The Sept. 21, 2011, execution of Troy Davis drew international condemnation because of questions about the case, and it sparked a national debate. Read a Sept. 11, 2001, article published on ABCNews.com about the execution.

Cynthia Lynn Lyerly is associate professor of history at Boston College in Massachusetts. She has written about women in Southern churches.

In September 2011, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia told an audience at Duquesne University Law School, “If I thought that Catholic doctrine held the death penalty to be immoral, I would resign.” That statement prompted criticism that Scalia, one of six Catholics on the high court, was misinterpreting Catholic teaching against capital punishment. Read this Sept. 25, […]

Sister Mary Ann Hinsdale is associate professor of theology at Boston College in Massachusetts. She is author of Women Shaping Theology.

A Sept. 22, 2011, blog post at Christianity Today examines attitudes toward the death penalty broken down by religion.

Read a Nov. 22, 2011, New York Times story about Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber’s decision to suspend executions and seek reforms to the state’s death penalty laws.

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.

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.

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 […]