Criminal Justice Department and QEP to present panel discussion on faith and capital punishment

Judson College’s Quality Enhancement Plan, Project Curiosity, is proud to present “Understanding the Intersection of Faith and Capital Punishment,” on February 4 at 3:30pm.

Current practice of capital punishment remains politically, culturally and morally contested. Last fall, students in Judson’s Debating the Death Penalty class decided that a community-wide panel discussion, comprised of representatives from the faith and criminal justice communities, should speak to questions of conscience regarding the continued use of execution in our state and elsewhere. These questions foreground the role of faith in determining our civic and ethical obligations in addressing the purpose of punishment, the expectation of reform, and the inequities that continue to compromise the legitimacy of the process.

The Judson College Criminal Justice Department has convened an expert, professional group of stake-holding panelists, each with a unique perspective on the topic. Panelists are as follows:

Chaplain George Adams, a graduate of Samford University’s Beeson Divinity School, currently oversees sixteen faith-based programs in Alabama’s William E. Donaldson Correctional Facility. He has also performed missionary work in Lima, Peru and New Orleans, Louisiana and served as an ambassador for the Peace Baptist District of the National Baptist Convention USA.

Attorney Talitha Powers Bailey, a graduate of Cumberland School of Law, presently works as a Mitigation Specialist, providing penalty phase services and expert mitigation assistance to attorneys representing defendants in the State of Alabama. Previously, she served as Director of the Capital Defense Law Clinic at The University of Alabama School of Law.

Reverend Tom Duley is a United Methodist minister currently serving as the Minister of Missions and Pastoral Care at Bluff Park United Methodist Church in Hoover.  He is a member of JAM (Justice and Mercy for All) which works for the abolition of the death penalty in Alabama.

Attorney Alaric May, licensed by both the Alabama and Georgia State Bar Associations, has served for more than twenty years as a trial attorney, litigating in city, county, and federal courts. He is presently running for Jefferson County Circuit Court Judge, Criminal Division-Place 26.

Judge Don McMillan, now serving his second term as District Judge of Perry County, is running for Circuit Judge in Place Two, Fourth Judicial Circuit (Bibb, Dallas, Hale, Perry, and Wilcox counties). Prior to being elected District Judge, he served as a prosecutor for the Fourth Judicial Circuit of Alabama and then as an assistant attorney general for the state of Alabama. In addition to his legal service, he teaches constitutional law, criminal law, and criminal procedure for Judson’s Department of Criminal Justice.

The panel discussion will take place on Thursday, February 4th from 3:30-5:00pm in Judson College’s Alumnae Auditorium.

Judson students are invited to meet the panelists at a reception in Archibald Hall following the event.

For more information about the event, contact Christine Bussey, Criminal Justice Department Head, at civie@judson.edu or (334) 683-5245.

 

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