JAN. 2, 2008
UPDATED APRIL 16, 2008

SOCIAL ISSUES
Death penalty debate in flux

The death penalty debate is flaring up. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the lethal injection method in Kentucky on April 16, 2008, though experts say debate and court challenges will continue.  DNA-based exonerations of convicted murderers continue apace, the United States was a high-profile holdout on a United Nations resolution calling for a moratorium on the death penalty, and New Jersey became the first state in 42 years to repeal its death penalty law. The majority of Americans – 62 percent – support the death penalty, but polls show that that support has declined to the lowest level in three decades. Supreme Court rulings in 2005 and 2002 restricted the executions of juvenile and mentally retarded offenders.

The capital punishment debate also raises questions about the relationship between pragmatism and moral principle. Many death penalty opponents base their views on research that shows the death penalty is ineffective as a deterrent to crime, or is racially biased against minorities. Others point to the huge financial burden death penalty cases put on the government, a burden that often limits the quality of lawyers appointed to defend the accused. Yet those who oppose capital punishment on moral reasoning say such considerations should not be foremost, and indeed could backfire if subsequent research undermines those arguments.

Moreover, the United States is increasingly seen as an anomaly globally. It is one of few industrialized nations – and one with deep religious convictions at that – that still sanctions the death penalty. Some argue that this stance erodes the moral authority of the United States, especially at a time when Washington’s credibility is at a low ebb in the community of nations.

Why it matters

The death penalty debate epitomizes the impact of religion in the public square, encompassing issues of religious belief, interpretation of scripture and justice.

What’s new

• On April 16, 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the lethal injection method in Kentucky. The ruling came on the first full day of Pope Benedict’s first visit to the U.S. as pope, and all five Catholic justices supported the result, though only three signed onto Chief Justice John Roberts’ majority opinion. The Catholic Church in the United States has become increasingly vocal in its opposition to capital punishment. In 2005, the Catholic bishops launched a new campaign to end the death penalty.
• On Jan. 17-20, 2008, the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty will hold a major conference in San Jose, Calif.
• On Dec. 18, 2007, the Death Penalty Information Center, a leading advocacy group against capital punishment, released a study showing that executions in the United States declined to a 13-year low of 42, the fewest recorded since 1994, when there were 31. Read a Dec. 19, 2007, New York Times story.
• Also on Dec. 18, 2007, the General Assembly of the United Nations passed a nonbinding resolution calling for a moratorium on capital punishment and an eventual ban. The debate was intense, and the United States vote against the resolution put it in the unusual position of siding with Iran and Syria on a human rights issue. See a Dec. 18, 2007, Associated Press story posted by MSNBC.
• A day earlier, on Dec. 17, 2007, New Jersey became the first state in 42 years to repeal its death penalty statute. Although the state had not executed anyone since 1963, the move was seen as a powerful symbol of growing resistance to the use of capital punishment. See a Dec. 18, 2007, AP story posted by MSNBC.
• A Nov. 18, 2007, article in The New York Times, “Does Death Penalty Save Lives? A New Debate,” sparked lively commentary over its discussion of the latest research showing that capital punishment may in fact reduce the number of murders. Other experts disputed those findings as flawed. The story has a link to the seven studies under review and their authors.

Organizations

Religious
• Read a roundup of the positions of various religious groups and denominations on capital punishment posted by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

Secular

OPPOSING THE DEATH PENALTY
• Diann Rust-Tierney is executive director of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. Contact 202-331-4090, diann@ncadp.org.
• Richard Dieter is executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, which opposes capital punishment and tracks recent developments in juvenile death penalty rulings, as well as legislation on the death penalty. Contact 202-289-2275.
• James E. Coleman Jr. is a law professor at Duke University in Durham, N.C., and chairs the American Bar Association’s Death Penalty Moratorium Implementation Project. Contact 919-613-7057, jcoleman@law.duke.edu. Deborah T. Fleischaker directs the project. Contact 202-662-1595, fleischd@staff.abanet.org.
• Joyce A. McGee is executive director of The Justice Project, which describes itself as a nonpartisan organization “dedicated to fighting injustice.” The Justice Project advocates for better representation of defendants in capital cases. Contact 202-557-7572, jmcgee@thejusticeproject.org.
• Cox is executive director of Amnesty International USA, and Sue Gunawardena-Vaughn is director of Amnesty International’s Program to Abolish the Death Penalty. AIUSA opposes the death penalty and says juvenile executions are the next frontier for abolition. Contact through Ben Somberg, 212-633-4268. Amnesty International also sponsors an annual Faith in Action weekend to abolish the death penalty. Amnesty has a list of regional offices.
• Murder Victims’ Families for Reconciliation is a leading organization of relatives of murder victims who oppose capital punishment. Lorry Post is executive director. Contact through the Washington office, 877-896-4702, info@mvfr.org.
• The Campaign to End the Death Penalty is a Chicago-based grass-roots group that describes itself as “the only national membership-driven, chapter-based grassroots organization dedicated to the abolition of capital punishment in the United States.” Contact Julien Ball or Alice Kim at 773-955-4841.
• Stephen B. Bright is a capital defense lawyer and president of the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta. The center focuses on issues of discrimination in the application of the death penalty. Contact 404-688-1202, sbright@schr.org.

SUPPORTING THE DEATH PENALTY
• The pro-death penalty Justice For All is a victims’ rights organization based in Houston. The organization also maintains Pro-Death Penalty, a resource site that lists information about victims, and MurderVictims.com. Dianne Clements is president. Contact 713-935-9300, voice pager 713-508-6979, cell 281-435-7348, info@jfa.net. Dudley Sharp is death penalty resource director for Justice For All. Contact sharpjfa@aol.com.
• Michael Rushford is president of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, based in Sacramento, Calif., which supports the death penalty for juveniles over age 16. Contact 916-446-0345, rushford@cjlf.org.

Click the map for interview sources in your state and region

National sources
• Harold W. Attridge is dean of Yale University Divinity School and a professor of New Testament. He is the author of The Bible and the Death Penalty and can speak about scriptural citations and traditions invoked by both sides of the debate over capital punishment. Contact 203-432-5304, harold.attridge@yale.edu.
• James J. Megivern is an emeritus professor of religion at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington. He is an expert on Christian ethics and capital punishment and is author of The Death Penalty: An Historical and Theological Survey. Contact 828-883-4280, Jimmeg2@AOL.com.
• Mark Lewis Taylor is a professor of theology and culture at Princeton Theological Seminary and author of The Executed God: The Way of the Cross in Lockdown America. He is also a Presbyterian minister and he opposes the death penalty. Contact 609-497-7918, mark.taylor@ptsem.edu.
• Jeffrey Fagan is a professor of law and public health at Columbia University in New York. He says judges and juries have shown a declining willingness in recent years to sentence teenage criminals to death. Contact 212-854-2624, jfagan@law.columbia.edu.
• Davison Douglas is a law professor at the College of William & Mary’s Marshall-Wythe School of Law. He wrote “God and the Executioner: The Influence of Western Religion on the Death Penalty” for the William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal in 2000. He noted the difference in attitudes between the pulpit and the pew and suggested that the fate of the death penalty in America will probably be decided in the realm of the secular, not the sacred. Contact 757-221-3853, dmdoug@wm.edu.
• Lloyd Steffen is a professor of religion studies and university chaplain at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. He is the author of Executing Justice: The Moral Meaning of the Death Penalty. Contact 610-758-3353 or 610-758-3877, lhs1@lehigh.edu.
• Herbert H. Haines is a sociology professor at the State University of New York, College at Cortland. He studies social movements for criminal justice reform and is the author of Against Capital Punishment: The Anti-Death Penalty Movement in America, 1972-1994. Contact 607-753-2472, haines@cortland.edu.
• Allan C. Hutchinson is a visiting professor at Harvard Law School. He wrote a letter to The New York Times in response to the Nov. 18, 2007, article on deterrence arguing that the death penalty “is not a technical or empirical issue, but a moral one. As such, economists and other social scientists have little to tell us as empirical chroniclers about the death penalty’s continued use.” Contact 617-495-9559, ahutchinson@law.harvard.edu.

Background

LEGAL
• In 1972, in the culmination of a series of rulings, the U.S. Supreme Court effectively barred capital punishment, which was on the books in 40 states.
• In 1976, the Supreme Court ruled that several new statutes were constitutional and that the death penalty itself was constitutional under the Eighth Amendment. That effectively reinstated the use of capital punishment.
• In March 2005 the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, abolished capital punishment for juvenile offenders. The majority ruled that the death penalty for minors is cruel and unusual punishment, and in the decision cited a “national consensus” against the practice. The decision overturned a 1989 ruling that had upheld the death penalty for offenders as young as 16 and 17 years old. In 2002, the high court also banned capital punishment for the moderately mentally retarded.
• The Death Penalty Information Center in Washington reported in December 2004 that both the number of executions and new death-penalty sentences are dropping. The DPIC said the number of people sentenced to death annually has dropped by 50 percent since 1999. In addition, the number of inmates on death row fell slightly, from 3,504 in 2003 to 3,471 in 2004. Executions fell by 10 percent, from 65 in 2003 to 59 in 2004.
• The Legal Information Institute allows you to search for U.S. Supreme Court decisions on the death penalty.
• For more detailed information legal developments in the death penalty in America, see a timeline by the Clark County, Ind., prosecuting attorney’s office.

RELIGIOUS
• Read a roundup of the positions of various religious groups and denominations on capital punishment posted by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. See also an entry in Wikipedia on “Religion and capital punishment.” The entry seems to offer an accurate overview, but as with any open-source site, it can change regularly and journalists should double-check any information before citing it.

American religious attitudes toward the death penalty are largely formed by the Judeo-Christian ethic, which is based on citations from the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, as well as rabbinic and Christian tradition. But religious leaders and adherents can cite Scripture and tradition to back different views. Here are some of the salient references often cited in the debates:
• The so-called lex talionis, the “eye for an eye” law of ancient Judaism, is cited by those who support capital punishment.
• The commandment “Thou shalt not kill” is cited by opponents of the death penalty.
• In Genesis 9:6, God says to Noah: “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for God made man in his own image.” This is seen as a justification for the death penalty.
• The episode in the Gospel of John (Chapter Eight) in which Jesus defends the woman caught in adultery is cited by some Christians as showing that Jesus set aside the death penalty as a justifiable punishment.
• Christian supporters of capital punishment also cite the words of the Apostle Paul in Chapter 13 of the New Testament Epistle to the Romans, in which he states that the Christians must be subject to secular authorities because “those that exist have been instituted by God.” He also says that authorities justly “bear the sword.”

RESOURCES
• The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life has a policy page on death penalty resources. It includes a Dec. 19, 2007, overview of issues regarding the death penalty in the United States by David Masci of the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. Masci covers the role of the courts, lethal injection and the Baze case, the history of the death penalty, and the death penalty worldwide.
• Read a Dec. 19, 2007, Pew Forum summary of American public opinion on the death penalty during the last 50 years. The analysis shows large differences in opinions on the death penalty, with black and Latinos expressing greater opposition than other Americans.
• The Pew Forum also held a January 2002 conference on the death penalty that included reflections from a variety of faith traditions. The essays were collected into a volume, Religion and the Death Penalty: A Call for Reckoning, part of The Eerdmans Religion, Ethics and Public Life Series. The volume has the writings of 21 contributors representing a range of religious traditions.
• Read a Jan. 17, 2007, report at Stateline.org titled “Lethal injection on trial.” The story has useful tables on executions and exonerations, and the rate of executions through the years.
• See state-by-state reports on statistics and action on death penalty issues from the American Bar Association’s Death Penalty Moratorium Implementation Project.
• See four previous ReligionLink editions on the death penalty.

ARTICLES
• See a summary of the issues surrounding lethal injection in this article from the Death Penalty Information Center.
• A Dec. 26, 2007, New York Times story, “At 60% of Total, Texas is Bucking Execution Trend,” shows how the decline in executions in most states has made Texas the modern-day capital of capital punishment. As the story notes, “For the first time in the modern history of the death penalty, more than 60 percent of all American executions took place in Texas.”
• Read a Nov. 4, 2007, New York Times story, “Capital Cases Stall as Costs Grow Daunting,” about the growing costs of defending death penalty cases and how that is affecting the rate of executions.
• Read a May 2002 article by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, “God’s Justice and Ours,” in the journal First Things. In the article, Scalia, a Catholic, argues against the church’s increasingly stringent teaching against the death penalty.