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 […]

Pollingreport.com posts opinion polls about the death penalty among other topics like crime and violence.

For more detailed information on legal developments in the death penalty in America, see a timeline by the Clark County, Ind., prosecuting attorney’s office.

Murder Victims’ Families for Reconciliation was founded in 1976 as an organization for family members who have a relative who was murdered and who oppose the death penalty. Jack Sullivan Jr. is the executive director.

Mark Lewis Taylor is Maxwell M. Upson Professor of Theology and Culture at Princeton Theological Seminary. He wrote Religion, Politics and the Christian Right: Post-9/11 Powers and American Empire and The Executed God: The Way of the Cross in Lockdown America. He is a commentator on American culture and politics. He has written articles on hip-hop and religion. His […]