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?
Deepak Chopra | Posted 11.12.2007 | Politics
This country's refusal to eliminate the death penalty belongs to a long tradition of ignoring judicial trends around the world, opposition to gun control is another glaring example.
Sarah Tofte | Posted 10.31.2007 | Politics
When it comes to the death penalty, nothing about the process, from conviction to killing, has ever been just.
Byron Williams | Posted 10.31.2007 | Politics
Our collective primordial thirst for revenge blinds us to the insanity of the capital punishment policy.
AP | AMIR SHAH | Posted 10.08.2007 | Home
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Diann Rust-Tierney | Posted 11.22.2008 | Politics