Happy Halloween -- there's a new blog in town!

A friend and former colleague of mine today launches a new blog aimed at looking at the history of executions -- or, more precisely, of those executed. You can find it here.

Jason describes his blog this way:

Executed Today is a blog of history, sociology, biography, criminology, law, and kismet —- an unrepresentative but arresting view of the human condition across time and circumstance from the parlous vantage of the scaffold. This blog each day chronicles an historical execution that took place on that date, and the story behind it.

My own background is out of the abolition movement, where I worked for the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty until early 2005.

You'll probably find that history reflected not so much in the blog's editorial stance (officially, it's not an anti-death penalty blog) and more in the overall tone, which aspires (notwithstanding the somewhat ghoulish choice of Halloween for a launch) to respectfulness for the wide variety of people caught up in this strange institution. Fundamentally, it's a work of historical exposition ... and like most abolitionists, I tend towards the view that the death penalty gets less appealing the more one looks into it.

Check it out!