Helen Prejean

Although the Supreme Court cleared the way for the execution of Dustin Higgs Jan. 15, two justices made their objections known loud and clear in dissents that called into question the speed of these decisions and even the constitutionality of capital punishment.

Religious leaders in a Georgetown-hosted webinar said people of faith have a moral duty to end the death penalty and resist policies that treat human beings as disposable.

Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty has signed onto a letter urging Congress to pass legislation to end the federal death penalty, and to oppose executions scheduled before Biden's inauguration.

"We must stop the execution of Lisa Montgomery. Lisa was psychotic — unable to act rationally — when she committed a terrible crime. She desperately needed psychiatric care and instead she got a death sentence," said Sr. Helen Prejean in a Nov. 12 Facebook post.

A move by the Department of Justice to expand how it carries out federal death sentences — to include electrocution, gas or firing squads along with lethal injections —was sharply criticized by Catholic anti-death penalty activists.

Longtime anti-death penalty activist Sr. Helen Prejean tweeted after Orlando Hall's execution by lethal injection that under Attorney General William Barr's leadership, "the Justice Department worked into the early morning hours filing reams of appeals, ultimately succeeding in gaining court approval to execute a Black man who was sentenced to death by an all-white jury. This is not 'Christlike behavior.'"

In response to the upcoming federal execution of Orlando Hall Nov. 19, and two more federal executions scheduled to take place in December, two U.S. bishops' committee chairmen called on the government to end this practice.

Signs of the Times: Prayer breakfasts are generally not controversial events in the Catholic world, except when they are stages for giving awards to people like Attorney General William Barr.