“There is no reason to kill. No reason for me to kill, no reason for you to kill, and no reason for the state to kill.” These are the words of Lawrence Hayes as he spoke at the “Live from Death Row Tour,” a national speaking tour with a focus on building opposition to the…
In a year in which political campaigns and media drove public perception of rising crime to record highs, support for the death penalty in 2022 remains near the lowest it’s been in 50 years. Even among conservatives, support for the death penalty fell five percentage points, despite a barrage of media stoking fear in the…
We lost a member of the EJUSA family last week. Bonnita Spikes was a force, a fierce and fearless organizer whose impact on communities across Maryland and beyond is immeasurable. Every time Bonnita told her story, people listened. Her strategic vision, her warmth, and her persistence helped to end the death penalty in Maryland and…
The prospect of a death penalty repeal has never gotten as far along in Ohio as it has this year. So it seemed like a great time to bring together Jennifer Pryor, Director of Organizing & Community Outreach at Ohioans to Stop Executions, and Sarah Craft, Death Penalty Program Director at EJUSA. They discussed the…
Growing up in Birmingham, Alabama, a focal point during the Civil Rights Movement, I had been to museums and monuments around the city that honor activists and organizers from the sixties. I’ve read every plaque, and I know every story where a Black person was denied access to a building during segregation. The steps leading…
Melissa Lucio is likely innocent, but Texas plans to execute her on April 27 anyway. There’s a real risk that Texas might execute an innocent person next month. Melissa Lucio was tried, convicted, and, in 2008, sentenced to death for a crime that likely never happened. Now, a broad coalition of organizations and experts are…
EJUSA’s vision is a world where violence is rare and every community is safe and healthy. That means that we have a criminal legal system that doesn’t cause more harm. A full scale transformation of the criminal legal system and all the systems that connect to it is work that will take generations. We need…
Today is a day for reflection. And I want to share the two thoughts foremost on my mind. The first is gratitude for the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his impact — while he was alive but also the enduring influence he has on our world, and the example he…
The more things change, the more they stay the same. The past two decades have brought a steady, state-by-state dismantling of the death penalty, and 2021 proved no different. We saw the first former Confederate state repeal the death penalty when Virgina Governor George Northam signed the state’s new law into the books. That stroke…
In his own words, Clemente Aguirre describes how he spent almost 15 years on death row in Florida for a crime he didn’t commit. I know the torture of fighting against a government that wanted to kill me. The state saw me as just a disposable, undocumented immigrant, and I lost almost 15 years of…