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, […]

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 […]

Read the June 26, 2008, Washington Post story “High Court Rejects Death For Child Rape.”

See state-by-state reports on statistics and action on death penalty issues from the American Bar Association’s Death Penalty Moratorium Implementation Project.

The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life has a policy page on death penalty resources.