Japan, the United States and South Korea are the only nations in the OECD group of developed economies that have the death penalty.

A federal judge Nov. 20 temporarily blocked the executions of four federal death-row inmates scheduled for December and January, saying the lethal injections they were to receive goes against the Federal Death Penalty Act.

Lest the reader assume that Sister Prejean’s work against the death penalty, is the sum total of her story, she spends the final pages of her afterword calling out the places where she sees continued injustices, particularly in the treatment of women and L.G.B.T. people in the church.

After a nearly two-decade lapse in federal executions, the move, according to a Department of Justice statement to the press, brings “justice to victims of the most horrific crimes.”

The Supreme Court, citing racial bias in the prosecutor's jury selection, overturned the death sentence of a Mississippi African American man who had been tried six times for a quadruple murder charge.

The bishops' proposed draft about the death penalty states that "today it is no longer just nor reasonable to apply the death penalty," stressing that it is not needed to protect society and its application is "inequitable and flawed."