Death Penalty: Shane Claiborne

I oppose the death penalty.

(RNS) It’s 93 degrees in Texas and the Rev. Jeff Hood is walking 200 miles across the state. What would compel somebody to do that? He wants to end the death penalty – and he is not alone.

Hood is a Southern Baptist pastor, deeply troubled by his denomination’s stand on capital punishment and his state’s standing as the most lethal in the U.S. Texas executed 515 people since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976, a whopping 37 percent of all U.S. executions.

Hood has been a longtime organizer and board member for the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, a movement that is gaining some serious momentum these days.

Even as Georgia and Missouri executed two inmates earlier this week, a growing number of Texans — and Americans in general — are questioning the death penalty.

A recent ABC News/Washington Post pollshows we are at the tipping point, with more than half of Americans opposed to the death penalty. For some the problem is racial bias — in Texas, it is not uncommon for an African-American to be found guilty by an all-white jury. In fact, in considering “future dangerousness,” a criterion necessary for execution in Texas, state “experts” have argued that race is a contributing factor, essentially that someone is more likely to be violent because they are black — prompting articles such as this New York Times op-ed piece: “Condemned to Die Because He’s Black.”

Best book I’ve read on this: David Clinton Owens and Virginia Stem Owens, Living Next Door to the Death House.