1) PARISH GRASSROOTS EFFORTS HELP PAVE WAY FOR FUTURE REPEAL CAMPAIGN IN OREGON
2) CRIME AND PUNISHMENT REVISITED, by Most Rev. John Vlazny
3) MOVE TO EXPAND FEDERAL DEATH PENALTY AXED IN CONFERENCE COMMITTEE
4) IN GREETING NEW AMBASSADOR, POPE HAILS MEXICO’S ABOLITION OF DEATH PENALTY
5) OTHER STATE NEWS
6) THE NEEDLES OF DESPAIR, By Most Rev. Paul S. Loverde
7) OVERSEAS NEWS
8) OBITUARIES
9) SCALIA’S CATHOLIC ‘BETRAYAL’, by Alan M. Dershowitz
10) QUOTES
11) OBSERVATIONS
1) Parish grassroots efforts help pave way for future repeal campaign in Oregon
Portland archbishop calls for renewed drive against ‘violence by the state’
Almost a decade ago, a drive to end the death penalty in Oregon via the voter initiative route fell short of collecting the number of signatures required to get the question on the ballot. In retrospect, that might have been a blessing in disguise, many death penalty opponents now feel. Voter sentiment on the issue back then, they say, was such that a repeal initiative might have lost by a huge margin—one that would have enshrined the death penalty as a permanent part of the Oregon justice system.
Ten years later, a different picture emerges. The repeal victories in New Mexico earlier this year and in New Jersey in 2007 are seen as resulting from increased public perception of executions as illogical, ineffective, and too costly. Oregon abolitionists are weighing another try, either in 2011 or at some future time. And if and when they take the plunge, they say they will rely on Catholic-based opposition to capital punishment as a key component of their campaign.
“We invite all caring people to join in this effort,” says CACP member Clarence Pugh, chair of Oregonians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. “We reach out most strongly to the Catholic Church because of the church’s teachings in the areas of respect for all life.”
Pugh made the latter remarks in his keynote address November 14 at the annual Tobin Lecture event, sponsored by the Archdiocese of Portland’s Justice and Peace/Respect Life Office, at All Saints Church in Portland.
Three months earlier, in his column in the archdiocesan newspaper, the Catholic Sentinel, Portland Archbishop John Vlazny called for a renewed effort to end the death penalty in the state. Catholic teaching, he wrote, “clearly articulates a call for us to set aside all unnecessary violence, including violence by the state, on the basis of the dignity of each and every person and the building of a culture of life.” (For excerpts from Vlazny’s statement, scroll down to Item No. 2.)
Workshops under way in parishes: A memo sent to all parishes in August by Archdiocesan Chancellor Mary Jo Tully called for increased grassroots efforts on the issue. “We need to share our Catholic teaching with courage and clarity,” she wrote. “We need to reach out to our teachers and to our parishioners. We need to be advocates for change.”
The first of a planned series of free parish workshops on the subject was held August 26 at St. Andrew Church in Portland. It was sponsored by the new Catholic Mobilizing Network to End the Use of the Death Penalty, a national organization formed last January.
In his November 14 address, Pugh said “the tide is changing” in terms of public support of executions. In addition to the successes in New Mexico and New Jersey, he cited the refusal of New York lawmakers to enact a new death penalty law after the old one was ruled unconstitutional by the state’s highest court, as well as near-miss attempts to repeal such laws in Colorado, Connecticut, Maryland, Montana, and elsewhere.
“Death sentences are down by nearly half,” Pugh said. “Executions are down by two-thirds. There is national movement on this issue.”
In Oregon, Pugh sees “new vigor” in the abolition movement. Over the past two years, he reported, representatives of his organization have met with their counterparts in states that have achieved abolition to learn more about their successful strategies, and have set up an outreach committee to develop and manage a statewide program that includes media relations, speaking events, and volunteer recruitment. OADP has also created a People of Faith Committee to reach out to the faith community. Portland Archdiocesan chancellor Tully, he noted, is a member of OADP’s board of directors.
Possible ballot vote in 2012: Only two people have been executed in Oregon since the state reinstated capital punishment in 1978—one in 1996, the other in 1997. Each was a man in his mid-fifties who had abandoned his appeals. There are 35 inmates on Oregon’s death row.
In recent years, the state has averaged only one or two death sentences per year. Its annual murder rate is 2.1 per 100,000 population, well below the regional average in the West of 4.8.
Of the 73 death sentences handed down in the state in the past 25 years, 36 were overturned by the Oregon Supreme Court.
Pugh noted there are now three Oregon death row inmates who have reached the federal level of appeals. The legal costs to the state in pursuing such cases “are expected to be very high,” he said.
“So many resources are going into the first cases because Oregon’s current death penalty law has not been fully reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court,” he explained. “The most advanced of these cases will be the first from Oregon to reach the federal level. The federal decisions made will determine the case law for future Oregon cases.”
At this point, none of the cases have reached the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court. They are still in federal district court in Portland.
Oregon is one of the few states where the death penalty is written into the state constitution, and can be changed only via initiative or referendum.
“Part of our strategic planning,” Pugh said, “will be consideration of whether the time will be ripe to move for a legislative referral of a repeal measure to the people in 2011, with a possible vote of the people in 2012.
“The decision has not yet been made,” he noted. “Many threads will need to intertwine for it to happen.”
Interactive workshops in parishes: The August 26 workshop at St. Andrew in Portland was attended by 18 individuals representing that congregation as well as the neighboring parishes of St. Peter, St. Pius X, St. Philip of Neri, Queen of Peace, St. Mary Magdalene, St. Ignatius, and Church of the Resurrection. It was led by Sarah Craft, a campaign organizer for Equal Justice USA, an anti-death-penalty group headquartered in Brooklyn, NY.
“The presentation covered the basics of Catholic social teachings on the issue and practical, down-to-earth advice on how to mobilize your parish to support death penalty repeal,” said CACP member Eileen Kennedy, a St. Andrew parishioner. “The workshop was interactive, and participants had opportunities to talk, ask questions, and exchange ideas.”
Another attendee, Queen of Peace parishioner Ron Steiner, was involved in the successful campaign to end executions in New Mexico earlier this year. Grassroots organizing there “led to stunning results—like 12,000 messages to Governor Bill Richardson in four days,” he told the Catholic Sentinel.
“We’re trying to find people in the parishes to take this to their communities,” he said. “We’d like someone in every parish in the archdiocese.”
Since then, OADP reports, similar workshops have taken place in several other churches, including ones of the Unitarian-Universalist, First Methodist, and United Church of Christ denominations.
Information about holding similar programs in other parishes—in Oregon or in other states—is available from Karen Clifton, executive director of the Catholic Mobilizing Network to End the Use of the Death Penalty (713-823-9827; www. catholicmobilizing.org) or Shari Silberstein, executive director of Equal Justice USA (718-801-8940; www.ejusa.org).
2) CRIME AND PUNISHMENT REVISITED, by Most Rev. John Vlazny
Following are excerpts from an article in the August 13, 2009 issue of the Catholic Sentinel, newspaper of the Portland (Oregon) Archdiocese. Archbishop Vlazny has headed the archdiocese since 1997. Before that he was bishop of Winona, MN (1987-1997) and auxiliary bishop of Chicago (1983-1987).
This year legislation has been introduced in many of our states to abolish the death penalty. Where? Colorado, Connecticut, Kansas, Maryland, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire and New Mexico. In these hard economic times the tremendous cost of the death penalty has been a significant factor, one that was mentioned time and time again.
A legislator in Kansas, moreover, indicated that not only is the death penalty too costly, it does not benefit the people and it should be replaced with life without parole.
It would seem it is time for the state of Oregon to revisit this matter. Even though some might suggest that this smacks of liberal posturing, which conservatives will quickly reject, the matter is not quite that uncomplicated.
Recently Richard Viguerie, whom some have described as “one of the creators of the modern conservative movement,” explained how his conservative ideology actually led him to oppose the death penalty. He now is calling for a national moratorium on the death penalty.
Viguerie said that capital punishment goes against conservative values. Everyone may not embrace his rationale but here it is: “Conservatives have every reason to believe the death penalty system is no different from any politicized, costly, inefficient, bureaucratic, government-run operation, which we conservatives know are rife with injustice.”
Nearly four years ago the American bishops approved a document entitled “A Culture of Life and the Penalty of Death.” We invited our Catholic people to embrace a call for a common action against the death penalty. I sent a letter to pastors about this matter in March 2006 asking them to encourage you to reflect on the death penalty and the principles of justice, forgiveness, mercy and the sanctity of life. Not much came from that invitation, but let me try again.
As Catholics, we are committed to promoting a consistent ethic of life and upholding the dignity of life from conception until natural death. We emphatically oppose a culture of death. We cannot promote the “illusion that we can protect life by taking life.” Why did we bishops speak out so publicly in opposition to the death penalty? Let me tell you why:
1. The sanction of death, when it is not necessary to protect society, violates respect for life and dignity.
2. State-sanctioned killing in our names diminishes all of us.
3. Its application is deeply flawed and can be irreversibly wrong, is prone to errors, and is biased by factors such as race, the quality of legal representation, and where the crime was committed.
4. We have other ways to punish criminals to protect society.
Fortunately, public attitudes are changing. States with more executions tend not to have lower murder or crime rates. There really is no clear evidence that the death penalty prevents or deters crimes. Recent Supreme Court decisions have ended executions of those who are mentally retarded and who were juveniles at the time they committed their crimes. The Court has also insisted that only juries, not judges, can impose a sentence of death.
By itself a death penalty is not intrinsically evil. Our Catholic teaching in this matter is rooted in the same concern for the sanctity of the human person as is our teaching on euthanasia, war, genocide and abortion. But all these issues are different and they do not have the same gravity or moral content. They are not equivalent.
On the other hand, Catholic teaching on the death penalty clearly articulates a call for us to set aside all unnecessary violence, including violence by the state, on the basis of the dignity of each and every person and the building of a culture of life. Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver put it this way, “In the wake of the bloodiest century in history, the Church invites us to recover our own humanity, choosing God’s higher road of restraint and mercy instead of state-sanctioned killing that implicates all of us as citizens.”
Fortunately, more and more of our Catholic people seem to be getting the message. Less than half now support the death penalty. For those who attend church regularly, support of the death penalty decreases even more.
This is consistent with everything we have learned about Catholic support for the sanctity of human life. The more active people are in practicing their faith, the more they understand and appreciate the value of human life as a gift from God, one where we exercise some stewardship, but not ownership.
Bud Welch, the father of Julie Marie Welch, who was killed in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, had this to say about the death penalty as a possible punishment for his daughter’s assassin:
“My conviction is simple. More violence is not what Julie would have wanted. More violence will not bring Julie back. More violence only makes our society more violent.”
A renewed effort on behalf of the abolition of the death penalty in this land would be yet another effort to encourage our people and fellow citizens to reject a culture of death and to build a culture of life. This very old and fundamental choice was articulated wisely and well long ago in Sacred Scripture: “I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life, then, that you and your descendants may live.” (Dt. 30:19)
3) Move to expand federal death penalty axed in conference committee
A Senate-passed proposal to extend the reach of the federal death penalty to include certain hate crimes was dropped from the final language of the Hate Crimes Prevention Act by a Senate-House conference committee in early October.
The hate crimes measure was signed into law by President Obama on October 28 as part of the National Defense Authorization Act (S.1390). The statute makes it a federal crime to assault an individual because of his or her sexual orientation or gender identity.
On July 20, the Senate adopted an amendment to the bill that would have made perpetrators of hate crimes eligible for execution. It was sponsored by Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), an outspoken opponent of hate crimes legislation. It was one of several amendments introduced by Republicans in an attempt to derail the legislation.
The House of Representatives removed the Senate’s death penalty language from the bill before passing it on October 8.
In an October 20 statement, Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), a Catholic who opposes capital punishment, hailed the final version of the measure, saying he was “glad that we were able to pass this bill without adding a new federal death penalty, which would have needlessly inserted a divisive issue into this legislation.”
CACP, the American Civil Liberties Union, and other groups urged conferees to drop the death penalty provision.
The United Methodist General Board of Church and Society called the proposal “misguided” and “very harmful,” and added:
“Any expansion of the federal death penalty stands in direct contrast to furthering the cause of civil rights in the United States.” Failure to remove the death penalty provision, it said, would undermine the very premise of hate crimes legislation, which is to increase civil rights protection.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops voiced no opposition to, or support of, the proposed death penalty amendment. A spokesperson noted that the USCCB had adopted a “neutral” position on the overall hate crimes bill and therefore was taking no position on amendments or specific provisions.
4) IN GREETING NEW AMBASSADOR, POPE HAILS MEXICO’S ABOLITION OF DEATH PENALTY
In welcoming Hector Ling Altamirano as Mexico's new ambassador to the Vatican at a July 10 ceremony, Pope Benedict XVI congratulated the Mexican government for having formally repealed the nation's death penalty laws in 2005.
“It cannot be overemphasized that the right to life must be recognized in all its fullness,” the pope said. He called upon governments to enact laws and public policies that “take into account the high value that a human being has at every moment of existence,” and added:
“In this context, I joyfully welcome the initiative by which Mexico abolished the death penalty in 2005, and the recent measures adopted by some Mexican states to protect human life from its beginnings. These resolute moves in such a fundamental question should be an emblem of your homeland, one of which it can be justly proud.”
5) OTHER STATE NEWS
CONNECTICUT: The Catholic Church is known for its pro-life stance, and that includes being against capital punishment, said Deacon Arthur L. Miller, director of the office of Black Catholic Ministries of the Archdiocese of Hartford, at an October 4 rally on the steps of the state capitol in Hartford.
Miller was one of several speakers at the event, held to relaunch a campaign to repeal Connecticut’s death penalty law.
Last May, the Connecticut legislature passed an abolition bill by a 90-56 vote in the House and by 19-17 in the Senate, but Gov. M. Jodi Rell (Rep.) vetoed it on June 5. The Connecticut Catholic Conference had testified in favor of the proposal.
FLORIDA: On August 20, death penalty opponents gathered in Tallahassee to protest the execution of John Marek the previous day. In an interview with WJHG News, Sheila Hopkins, a spokesperson for the Florida Catholic Conference, said the anti-death-penalty movement is gaining support, “not just because of moral reasons, which is where we are,” but also because of the high costs of the capital punishment process. “People are finding it is an expensive proposition.”
On August 17, Florida's Catholic bishops had urged Gov. Charlie Crist (Rep.) to issue a stay. “Executions do not make society safer nor act as a deterrent,” they told Crist, “but add to the violence we experience daily in society, numbing us to the truth that every human being has worth. You have the ability to stop the intentional killing of the people on death row by commuting death sentences to life in prison without possibility of parole.” Marek’s co-defendant, Raymond Wigley, was sentenced to life in prison.
INDIANA: Eric Wrinkles, 49, was executed December 11 for the 1994 slayings of his wife, her brother and her brother’s wife. Final sacraments were administered to him by Fr. Thomas McNally, CSC of Notre Dame University and Deacon Malcolm Lunsford of Ss. Peter and Paul Church in Merrillville, who had been his spiritual advisers on death row.
Wrinkles blamed the killings on his addiction to methamphetamine but, having exhausted his legal appeals, did not seek gubernatorial clemency. It was the state’s first execution in more than two years.
McNally described Wrinkles as “a far different man from the killer who fired those bullets more than 15 years ago.,” and added: “In my opinion he is truly repentant for what he has done.... Through my contact with Eric, I realize more strongly than ever that God’s mercy is without bounds, and that He never gives up on anyone.”
“Eric really believes in the mercy of God,” said Bishop Dale Melczek of the Diocese of Gary, who visited Wrinkles prior to the execution. “He is very peaceful facing his death. Spiritually, mentally, emotionally [he is] in a very good place.”
Among those asking that the sentence be commuted to life was Mary Winnecke, mother of Wrinkles’ slain sister-in-law.
Most Rev. Gerald A. Gettelfinger, bishop of the Diocese of Evansville, where the murders took place, criticized the pending execution in a November 29 article in the Evansville Courier-Press.
“On the frontier many years ago,” he wrote, “execution provided quick and final justice. That may have been necessary then, as there were no means to separate the criminal from society for a lifetime. It seems to me that we are still invoking frontier justice. Indiana is no longer the frontier. The state is able to protect its citizens from murderous criminals by separating them from society by sentencing them to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
“One cannot ignore the reality that deep within the human being there is somehow a ‘blood lust’ as ancient as humankind,” Gettelfinger continued. “Executions were made a public spectacle so as to teach a lesson, or worse, to satisfy base instincts for vengeance and retribution.
“Indiana must not pander to baser human instincts. Christians are taught by Jesus Himself that we are not only to forgive our enemies, but we are also to love them without approving the wrongs they have committed.”
Gettelfinger noted that the bishops of Indiana have “persistently” worked to end capital punishment for over 30 years. “We have not prevailed, yet we are determined to continue our effort,” he wrote.
KANSAS: At a November 4 meeting with members of several Catholic religious communities, Gov. Mark Parkinson (Dem.) said he would be willing to reconsider the state’s death penalty law, according to a report on the website of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Concordia.
Kansas reinstated the death penalty in 1994, but no one has been executed in the state since then. There are 10 men on the state’s death row. Legislation to abolish the law was shelved last March, but is expected to be considered next year. Proponents of repeal have cited the high costs of death penalty trials in their arguments.
Former Lieutenant Gov. Parkinson, a United Methodist, became governor in April following the appointment of former Gov. Kathleen Sebelius (Dem.) as U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services.
The death penalty was one of several issues on the meeting agenda, along with concern for the poor, immigration, the environment, the marginalized, and the state budget. Participants included representatives of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Concordia; the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth; the Sisters of St. Benedict, Atchison; the Adorers of the Blood of Christ, Wichita; and the Congregation of St. Joseph of Wichita.
KENTUCKY: A November 23 request by Attorney General Jack Conway (Dem.) asking Gov. Steven Beshear (Dem.) to set execution dates for three death row inmates drew criticism from the Kentucky Catholic Conference and the Kentucky Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.
Conway, who is seeking election to the U.S. Senate next year, said the three men—Ralph Baze Jr., Robert Foley and Gregory Wilson—had exhausted all of their “matter of right” appeals in state and federal courts. Their “horrific crimes,” he said, “have taken an enormous toll on the victims’ families, for whom this may bring closure.”
The Catholic conference asked Beshear to refuse to sign the warrants. “While praying for the victims of these heinous crimes and their families, the conference remains concerned that the death penalty is both cruel and unnecessary,” it said, “and does more harm than good to society when the state kills a human being as an act reflecting public policy.”
KCC executive director Robert J. Castagna said the conference asked Beshear “to lead the Commonwealth of Kentucky to a more enlightened public policy.”
Castagna noted that the crime for which each of the three inmates was convicted took place more than 15 years ago. “The passage of time since these heinous crimes were committed amply demonstrates that society legitimately can protect itself by modern means of incarceration rather than resorting to the taking of life in the death penalty,” he said.
The Kentucky Coalition’s statement said that if the executions were carried out they would “shock the conscience of a state that has executed only four people since 1956.”
Rev. Patrick Delahanty, a Catholic priest who chairs the coalition, said his group was “asking the governor to hold off on signing any death warrants pending a complete assessment of the way the death penalty is administered in Kentucky.”
MARYLAND: In an August 28 letter to the state’s Department of Corrections commenting on the its proposed revised regulations for death penalty procedures, the Maryland Catholic Conference asked that a provision be inserted to allow prison staff members to refuse to participate in the death penalty procedure on the grounds of moral or religious convictions.
“Such protections exist in federal law regarding participation in federal executions” it said, “and should be explicitly included here as well.”
The letter, sent to the DOC by MCC executive director Mary Ellen Russell on behalf of the state’s bishops, also asked for rules specifying that death row inmates have access to authorized clergy members via phone calls, that such clergy be informed of the date and time of a planned execution, and that clergy be allowed not only to escort the inmate to the execution chamber, but also to remain with the inmate until the moment of death.
“As a religious community,” MCC said, “we believe it is imperative that strict attention be given to ensuring that an inmate has appropriate access to a clergy member who can provide him spiritual counsel in preparing to face death. Because we believe in God as our ultimate judge, and in the power of his redemption, it is especially important that there should be nothing that could impede an inmate from conferring with a clergy member in order to make peace with God and to have the opportunity to express repentance and seek spiritual forgiveness right up until the moment of his death.”
Russell emphasized that the MCC’s comments were submitted “within the context of our long-standing opposition to the death penalty,” and that they “should not be construed to suggest that specific changes to these procedures would render the process as a whole any more acceptable in our view.”
NEW HAMPSHIRE: The new 22-member Commission to Study the Death Penalty in New Hampshire held its first meetings October 21 and December 4. The panel is chaired by retired Superior Court Chief Justice Walter Murphy.
A law creating the commission was enacted earlier this year after a bill to repeal the state’s death penalty law was passed in the House but tabled in the Senate.
In April 14 testimony on behalf of the abolition bill, Bishop John B. McCormack of the Manchester Diocese, which covers the entire state, argued that capital punishment “has the potential of contributing to the culture of violence that we seek to eliminate from our society.”
Murphy, a graduate of Boston College Law School, spent 20 years as a Superior Court judge. Another member of the commission is Renny Cushing, a New Hampshire state representative who also serves as executive director of the organization Murder Victims’ Families for Human Rights. The commission is to issue a report and recommendations by December 1, 2010.
No executions have been carried out by New Hampshire since 1939. It is the only death penalty state that does not have a death row or an execution chamber.
Last December, Michael Addison was sentenced to die for a 2006 killing of a Manchester police officer. At its December 4 meeting, the commission heard that prosecution, defense and sentencing costs in the Addison case had already reached $2.7 million, and are expected to grow by a half million dollars per year while he appeals his sentence.
NEW JERSEY: “Mounting an Effective Anti-Death-Penalty Campaign” was the title of a workshop coordinated by the group Catholics Mobilizing Against the Use of the Death Penalty on the final day of the July-19-24 Social Action Summer Institute held at Seton Hall University in South Orange, N.J.
The annual event is sponsored by the Roundtable Association of Diocesan Social Action Directors and other groups. The workshop was led by Vicki Schieber, chair of Murder Victims’ Families for Human Rights, and Celeste Fitzgerald, former head of New Jerseyans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.
NORTH CAROLINA: On August 11, Gov. Bev Perdue (Dem.) signed into law the North Carolina Racial Justice Act, a measure that allows murder suspects and death row inmates to present evidence showing that racial bias was behind a prosecutor’s decision to seek the death penalty or a jury’s decision to impose it.
Bishops Michael F. Burbidge of Raleigh and Peter J. Jugis of Charlotte were among more than a dozen church leaders who
joined with civil rights leaders in urging passage of the measure.
OHIO: “I am sorry from the bottom of my heart,” said Kenneth Biros, 51, just before his December 8 execution. “Now I am being paroled to my Father in heaven, and I will spend all my holidays with my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Peace be with you all.”
Biros was the first person executed in the U.S. via injection of a single drug—sodium thiopental, heretofore used mostly by veterinarians to put down pets. The procedure was touted as an improvement over the three-drug mixture used in other states.
On November 18, Archbishop Daniel E. Pilarczyk of Cincinnati sent a letter to Gov. Ted Strickland (Dem.) asking him to “stop this lethal form of punishment,” and added:
“Ohio has spent the past several months figuring out how to kill another person more efficiently,” he wrote. “What a shameful legacy for our state: pursuing the slippery slope of ‘humane’ death.”
Ohio opted for the new procedure following a September 16 incident in which the execution of inmate Romell Brown was postponed after he spent two hours on the gurney while officials made 18 attempts to find a usable vein.
Pilarczyk noted that the state’s bishops have consistently advocated for an end to the death penalty, saying this form of punishment is unnecessary and systemically flawed.
News reports of Biros’s execution said the inmate received Communion prior to his execution.
TEXAS: Many inmates on the state’s death row express interest in learning about the Catholic faith, according to retired prison chaplain Deacon Harry Davis, whose prison ministry for the Diocese of Beaumont includes the male death row facility in Livingston. His ministry provides a modified RCIA program, Davis said in an October interview with the Texas Catholic newspaper.
“The church is there to meet their needs,” he said. “A priest will come, even within 24 hours of a scheduled execution, so that someone can be brought into the Catholic faith. It’s a very beautiful ministry—painful, yes.”
In 2005, Texas became the last U.S. state with a death penalty law to allow life-without-parole sentences. But Davis said that he encounters Texas Catholics who have not been swayed to oppose the death penalty even though life without parole now is an option. “It still appears that there are a majority of Catholics in Texas who are for the death penalty, but there is an undercurrent and the number is coming down,” he said.
Davis said that he often asked inmates on death row if they would prefer life without parole. “They all said they would prefer the death penalty,” he said. “They said that with life without parole, ‘They'll just throw away the key.’”
His ministry also reaches out to victims’ families. He said that he has observed that forgiveness is the chief avenue to closure. “It’s a process,” he said. “Jesus forgave.”
Davis said that his last words to a person about to be executed pose a question. “I’ll say, ‘Could you pray for us? We’re still on this journey.”
WASHINGTON: In September, the state’s Catholic bishops issued a pastoral statement urging lawmakers to conduct an “open and thorough review” of the death penalty and search for effective sentencing alternatives.
“When someone is murdered,” they said, “their death cries out for a response, but violence in response to violence only perpetuates the illusion that cruelty and the taking of human life can balance the scales of justice. We therefore call upon Catholics, all citizens and our state leaders to find appropriate methods and means to protect innocent life from those who would commit murder.
“We further acknowledge that in the most extreme cases of violent murder, the sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole can be an appropriate sentence. In order to establish sentencing alternatives for the death penalty, however, we must reject state-sponsored killing from the outset.”
The statement, available at www.thewscc.org, was signed by Seattle Archbishop Alex J. Brunett, Bishops William S. Skylstad and Carlos A. Sevilla, S.J., of the Dioceses of Spokane and Yakima, respectively, and Seattle Auxiliary Bishops Eusebio Elizondo, M.Sp.S. and Joseph J. Tyson.
Four men have been executed in the state since capital punishment was restored in 1976, all between 1993 and 2001. Three were so-called “volunteers,” who admitted their guilt and waived their final appeals. There are eight men on the state’s death row.
6) THE NEEDLES OF DESPAIR, By Most Rev. Paul S. Loverde
Following are excerpts from a November 5, 2009 statement by Arlington, Va., Bishop Paul S. Loverde, urging that the death sentence of Virginia inmate John Muhammad be commuted to life in prison. The murder for which Muhammad was sentenced to die took place in Loverde’s diocese. It was one of a series of 10 sniper killings in the Maryland/Virginia/D.C. area in the fall of 2002. Muhammad was executed on November 10.
To say that [Muhammad’s] acts are horrific and appalling would be an understatement. Certainly, a person who committed such brutal acts should be punished severely, and many among us would surely desire revenge and would even say that such a person deserves to die for what he did. It is understandable for us—all of us, myself included—to have these reactions.
These emotions, however, are a beginning, not an end. We are called to be more, and to do more, than we could ever be or do without God’s transforming grace.
In seeking to “be more,” we should begin with prayer for the families of the victims of the sniper attacks, beseeching Our Blessed Lord to help them experience the healing that only His hand can offer. And then, as we open our minds and hearts in prayer, we can prepare ourselves to ask Jesus: “Who are you calling me to be in this situation?”
During his public ministry, Jesus Himself was asked to make a statement on putting someone to death (John 8:2-6). Many of those gathered probably wanted Jesus to reach the “inevitable” conclusion that stoning was the appropriate punishment under the law. Jesus’ response, of course, surprised them all.
While recognizing the seriousness of the woman’s offense and admonishing her to “not sin anymore,” Jesus refused to choose death over life, or despair over hope. Although He understood the demands of justice, His emphasis was on mercy and the human dignity of the sinner.
Because each person is created in God’s image and likeness, each person retains an intrinsic human dignity—even someone convicted of a heinous crime. This dignity is what leads the Church—while acknowledging the legitimate defense of individuals and society—to teach that the death penalty cannot be justified when a government has other ways to protect its people adequately against an unjust aggressor.
In solidarity with this teaching, we are called to choose hope—hope in the redemption of an immortal soul–over the despair embedded in the death penalty.
When life without the possibility of parole in a maximum security prison is an option, we have no need for the death penalty. By sparing the woman caught in adultery, Christ taught us a lesson which Saint Paul later expressed: “Do not be conquered by evil but conquer evil with good.” (Romans 12:21).
In the needles of lethal injection, we see the manifestation of despair. And in this despair, in advocating the use of the death penalty, our society has moved beyond the legitimate judgment of crimes. We are better than this. We are called to be more than slaves to despair; we are called to be heralds of hope.
7) OVERSEAS NEWS
PHILIPPINES: On November 29, Catholic Church officials criticized proposals to revive the nation’s death penalty following the massacre of 57 people in Maguindanao Province six days earlier.
Rodolfo Diamante, executive director of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines’ Commission on Prison Pastoral Care, said taking away one life does not fully serve moral justice to the families of the victims.
He said it was “dismaying” that people push for the revival of the death penalty whenever a heinous crime takes place. “The death penalty has never been the solution to violence,” he said in an interview over church-run Radio Veritas.
President Gloia Macapagal-Arroyo abolished the death penalty on June 24, 2006 through Republic Act 9346.
According to the Philippine Star, Bishop Honesto Ongtioco of Cubao said that neither the people nor the government possesses the right to take a person’s life, whatever the gravity of one’s sins.
“If it is necessary to put the criminals in jail, so be it. But we cannot say that the criminals have no right to live. Life is a gift from God which has to be respected,” he stated.
Bishop emeritus Teodoro Bacani of Novaliches said he understands the raging sentiments of the people but advised them not to be carried away with their emotions.
“They should be objective and sober. They should not be rash. This is not the answer to violence. Let’s not worsen the violence by another kind of violence,” the Star quoted Bacani as saying.
8) OBITUARIES
Sister Elizabeth of the Trinity, OCD, 90, died September 9 at the Carmelite Monastery in Santa Clara, Calif. She had been a member of CACP since 1997.
One of five daughters of former U.S. Senator Hall S. Lusk (D-Oregon), the former Catherine Holmead Lusk attended Pomona College in California and Reed College in Oregon and studied piano at the Julliard School of Music in New York before entering the Discalced Carmelites in 1940. She was a strong opponent of the death penalty, and corresponded with death row prisoners for many years.
John M. Martini, 79, an inmate on New Jersey’s death row who dropped his appeals 13 years ago and demanded to be executed, died September 10 at the State Prison in Trenton.
“I want to repent for what I did,” Martini told a judge in 1996, saying that he was a Catholic and that “I should be punished.” Several years later he reversed his decision after having been counseled by prison chaplain Sr. Elizabeth Gnam, O.P.
9) SCALIA’S CATHOLIC ‘BETRAYAL,’ by Alan M. Dershowitz
The following article originally appeared August 18, 2009, on The Daily Beast, a news reporting and opinion website (www. thedailybeast.com) published by IAC/InterActiveCorp. Professor Alan M. Dershowitz has been called “the nation’s most peripatetic civil liberties lawyer” and one of its “most distinguished defenders of individual rights.” He is the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and is the author of 27 fiction and nonfiction works.
I never thought I would live to see the day when a justice of the Supreme Court would publish the following words:
“This court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is ‘actually’ innocent. Quite to the contrary, we have repeatedly left that question unresolved, while expressing considerable doubt that any claim based on alleged ‘actual innocence’ is constitutionally cognizable.”
Yet these words appeared in a dissenting opinion issued by Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas on Monday [August 17].
Let us be clear precisely what this means. If a defendant were convicted, after a constitutionally unflawed trial, of murdering his wife, and then came to the Supreme Court with his very much alive wife at his side, and sought a new trial based on newly discovered evidence (namely that his wife was alive), these two justices would tell him, in effect: “Look, your wife may be alive as a matter of fact, but as a matter of constitutional law, she’s dead, and as for you, Mr. Innocent Defendant, you’re dead, too, since there is no constitutional right not to be executed merely because you’re innocent.”
It would be shocking enough for any justice of the Supreme Court to issue such a truly outrageous opinion, but it is particularly indefensible for Justices Scalia and Thomas, both of whom claim to be practicing Catholics, bound by the teaching of their church, to do moral justice. Justice Scalia has famously written, in the May 2002 issue of the conservative journal First Things, that if the Constitution compelled him to do something that was absolutely prohibited by mandatory Catholic rules, he would have no choice but to resign from the Supreme Court.
Unlike President Kennedy, who pledged to place his obligation to the Constitution above his commitment to his church, Scalia has insisted that in his view, “The choice for the judge who believes the death penalty to be immoral [according to the teachings of the Catholic Church] is resignation.” He put his point in “blunt terms”: “I could not take part in that process [of authorizing an execution] if I believed what was being done to be immoral.” He continued: “It is a matter of great consequence to me, therefore, whether the death penalty is morally acceptable. As a Roman Catholic—and being unable to jump out of my skin—I cannot discuss that issue without reference to Christian tradition and the church’s Magisterium.”
After reviewing the teachings of the church, he concluded that there is no conflict between his judicial role in affirming death-penalty sentences and the strict teachings of the Catholic Church, which counsel against the use of capital punishment but permit this extreme sanction in extraordinary cases, especially when there is no reasonable alternative. This is the way he put it:
“So I have given this new position thoughtful and careful consideration—and I disagree. That is not to say I favor the death penalty (I am judicially and judiciously neutral on that point); it is only to say that I do not find the death penalty immoral. I am happy to have reached that conclusion, because I like my job, and would rather not resign. And I am happy because I do not think it would be a good thing if American Catholics running for legislative office had to oppose the death penalty (most of them would not be elected); if American Catholics running for governor had to promise commutation of all death sentences (most of them would never reach the governor’s mansion); if American Catholics were ineligible to go on the bench in all jurisdictions imposing the death penalty; or if American Catholics were subject to recusal when called for jury duty in capital cases.”
But whatever the view of the church is on executing the guilty, surely it is among the worst sins, under Catholic teaching, to kill an innocent human being intentionally. Yet that is precisely what Scalia would authorize under his skewed view of the United States Constitution. How could he possibly consider that not immoral under Catholic teachings? If it is immoral to kill an innocent fetus, how could it not be immoral to execute an innocent person?
Ordinarily I would not include a justice's religious views in a criticism of a judicial opinion, but with regard to capital punishment, it is Justice Scalia who has introduced the religious dimension. I am simply trying to hold him to his own published standards.
I am not a Catholic, yet I teach principles of Catholic morality in my Harvard Law School freshman seminar, “Where Does Your Morality Come From?” I hereby challenge Justice Scalia to a debate on whether Catholic doctrine permits the execution of a factually innocent person who has been tried, without constitutional flaw, but whose innocence is clearly established by new and indisputable evidence.
Justice Scalia is always willing to debate issues involving religious teachings. He has done so, for example, with the great Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, and with others as well. He also has debated me at the Harvard Law School. Although I am neither a rabbi nor a priest, I am confident that I am right and he is wrong under Catholic Doctrine. Perhaps it takes chutzpah to challenge a practicing Catholic on the teachings of his own faith, but that is a quality we share.
I invite him to participate in the debate at Harvard Law School, at Georgetown Law School, or anywhere else of his choosing. The stakes are high, because if he loses—if it is clear that his constitutional views permitting the execution of factually innocent defendants are inconsistent with the teachings of the Catholic Church—then, pursuant to his own published writings, he would have no choice but to conform his constitutional views to the teachings of the Catholic Church or to resign from the Supreme Court.
10) QUOTES
“What do you suppose the early Christians thought of St. Paul—or Saul, as he was called—when he was persecuting Christians?
“He was a self-described zealot who by his own admission dragged Christians from their homes and delivered them in chains to be beaten and in some cases killed.
“Christ recognized Saul not as the early Christians knew him, but as a man who would become the greatest of all evangelizers and the one who could take the good news of our Savior Jesus Christ to the Gentiles.
“I believe that situation continues today. Sometimes those who have committed serious crimes against humanity have the most powerful witness. It is my belief that we should not get in the way of God and his salvation plan for even the worst of the worst. Who is to say what God’s plan is for them?”
—Moe Wosepka, executive director of the Montana Catholic Conference, in his February 18, 2009 article, “The Confusing Language of Life and Death,” on the MCC’s website (www.montanacc.org)
“I’m a Catholic. Because of my Christian faith, and because I am a follower of Jesus Christ, I oppose the death penalty. I’m a conservative as well, and because my political philosophy recognizes that government is too often used by humans for the wrong ends, I find it quite logical to oppose capital punishment.
“I have been criticized by some conservatives for my opposition to the death penalty. On the other hand, some conservatives have told me they question capital punishment or even oppose it, but believe that the conservative “position” is to support it. Fortunately for me, even if someone were to question my conservative bona fides (I’ve never been called not conservative enough, trust me), I wouldn’t care.
“I don’t understand why more conservatives don’t oppose the death penalty. It is, after all, a system set up under laws established by politicians (too many of whom lack principles); enforced by prosecutors (many of whom want to become politicians—perhaps a character flaw?—and who prefer wins over justice); and adjudicated by judges (too many of whom administer personal preference rather than the law).”
—From an article in the July 2009 issue of Sojourners magazine by Catholic conservative Richard A. Viguerie, a pioneer in the use of direct mail to further political goals and, in the words of The Nation magazine, “one of the creators of the modern conservative movement.”
11) OBSERVATIONS
As we approach the end of CACP’s 18th year of existence and prepare to begin the 19th, we once again thank members and friends for your prayers, for keeping us up-to-date on Catholic-oriented anti-death-penalty news, and for your generous financial support that allows CACP to keep going.
Although we were able to publish only two issues of the printed CACP News Notes this year, we are by no means complaining; each week, it seems, we hear news of another nonprofit organization like CACP closing up shop because of a lack of funds. Although our expenses are relatively low compared to those of many other groups, we do need money to pay the printer and postmaster and to maintain CACP’s website, and so we’re grateful to all who continue to support us in the current recession.
We pray that God will bless you and your loved ones in this Christmas season, and that 2010 will be a good year for you.
Ellen and Frank
