c. 2003 Religion News Service

Record Number of Death Row Inmates Exonerated This Year

WASHINGTON (RNS) Nine death row inmates have been exonerated this year, the highest number in 15 years, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Three men who spent a combined 67 years on death row were freed in the last week, bringing to 111 the number of inmates who have been released from death row since 1973.

All charges were dropped against Timothy Howard and Gary Lamar James, childhood friends who were convicted in 1977 in Ohio on robbery and murder charges, on July 21 after new evidence was presented in Howard’s case and James passed a polygraph test. Both men were on death row before Ohio’s capital punishment law was overturned in 1978.

A third man, Joseph Amrine, was released on Monday (July 28) from a Missouri prison after spending 17 years on death row. Inaccurate testimony from witnesses helped free Amrine from a conviction in the 1985 murder of a fellow inmate.

Six inmates from Illinois, Louisiana and Florida have been freed this year; another man, Nicholas James Yarris, is expected to released soon in Pennsylvania.

“With these most recent exonerations, it is increasingly clear that the death penalty is falling apart at the seams,” said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, which opposes capital punishment. “There is no question that additional cases of innocence remain uncovered on America’s death row.”

Most religious groups have long opposed capital punishment. In 2000, then-Gov. George Ryan of Illinois imposed a moratorium on all executions after 13 inmates had their sentences overturned. Days before he left office last January, Ryan commuted the death sentences of 167 inmates. Illinois remains the only state to have a moratorium on all executions.

Gov. Robert Ehrlich of Maryland overturned a statewide moratorium imposed by his predecessor, Parris Glendening, when he was inaugurated earlier this year.

_ Kevin Eckstrom

Update: Despite Dealer’s Arrest, Debate on James Ossuary Continues

(RNS) Experts continue to clash over the authenticity of the James ossuary, a 2,000-year-old limestone burial box purported to be that of James, the brother of Jesus, that was deemed a forgery by the Israeli Antiquities Authority in June.

The debate is heating up following the arrest of Oded Golan, the Tel Aviv antiquities dealer who has been under suspicion of systematically counterfeiting relics since Israeli police discovered tools used for inscription and partially inscribed stones in his apartment. Golan has been released on bail and has not been charged.

Despite the mounting evidence against Golan, a number of experts stand by his contention that the Aramaic inscription is ancient.

“I still stand by the fact that it is a genuine ossuary with a genuine inscription,” Ed Keall of the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, where the ossuary was on display for five weeks last winter, told Canadian Broadcasting Corporation television.

Hershel Shanks, editor of the Washington-based Biblical Archaeology Review and a staunch defender of the ossuary, said the final verdict cannot be issued until the test results are published. Shanks, who is urging an international committee be appointed to evaluate the box, accused the IAA of mishandling the matter by refusing to allow further tests after a panel of Israeli experts concluded the inscription “James, son of Joseph, Brother of Jesus” was a modern forgery.

“We’re urging more tests,” he said, adding that the two scientists on the panel never called the inscription a forgery. “These people haven’t told us what they’ve done. They haven’t published the results.”

Scientists cited the absence of a patina, or fossilized sheen, over the inscription as evidence that it was carved in modern times. After measuring the box’s oxygen isotopes, which indicate weathering, scientists concluded that the sheen over the inscription was a water and chalk paste intended to imitate ancient weathering.

But Shanks and others, including Amos Bein, the director of the Israel Geological Survey _ the research institute that conducted the test _ say the patina could have been rubbed off by vigorous cleaning. Golan claims his mother scrubbed the ossuary with hot water.

While experts wrangle over the scientific evidence against the ossuary, some biblical scholars are disputing the box’s authenticity on historical grounds, saying the inscription was clearly written centuries after James’ death to appeal to believers.

“James was so important in his own right that his followers never would have referred to him as the brother of Jesus,” Robert Eisenman, author of “James, the Brother of Jesus,” said in an interview. “The best that can be said of this is that a pilgrim came along in the third or fourth century and inscribed it.”

– Alexandra Alter

Update: Israelis Suspend Visits by Non-Muslims to Temple Mount

(RNS) Israeli police have suspended controversial visits by non-Muslims to Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, a holy site known to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary or Haram al-Sharif.

Palestinian officials, among them Yasser Arafat, warned there would be “grave consequences” if Israel allowed Jews to visit the site.

Visits to the site, which resumed several weeks ago despite Palestinian protests, have been halted amid fears of rising Palestinian anger and rioting.

An Israeli police spokesman declined to say when the site would be reopened, citing “operational reasons” for suspending tours, the newspaper Ha’aretz reported.

Fearing Palestinian protests, police barred Muslims under the age of 40 from last Friday’s prayers.

Holy to Muslims, Jews and Christians, the Temple Mount was a popular tourist destination prior to its closure in 2000, when violence erupted after Prime Minister Ariel Sharon visited the site.

In recent weeks, Israel began quietly allowing small groups of tourists, accompanied by armed guards, to again visit the site, third holiest in Islam following Mecca and Medina.

“Our desire is to come here in peace,” Justin Kron, a young American Christian touring the site before visits were suspended, told the BBC. “To learn about this land, to learn of the biblical and spiritual and historical significance of this land. And the people of this land are not just Israelis, they’re also Arabs.”

The Noble Sanctuary holds the al-Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock, built in A.D. 691, where Muslims believe the Prophet Mohammed ascended to heaven. Jews believe the site sits atop the remains of the First and Second Temples, leading some militant Jewish groups to demand the mosque be torn down. Jewish prayers at the site have been restricted since the outbreak of violence in 2000.

Muslim security forces in charge of the area denied non-Muslims access in the past in part because so many Palestinians have been barred from entering, the BBC reported. Only Palestinians with the right papers who live in Israel can enter the Temple Mount, while residents of the West Bank and Gaza are limited in their movements by Israeli security forces.

_ Alexandra Alter

Proposed Animated Cartoon on Vatican _ `Popetown’ _ Draws Protests

LONDON (RNS) Nobody has seen it yet _ it is still in production _ but already 25,000 people have signed a petition calling on the BBC not to go ahead next year with the screening of a series of animated cartoons called “Popetown” in which popular actor Ruby Wax will provide the pope’s voice.

According to the BBC’s publicity material, “Popetown is a … sitcom about the office politics that exist in any workplace _ with the bizarre twist that the company is the Vatican and the CEO happens to be the pope.”

The central character is “the long-suffering Father Nicholas” and the series depicts “his daily struggle against the insane and chaotic bureaucracy of Popetown, where the TV reporter is a fame-obsessed nun, cardinals are sinister, corrupt and mysteriously wealthy, and the pope is an infuriatingly childish 77-year-old whose every fickle whim must be indulged.”

This kind of language left the organizer of the petition, Kathy Goble, speechless with indignation. For her, 83-year-old Pope John Paul II is a saintly old man who may be physically enfeebled by infirmity but whose mind is as astute and lucid as ever and who is one of the great thinkers of our age.

“I think the BBC has sunk as low as it can get,” she said. “It wouldn’t dare do the same kind of thing about Islam.”

She said she would feel just as indignant if they were poking fun at the chief rabbi or a prominent Muslim leader rather than the pope.

The BBC says once viewers have the chance to see the program, “they will discover that it is more about poking fun at office bureaucracy than anything else.”

It said the series would be in a similar vein to the Channel 4 series “Father Ted,” which depicted presbytery life in a mythical Irish parish and which was very popular _ especially among Roman Catholic clergy.

However, one big question remains: How many people will actually see “Popetown” when it is screened next year?

It is being shown on one of the BBC’s new digital channels, BBC 3, which is aimed at young adults ages 25 to 34 and has an average weekly audience of 88,000.

_ Robert Nowell

Quote of the Day: Franciscan Friar Celestino Arias of Boston

(RNS) “The robe is now a sign of prestige, and that’s a problem. When I wear it to church, people go gaga.”

_ Franciscan Friar Celestino Arias of Boston, lamenting how his simple brown habit _ a sign of poverty and humility _ is now an icon in Boston since another Franciscan, Bishop Sean O’Malley, was named archbishop. O’Malley was installed as archbishop on Wednesday (July 30). Arias was quoted by The Boston Globe.

DEA END RNS