In reading over some papers inspired by Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy, I have learned a fair bit about sources that rise to the top of a Google search. Let me share a few observations.
It seems as if everybody who searches on this topic winds up at deathpenaltyinfo.org. While this site is highly factual, it is also highly opinionated. Let me give you an example. A student was trying to answer the question, “Why do prisoners spend so long on death row (before executions)?” The nice people at the site above provided a helpful page, “Time on Death Row,” which said a great deal about how long people stay there and how awful it is. What it completely failed to do is tell why. This website exists to push the argument against capital punishment; therefore, we should not be surprised that they don’t say, “The main reason for long stays on death row is endless appeals and a slow-moving court system.”
Another site that has popped up on several Works Cited is the American Civil Liberties Union. Their page “The Case Against the Death Penalty” provides useful information, but notice what happens when you go there. Instead of going straight to the material, we get a pitch for money. What interests them most: the topic or the money? That’s probably not fair, but we should never ignore the ulterior motives behind a source. That said, the ACLU page linked above lays out some great anti-death-penalty arguments. Use it, but recognize where they’re coming from.
By the way, I looked for a pro-death-penalty counterpart to the ACLU or deathpenaltyinfo.org. And to the best of my efforts, they just aren’t out there lurking on the web. That’s kind of an interesting fact. If the topic were abortion, we could easily find the flagship organizations on either side.