To everyone marking the end of Passover and the Easter holiday this weekend, we wish you meaningful celebrations. Shane Claiborne, Death Penalty Action’s Advisory Board Chairman, published this essay on Good Friday, linking the teachings and meanings of Good Friday to contemporary social justice issues, including our work to end executions.

Momentum continues to build across the country! Last Wednesday, legislatures in Nevada and Ohio held critical hearings on bills that would abolish the death penalty in those states. …

WOW — what a week! Virginia’s governor Ralph Northam signed the bill abolishing the state’s death penalty on Wednesday. Watch the video of the signing here. This historic moment makes Virginia the 23rd state in the union to abandon the death penalty and the first Southern state to do so. Virginia’s leaders recognized that their death penalty was fundamentally unfair and acted accordingly. So the big question is, who’s next? Things are looking promising in Ohio and we’re also working hard to abolish the federal death penalty.

Virginia just abolished the death penalty. Governor Northam signed the bill into law today, making Virginia the first Southern state in the nation to abolish the death penalty.

Passover is another one of those Jewish holidays where we proclaim, “They tried to kill us, we prevailed, let’s eat!” Seriously, it’s great food — at least it is in MY mom’s house. I’m especially looking forward to it this year, since we can once again be together. Along with the food and fellowship, I’ve also come to look forward to discussions around social justice issues.

The essential duty of Passover is to tell the story of how the Jewish people came into slavery and then how they came out of it. But it has always also been about community…

As Spring settles in, the world celebrates Women’s History Month. The vast majority of our social media followers, over 80%, are women! We want to celebrate and highlight the feminine power that is fueling our movement both online and in real life.

The programming we’ve got coming up in the next few weeks that tells the stories of women who persist in the struggle for death penalty abolition. We hope you’ll join us for these powerful and poignant conversations.

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Melissa Lucio has spent more than a decade on death row for the alleged murder of her two-year-old daughter, Mariah. In 2008, Lucio became the first Latina woman sentenced to death in Texas. In July 2019, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit overturned a Texas court ruling and found Lucio’s right to a “complete defense” had been violated in her original trial. In February 2021, a sharply divided en banc Fifth Circuit reversed the 2019 grant of relief by a vote of 10 to 7. Lucio’s hope for exoneration and freedom now lies…

Senator Dick Durbin introduced the companion legislation to the Federal Death Penalty Prohibition Act of 2021 on March 3.

As promised, the past week was pretty big for us. Starting on March 1, we marked Abolition Day with a panel discussion featuring three people who have been changed forever by the death penalty: Charles Keith, Lisa Brown and Rev. Sharon Risher. Watch the recorded program on Facebook here.

We were featured twice in Newsweek. First, on Monday with Rev. Risher, who opposes the death penalty for Dylann Roof, the white supremacist now on federal death row who killed Rev. Risher’s…

Today, March 1, is Death Penalty Abolition Day. On March 1, 1847, Michigan became the first state in the union to abolish the death penalty. We will to mark this occasion with a panel featuring Rev. Sharon Risher, whose mother, two cousins and friend were murdered by Dylann Roof in the Charleston church massacre.

March 1 also marks the 40th day of the Biden administration. We want to end federal executions in his first 100 days and we’re nearly at the halfway mark. …