Prop. 34: Repeal the death penalty

Published on November 1, 2012

Jewish tradition has always championed the idea that justice is a fundamental necessity. When the Torah commands us, “Justice, justice shall you pursue,” the repetition is to teach that not only we must have just ends, our means to those ends must be equally just.

Editorial Cartoon: California's death penalty by the numbers

By Steve Greenberg
Published on October 16, 2012

Saudi writer faces execution over Twitter posts about the Prophet Muhammad

By Brad A. Greenberg
Published on February 16, 2012

Yemeni high court upholds death sentence

Published on July 26, 2010

Yemen's Supreme Court has upheld the death sentence of a Yemeni man who killed a Jewish fellow citizen after demanding that he convert.

Should Tookie Die?

By Daniel Sokatch
Published on November 10, 2005

NATION & WORLD BRIEFS

Published on March 17, 2005

The U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved $200 million in aid to the Palestinians.

Waiting for Furrow

By Tom Tugend
Published on August 10, 2000

A year and a day after Buford O. Furrow Jr. allegedly burst into the North Valley Jewish Community Center, spraying the lobby with 70 bullets from a 9mm semiautomatic assault weapon, the case is slowly winding its way through the federal legal system - very slowly.

Fitting the Crime

By Naomi Pfefferman
Published on March 9, 2000

Eleanor Kadish had only returned to work for a couple of weeks when she learned that federal prosecutors were seeking the death penalty for Buford O. Furrow, Jr., the avowed white supremacist who is awaiting trial for allegedly shooting her son and four other people at the North Valley Jewish Community Center before murdering a Filipino-American postal worker Aug. 10.

Jews and the Death Penalty

Published on March 9, 2000

Many people assume that Jewish law unequivocally advocates capital punishment, because of frequent references to capital crimes and capital punishment in the Torah. But while Jewish law supports the death penalty in theory, the Oral Law makes it difficult, and in most cases impossible, to execute someone for murder, says Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein, director of the Jewish Studies Institute of Yeshiva of Los Angeles and the chair of Jewish law and ethics at Loyola Law School.