Ash Wednesday Execution
Executing a Life and Human Dignity
By Alex Mikulich Ph.D.
DeSoto District Judge Robert Burgess set an execution date for Christopher Sepulvado for Ash Wednesday, February 13, 2013. Sepulvado, 69, has served twenty years on death row at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola.
A DeSoto Parish jury imposed the death penalty on Sepulvado in 1993 for the March 8, 1992 death of his stepson Wesley Allen Mercer, age 6. Court documents describe the torture the preschooler endured for days leading to his death.
The challenge of building an inclusive, high-skilled workforce for New Orleans' future
As the 2012 U.S. presidential campaign heats up and debates how to ignite a fragile economic recovery, the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center recently released a study demonstrating the need for New Orleans to “place greater emphasis on building the education and skills of its future workforce in a more inclusive way.”
Stop Casting Stones
The Failure of Punitive Crime Policy
By Alex Mikulich, Ph.D.
It’s obscene.
The obscenity is not only in the increasing rate of homicide in New Orleans—up 14 percent from 2010 to 2011—or the loss of innocent lives, or the senselessness of the murders committed. The height of obscenity arrives when we, as a city, acquiesce to the loss of life as if those who died do not matter, or as if “they got what they deserved.”
The collective failure to mourn the loss of every life and failure to recognize how every victim is one of our own marks our own inhumanity.
Diminishing All of Us: The Death Penalty in Louisiana
Dr. Alex Mikulich of JSRI and Sophie Cull of the Louisiana Coalition for Alternatives to the Death Penalty recently published an extensive study on the Death Penalty in Louisiana. The full text of the study and a short brief are available through the Catholic Mobilizing Network.
Read the full text of the study: Diminishing All of Us: The Death Penalty in Louisana
Campaign to Reform Jury Selection in Capital Cases
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Louisiana Catholics Committed to Repeal of Death Penalty joins Louisiana for Alternatives to the Death Penalty in a campaign to reform jury selection in death penalty cases.
It's not very often that you can have an impact on criminal justice reform in little more than 60 seconds. You can do just that by recording your testimony for a campaign that aims to reform jury selection in death penalty cases.
New Study on the Death Penalty in Louisiana
Louisiana Catholics Committed to Repeal of the Death Penalty and the Jesuit Social Research Institute have collaborated on a study that addresses the death penalty through a Roman Catholic theological lens – aiming to “demonstrate the ineffectiveness and arbitrariness of our death penalty system as a public policy, including the ways it is unfairly administered across racial, social and economic lines.” The study – co-authored by Alex Mikulich of Louisiana Catholics Committed to Repeal of the Death Penalty and Sophie Cull of the Louisiana Coalition for Alternativ
Louisiana’s Historic Opportunity to End the Death Penalty and Affirm Life
By Alex Mikulich, Ph.D.
In September 2011, Louisiana Catholics Committed to the Repeal of the Death Penalty publicly launched its campaign to end the death penalty in Louisiana. The Louisiana Conference of Catholic Bishops initiated this campaign in 2010. This essay highlights key findings of a comprehensive study of Louisiana’s use of the death penalty that I have conducted over the past year. The full study, coauthored with Sophie Cull of the Louisiana Capital Appeals Project, was part of the campaign’s launch.
Louisiana’s Historic Opportunity to End the Death Penalty and Affirm Life
by Alex Mikulich, Ph. D.
In September 2011, Louisiana Catholics Committed to Repeal of the Death Penalty publicly launched its campaign to end the death penalty in Louisiana. The Louisiana Conference of Catholic Bishops initiated this campaign in 2010. This essay highlights key findings of a comprehensive study of Louisiana’s use of the death penalty that I have conducted over the past year. The full study, co-authored with Sophie Cull of the Louisiana Capital Appeals Project, was part of the campaign launch.
A Curious Case of Racial Amnesia
<p>Since the Supreme Court nearly declared the death penalty unconstitutional in Furman v. Georgia (1972), juries in Caddo Parish have voted to impose the death penalty on 16 men and one woman. Thirteen of these cases involved black defendants, and research demonstrates that the combination of a black defendant and a white victim exponentially increases the likelihood of aggressive prosecution.</p>
Dr. Alex Mikulich, Research Fellow
“Is it a prerequisite for jury service that you do not object to the Confederate flag flying outside the courthouse?”1 This is a real and legal question 150 years after the Civil War. The Louisiana Supreme Court and the Caddo Parish District Attorney seemed to assume that objection to the symbol of slavery constitutes bias on behalf of a potential juror, in the hearing of a death-penalty appeal on May 9, 2011.
Louisiana Children, Poverty, and the Faith Community
By Fr. Fred Kammer, SJ
Presented to the for Louisiana Interchurch Conference, 41st Annual Assembly on March 14, 2011, in Lafayette, Louisiana.
Scripture and Poverty