‘God commands us not to kill’: Faith leaders protest 50 years of executions

WASHINGTON (RNS) — In her first years attending a fast marking the anniversary of the Supreme Court decision that resumed the modern-day death penalty in the United States, SueZann Bosler was still on medication to treat the effects of being stabbed in the head by the same man who murdered her father, the Rev. Bill Bosler, in 1986.

To honor the wishes of her father — a Church of the Brethren minister in Florida who was against the death penalty — Bosler worked for a decade to commute the death sentence of the man who killed her father and injured her, despite initially struggling to forgive him. “ It saved my life, forgiveness,” she said.

On Thursday (July 2), the 50th anniversary of the 1976 Gregg v. Georgia decision that reignited the modern era of the death penalty in the country, Bosler is on her fourth day of fasting. She has been taking shifts as part of the “Starvin’ for Justice” anti-capital punishment protest outside the U.S. Supreme Court to try to convince passersby to join her in opposition as temperatures climb above 100 degrees.

But the solidarity of about 85 protesters involved makes the time joyful, Bosler told RNS, because she’s often the sole person…