Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism

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The Colosseum, Illinois & Easter - & How They All Relate to the Death Penalty

This week, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson is heading to Rome where he and his state will be honored for repealing the death penalty with the traditional lighting of the Colosseum on Wednesday. Gov. Richardson will be joined by Viki Elkey, the Executive Director of the New Mexico Coalition to Repeal the Death Penalty and she has promised to keep us all up to date on the goings on in Rome via the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty's blog and Twitter. The entire delegation will also receive the honor of an audience with Pope Benedict XVI.  Keep reading below the jump for more death penalty news.

 

Just last week, the case of Nathson Fields provided further evidence that there is too much room for doubt in our justice system to allow people to be executed. Fields was acquitted in a retrial in an Illinois court after spending more than a decade on death row. What changed, you ask? Turns out the judge who convicted him, Thomas J. Maloney, hadn't been such an upstanding citizen himself -- he was "convicted of fixing murder cases," including that of Fields, and spent 13 years in jail where he died last year.    

 

Last but not least, I highly encourage you to check out two recent op-eds by two major leaders in the death penalty abolition movement. On Huffington Post, Diann Rust-Tierney provides Reflections on Easter and the Death Penalty, reminding us that "Easter is when most Christians give more thought than usual to the implications of a legal and political system that has the power to authorize death as punishment...there is a deep understanding that in [Jesus'] case the system is about to make a cruel and arbitrary mistake." On his blog, God's Politics, Rev. Jim Wallis makes A Good Friday Appeal to Abolish the Death Penalty. Rev. Wallis reflects on recent victories and the "growing energy across political boundaries and especially among people of faith, to have a new national conversation on the death penalty."

 

Posted by Religious Action Center on April 14, 2009 10:35 AM |

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