Elisabeth Semel Condemns U.S. Death Penalty Practices

-Yahoo! News, AFP, June 16, 2010 by Allen Joseph
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5juyKBmpt9crjzOLsMR-mzHxzcd_A

“The firing squad is so anachronistic… the only way to understand it is to understand the history of the death penalty in the US.”

-Discovery News, AFP, June 18, 2010
http://news.discovery.com/history/gardner-firing-squad-execution.html

Semel believes Gardner’s execution is linked to Utah’s Mormon roots where “the idea of blood atonement is very meaningful. The idea of, if you’re committing a murder, the only way that you can genuinely demonstrate remorse and be adequately punished is by showing your own blood,” she said.

-Telegraph.co.uk, June 18, 2010 by Nick Allen
http://bit.ly/9HPn4y

Elisabeth Semel, director of the Death Penalty Clinic at the University of California, Berkeley, said: “It’s difficult to understand the issue of how can we still be engaged in this form of barbarism.”