One of our missions is to keep Hope Alive. There are times when this is harder to do than at others and with the current U.S. Supreme Court this is one of those times. This being the case, the following statements by Justice Sonia Sotomayor are certainly very welcome. “In a statement Justice Sonia Sotomayor recognized “the fundamental inequity” of “the State’s compressed timeline for notifying eligible inmates and haphazard approach to doing so,” stating that “the way the ADOC has administered the Alabama Legislature’s directive to allow those on death row to choose nitrogen hypoxia as their means of execution . . . was at odds with the gravity of that task and the humanity of those affected.” “Once a State has determined that individuals on death row should have a choice as to how the State will execute them,” she concluded, “it should ensure that a meaningful choice is provided.” “The humanity of those affected” those are certainly words to ponder! Thank you Justice Sonia Sotomayor!

The statement by Robert Dunham, Executive Director at the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) about last week’s execution of John Grant in Oklahoma says it all! “Executions like this provide death penalty opponents with further evidence that states who are in a rush to kill simply cannot be trusted with the death penalty. And the Supreme Court’s appalling intervention to ensure the execution would occur without meaningful judicial review further undermines the legitimacy of the Court and any pretense that it is still a neutral arbiter of the law.”

There has been a change in how we receive our personal mail. We now receive a copy of the letter or card sent to us and so it is likely that mail will take a little longer to reach us.

Now that we are in November we have begun work on our special Christmas edition of our quarterly newsletter Wings of Hope. It is a labor of love and as is true of all labors of love it requires time and dedication. It is work but we enjoy making it extra special for our readers.

In closing and as always, we continue to thank all our generous donors who either gave by going to our website and using the “donate” button or who gave directly. Thank you also to all who took the time to read our notes, commented, liked and shared them on Facebook. You encourage us and make all the difference. Stay safe and wear a mask!

Esther