I am an ordained Jewish cantor, a former Jewish prison chaplain, a third-generation Holocaust survivor, and co-founder of L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty. I write these words on the eve of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, and on the morning after Alabama executed Kenneth Eugene Smith with nitrogen gas — the first execution of this [...]
Barring the unlikely success of last-minute litigation, today, at 6 p.m. CST, Kenneth Eugene Smith is scheduled to become the first person in history to be executed by forced nitrogen gas inhalation. In Smith’s final minutes, personnel at the William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Alabama will strap an industrial-grade mask to his face. Secured [...]
According to the most recent data from the American Bar Association, women outnumbered men in law school classrooms across the country for the eighth year in a row in 2023. At the outset of the 20th century, women comprised less than five percent of all law students. However, a gradual but significant shift commenced in [...]
Author’s Note: The publication of this piece coincidentally aligns with the initiation of a direct military response by the US and UK against the Houthis in Yemen overnight on 12 January 2023. Rather than update the piece, we have decided to publish it as-is. Everything below still stands – the Yemeni people deserve a considered, [...]
On Jan. 25, the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) plans to execute Kenneth Smith by forcing him to breathe pure nitrogen gas, an untested execution method with profound legal and ethical consequences. Death penalty abolitionists worldwide have railed against this form of capital punishment, but these efforts have thus far failed to alter the state’s [...]
It is in the best interest of the Jewish people and the state of Israel that my fellow Jewish leaders whose moral compass compels them to criticize elements of the Israeli government’s response to Hamas’ horrific Oct. 7 terrorist attack do so openly. They should speak truth to power, despite any fears for job security, [...]
“The Taliban’s new curriculum is all about killing people in the name of Jihad,” a Kabul-based teacher* told me in a recent interview. “I’m not going to teach that material, even if I know it means I will almost certainly lose my job,” the teacher said, citing an early draft of the new curriculum. Upon [...]
On October 2, 2023, Ukraine’s High Anti-Corruption Court granted a $360,000 reward to a whistleblower in a corruption case involving an attempted $6 million bribe—the biggest reported bribe attempt in Ukraine’s history. This reward marks the first payment to a whistleblower under the Law of Ukraine on the Prevention of Corruption, a major piece of [...]
As we prepare to usher in 2024, the outlook on Alabama’s administration of the death penalty holds many terrible knowns, and an even greater number of grim unknowns. At the top of any capital punishment-watcher’s list: Is Alabama really going to move forward with the first state-sanctioned nitrogen gassing execution in US history? If all goes according [...]
After a particularly violent beating at the hands of her husband, Sohaila,* 38, was forced out onto the streets of Kabul, where she braved the elements through the night while waiting for her parents to wake up and shelter her. No sooner did her father let her in, than did she find herself being hauled [...]
