We look at the unprecedented five federal executions President Trump’s Department of Justice has scheduled before Inauguration Day, starting with Brandon Bernard on International Human Rights Day, and ending with Dustin Higgs on January 15, Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday. Four of the people set to die are Black men, and the other is Lisa Montgomery, a severely mentally ill white woman who faced a lifetime of sexual abuse and would be the first woman executed in nearly 70 years. “When you give absolute power over life and death to government officials, they can really do what they want,” responds Sister Helen Prejean, one of the world’s most well-known anti-death-penalty activists. She also discusses the life and legacy of Bill Pelke, who co-founded the group Journey of Hope and partnered with Prejean to campaign against the death penalty and spare the life of the woman who was 15 years old when she killed his grandmother.

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This post was originally published on Radio Free.