Executing Justice

This compelling book incisively analyzes every philosophical and humanitarian argument about the death penalty. It is a searching study of the ultimate invalidity of all the arguments advanced to justify the ultimate power of the state. The last chapter . . . is a powerful treatment of the reasons why Christianity must logically be opposed to the death penalty. No one is entitled to be heard in the fractious debate about the death penalty until that person has pondered the material discussed in this indispensable book.

-- Robert F. Drinan, SJ,

Professor of Law

Georgetown University Law Center



Lloyd Steffen has powerfully explored the moral reasoning of the death penalty. By utilizing the case of Willie Darden, he brings an abstract argument home on a personal level. Finally he poses what this means for those of us who are Christians. What will be your answer? This book provides an excellent consideration of all the available options.

-- Rev. Joseph B. Ingle,

Nobel Peace Prize nominee for his

ministry to persons on death row



We have, by now, a shelf of books that offer empirical, constitutional, or political discussions of the death penalty. What we don't have is a comprehensive, accessible, and persuasive evaluation of the death penalty in our society from the moral point of view. Thanks to Lloyd Steffen's new book, that need has been met. He enables us to see in patient detail just how difficult -- if he is right, how impossible -- it is to defend the death penalty on moral grounds. May his argument reach and persuade many!

-- Hugo Adam Bedau,

editor of The Death Penalty in

America: Current Controversies



There is no moral, legal, or ethical justification for the death penalty, and Executing Justice makes this abundantly clear. Steffen makes a compelling case that America can lift itself into the league of nations that long ago abandoned this barbaric practice.

-- Morris Dees,

cofounder and chief trial counsel of the

Southern Poverty Law Center



Lloyd Steffen is University Chaplain, Professor and Chair of the Religion Studies Department at Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. He is the author of Life/Choice: The Theory of Just Execution (1994) and The Demonic Turn: The Power of Religion to Inspire or Restrain Violence (2003).