugs it needs. "It's certainly clear that it has become more difficult for states to find the drugs that their protocols say they are supposed to use," said Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, which opposes the death penalty. "What the response to that will be is unclear." Drug supply Attorneys for Tennessee and attorneys for more than ...

“It is inconceivable to me how the execution of a severely mentally ill person such as applicant would measurably advance the retribution and deterrence purposes purportedly served by the death penalty.” “I am convinced that, because the criminal justice system is run by humans, it is naturally subject to human error. There is no rational basis to believe that this same type of human error will not infect capital murder trials.” “Evolving societal values indicate that the death penalty should be abolished in its entirety. Since Texas enacted life without parole as a punishment for capital murder, Texas district attorneys have significantly decreased their requests for the death penalty, and juries today often prefer that punishment to the death penalty.” -  Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Judge Tom Price , dissenting last week from the court majority that denied a stay in Scott Panetti’s execution.

“All Christians and people of good will are called today to struggle not only for abolition of the death penalty, whether legal or illegal, and in all its forms, but also to improve prison conditions, out of respect for the human dignity of persons deprived of their liberty. And this I connect with life imprisonment. Life imprisonment is a hidden death penalty.” - Pope Francis , addressing the delegates from the International Association of Penal Law, October 23, 2014 (Read full report here.)

"Seigneur, ayez pitié, ayez pitié des fous et des folles ! Ô Créateur ! Peut-il exister des monstres aux yeux de Celui-là qui sait pourquoi ils existent, comment ils se sont faits et comment ils auraient pu ne pas se faire ?"  -- Charles Baudelaire , Spleen de Paris (1869) Lord, have mercy, have mercy on madmen and madwomen! O Creator! Can there be monsters in the eyes of Him alone who knows why they exist, how they were made, and how they might have been made otherwise?” -- Charles Baudelaire , Paris Spleen (1869)

"Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto" ( I am a human being, I consider nothing that is human alien to me. ) -Terence , ancient Roman playwright (195/185–159 BC)

"I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions." - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian , Republican lawmaker who pushed to have state Supreme Court justices impeached for briefly halting Clayton Lockett's execution .

"But when silence or tricks of language contribute to maintaining an abuse that must be reformed or a suffering that can be relieved, then there is no other solution but to speak out and show the obscenity hidden under the verbal cloak."  -- Albert Camus , Reflections On The Guillotine

"If the death penalty is being used by only a small number of [U.S.] states, and if there is a clear national trend away from capital punishment, the [U.S.] Supreme Court could find that it has become a cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment." -- Richard Dieter , executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center

"Electrocution leaves minor burns, just barely noticeable." - Debra Gardner , chief deputy director of Virginia's Department of Corrections, on why Virginia could establish the electric chair as the state’s default method of execution when drugs used for lethal injection are not available.

“The act I committed to put me here was not just heinous, it was senseless. But the person that committed that act is no longer here - I am. I’m not going to struggle physically against any restraints. I’m not going to shout, use profanity or make idle threats. Understand though that I’m not only upset, but I’m saddened by what is happening here tonight. I’m not only saddened, but disappointed that a system that is supposed to protect and uphold what is just and right can be so much like me when I made the same shameful mistake…Tonight we tell the world that there are no second chances in the eyes of justice...Tonight, we tell our children that in some instances, in some cases, killing is right.” - Napoleon Beazley , executed in Texas on the evening of 28 May 2002, despite a former Texas death row warden, 18 state legislators, the prosecutor from Beazley's home county, and even the judge who oversaw his trial and set his execution date, being among the thousands of people wh...

"The profound moral question is not, 'Do they deserve to die?' but 'Do we deserve to kill them?'" - Sister Helen Prejean , CSJ

"My office closes at 5:00 p.m." - Sharon Keller , Presiding Judge of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, refusing to keep the court room open past 5:00 p.m. to allow the late filing of a death sentence appeal by Michael Wayne Richard's attorneys and not informing the Judge assigned to deal with such an appeal. Michael Richard was put to death by lethal injection a few hours later at The Walls prison unit in Huntsville, Texas, on September 25, 2007.

"You guys in AZ are life savers." - Scott Kernan of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation in a message emailed to Charles Flanagan, deputy director of the Arizona Department of Corrections, upon being resupplied with sodium thiopental from the Arizona Department of Corrections to carry out lethal injections, December 2010.

"The ability of so many people to live comfortably with the idea of capital punishment is perhaps a clue to how so many Europeans were able to live with the idea of the Holocaust: Once you accept the notion that the state has the right to kill someone and the right to define what is a capital crime, aren't you halfway there?" - Roger Ebert , "Mr. Death: The Rise And Fall Of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr.", Chicago Sun-Times, 4 February 2000.

"I don't see capital punishment as a peripheral issue about some criminals at the edge of society that people want to execute. I see the death penalty connected to the three deepest wounds of our society: racism, poverty, and violence." - Sister Helen Prejean , C.S.J., Would Jesus Pull the Switch? (Click here to read the full article by Sister Helen Prejean.)

“It’s not bad people I fear so much as good people. When a person is sure that he is good, he is nearly hopeless; he gets cruel -- he believes in punishment.” - Clarence Darrow , American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union.