5/14: The Day the Devil Came to Buffalo
A Buffalo author’s first-person account of grief, racism, and the aftermath of the Tops attack.
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Learn the facts. Keep the humanity in view.
A practical reading room for neighbors, faith groups, students, and organizers asking what justice without execution can look like.
Featured Teaching Resources
Ready starting points for journalists, students, faith groups, teachers, and organizers.
Updated June 2026
Death Penalty Facts For New York And Federal Cases
Sourced statistics on New York’s death penalty status, federal executions, death row, exonerations, race, cost, and deterrence.
Classroom Resource
Death Penalty Lesson Plan For Classrooms
A practical classroom structure with discussion prompts, primary sources, and an option to invite the coalition into the conversation.
Human Rights Position
Amnesty International opposes the death penalty in every case.
The death penalty is a violation of the right to life and is the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment. Amnesty International opposes the death penalty in all cases without exception, regardless of who is accused, the nature of the crime, or whether they are guilty or innocent.
All execution methods are inhumane and unacceptable. Amnesty International advocates for complete abolition of the death penalty.
National Information Resource
DPIC provides timely, trustworthy death penalty data.
The Death Penalty Information Center is a national nonprofit organization providing the media, policymakers, and the public with data and analysis on issues concerning capital punishment and the people it affects.
For more than 30 years, DPIC has been the preeminent national resource for timely and trustworthy information about the death penalty. DPIC does not take a position on the death penalty itself, but is critical of problems in its application.
Books And Readings
Gregg v. Georgia at 50
A law library reading on how Gregg reshaped modern capital sentencing fifty years later.
Read Source
Dead Man Walking
A spiritual and human account of capital punishment, grief, responsibility, and mercy.
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The Death of Innocents
An eyewitness account of wrongful executions and the moral urgency behind abolition.
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Against the Death Penalty
A landmark dissent arguing that modern administration of the death penalty is unreliable, arbitrary, and delayed.
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Ultimate Punishment
A clear, personal examination of capital punishment from a novelist and lawyer who served on Illinois’ death penalty commission.
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Just Mercy
A powerful account of wrongful convictions, racial injustice, and the human cost of extreme punishment.
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Grace Will Lead Us Home
A deeply reported story of the Mother Emanuel AME Church shooting and the difficult aftermath of grief and forgiveness.
Buy on AmazonDeath Penalty Cases
Court decisions that shaped how capital punishment is argued, limited, and challenged.
U.S. Supreme Court
Furman v. Georgia
408 U.S. 238 (1972)
A pivotal case holding that death sentences imposed in an arbitrary and capricious way violate the Eighth Amendment.
New York Court of Appeals
People v. LaValle
3 N.Y.3d 88 (2004)
A New York Court of Appeals decision that vacated a death sentence and held the state's jury deadlock instruction unconstitutional, making the death penalty unenforceable in New York without legislative repair.
U.S. Supreme Court
Gregg v. Georgia
428 U.S. 153 (1976)
A landmark U.S. Supreme Court case on the modern death penalty and the constitutional rules for guided sentencing.
Voices For An End To Capital Punishment
Capital punishment is the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal's deed, however calculated, can be compared.Albert Camus
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Justice is never advanced in the taking of a human life.Coretta Scott King
To take a life when a life is lost is revenge, not justice.Desmond Tutu
Catholics are called not just to oppose the death penalty, but to actively work against it.Pope Benedict
I realize that I cannot stand by silently as my government executes its citizens. If I do not speak out and resist, I am an accomplice.Sister Helen Prejean
The true measure of our character is how we treat the poor, the disfavored, the accused, the incarcerated, and the condemned.Bryan Stevenson
Short Explainers
Death Penalty Lesson Plan For ClassroomsUseDeath Penalty Facts For New York And Federal CasesReadUnderstanding Capital PunishmentReadThe Role of Advocacy in Ending Capital PunishmentReadCommunity Engagement for ChangeReadThe Spiritual Toll of Capital PunishmentReadPublic Awareness and EducationReadMoral Implications of Punitive MeasuresReadWhy Is the Death Penalty Unconstitutional? Key ArgumentsRead