Wisconsin to Vote on Reinstatement of Death Penalty After 153 Years Without it

For more than 150 years, the people of Wisconsin never approved of laws that would allow state authorities to execute anybody. Now, however, some citizens of that mid-western U.S. state appear to have changed their minds.

The state senate voted by a narrow margin in May to allow Wisconsinites to vote on a referendum that could reinstate the death penalty.
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The death penalty was banned in Wisconsin some five years after the state joined the union in 1848 in response to citizen revulsion over a public hanging in the town of Kenosha of a man who had drowned his wife.
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Among the civil society groups opposing the restoration of death penalty in Wisconsin are leading faith-based groups in the state, including the Jewish Conference and Catholic Conference. [snip] IPS News