May 19
VIRGINIA:
Column: Bishops' Statement on Death Penalty Debate----To build a culture of
life we must respect the sanctity of even "unlovable" lives.
This year, through the advocacy of the Virginia Catholic Conference, our Church
spent considerable time opposing legislation related to the death penalty. The
proposed measure would have permitted the Commonwealth to arrange with
compounding pharmacies to mix drugs for use in executions, hiding from the
public the identities of the pharmacies and materials used. Thankfully, this
bill was defeated. So, too, was a measure the Virginia General Assembly
considered last year - also opposed by the Conference - that would have forced
death row inmates to be electrocuted if lethal injection drugs are not
available.
Meanwhile, Pope Francis delivered a message which sharply contrasted these
disturbing debates. "There is discussion in some quarters about the method of
killing, as if it were possible to find ways of 'getting it right' ....," the
Pope wrote in a recent letter about the death penalty. "But there is no humane
way of killing another person."
Pope Francis' keen observation adds an exclamation point to the rejection of
these "method of execution" bills. In Virginia, we are indeed having the wrong
debate - a reality clearly visible in light of all we celebrate during this
Easter season.
In these final joyful weeks of Easter, the Church continues to celebrate the
gift of eternal life offered through the Resurrection. In our pilgrimage to
that life, we follow Jesus, who loved and forgave us from the Cross, by living
out the teaching of our faith that all human life is sacred, from the moment of
conception until natural death.
This conviction is reflected in our understanding that the poor and vulnerable
have the 1st claim on our consciences, in our opposition to abortion and
euthanasia, and in our responsibility to welcome immigrants and refugees. But
our faith also challenges us to declare sacred even the least lovable among us,
those convicted of committing brutal crimes which have brought them the
ultimate penalty, the penalty of death.
The Church's teaching on the death penalty is succinctly stated in a 2005 U.S.
Bishops' statement, "A Culture of Life and the Penalty of Death:" "No matter
how heinous the crime, if society can protect itself without ending a human
life, it should do so." This statement is the teaching of the Catechism, and
for decades Popes John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis consistently have
urged us to embrace it.
To be sure, this teaching challenges many people, including ourselves when we
reflect on violent crimes and lives lost in senseless and unimaginable ways.
The deep pain, grief, and suffering of those who have lost loved ones to
violence cry out for our care and attention. More killing, though, is not the
answer: The death penalty does not provide true healing for those who mourn,
nor does it embody the Gospel of Life, which each of us is called to affirm
even in the most difficult circumstances.
It is also important to note that people have been executed despite serious
doubts about their guilt, and inmates who languished on death row for decades
have been freed after their innocence was proven. Since 1973, some 152 death
row inmates nationwide - including 1 in Virginia - have been exonerated. We
must also be aware of the racial inequity inherent in the system, and that the
death penalty has been administered to individuals with severe intellectual
disabilities.
These circumstances further illustrate that, in Virginia and elsewhere, we are
having the wrong debate. We should no longer debate which inmates we execute or
how we execute them. Instead, we should debate this: If all human lives are
sacred and if a civilized society such as ours can seek redress and protect
itself by means other than taking a human life, why are we continuing to
execute people?
By ending the use of the death penalty we would take one important step - among
significant others we must take - to abandon the culture of death and embrace
the culture of life.
As Pope Francis reminds us, there is no humane way of taking a life. Let us not
choose whether to use lethal drugs, electric chairs, gas chambers, or firing
squads. Let us take the more courageous step and choose life instead, even when
it seems "unlovable."
(source: Bishop Francis X. DiLorenzo And Bishop Paul S. Loverde, Catholic
Diocese of Arlington---- connectionnewspapers.com)
USA:
Death Penalty
There was little surprise in a federal jury voting death for Boston Marathon
bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, and little ground for sympathy to be found in the
record of the defendant himself beyond his sheer youth. While the evidence
presented at trial seemed to confirm the picture of his enraged older brother
Tamerlan as the radicalized instigator of their brutal and nihilistic marathon
plot, Dzhokhar's protracted and active role ahead of time, and his stone-cold
activities in the hours following the bombing - calmly cruising the dairy aisle
at Whole Foods - are not the material from which a strong mitigation case is
made. To spare him, the jury would have had to vote against capital punishment
itself; since they were "death qualified" ahead of time in the selection
process this was never in the cards.
But while perhaps inevitable, Tsarnaev's federal-court death sentence is still
profoundly unsettling for most Bostonians - and should be unsettling nationwide
too. Tsarnaev was sentenced to death in a state which had abolished capital
punishment 31 years ago; in a city whose residents had overwhelmingly preferred
him to be imprisoned for life; and in a courtroom in which sat survivors and
family members left bereft by the Tsarnaevs' warped jihad who themselves were
deeply divided about his fate. What does it mean that a killer is sentenced to
die by lethal injection against the wishes - expressed in law, polls and the
words of many survivors - of the very community he injured? What is the purpose
of a federal prosecution imposing capital punishment on a region which wants
none of it, at a moment when capital punishment has been abandoned by more than
one third of all states?
State death-penalty law, for better or worse, is usually a deep reflection of
local history, culture and debate. That's true in the states which still
routinely execute prisoners - Texas, Oklahoma and the deep-South death penalty
strongholds; those which shut their death rows decades ago, such as West
Virginia and Michigan; and of the nine states which have abolished capital
punishment since 1980, including Massachusetts.
The federal death penalty, on the other hand, is a different story: largely a
recent invention, radically expanded during a few brief years of Bill Clinton's
presidency. Ever since, the federal death penalty - both in the laws passed by
Congress and the cases selectively pursued by U.S. attorneys - has been all
about politics of the most cynically expedient variety. Most relevant to the
Tsarnaev case, the federal death penalty has been a convenient vehicle for
Washington Republicans and Democrats alike to profit from the same terrorism
panic which after 9/11 saddled us with the Patriot Act.
Up until 20 years ago, the federal death penalty was limited to treason and a
handful of other rare offenses not covered by state criminal laws. But in 1994,
the Clinton administration - responding to the 1st World Trade Center bombing
and otherwise hoping to burnish its tough-on-crime credentials - radically
expanded capital punishment, writing terrorism in among dozens of new federal
death-penalty offenses into that year's sweeping criminal-justice reform
package. It didn't do much good; 7 months after the bill was signed, Timothy
McVeigh and 2 co-conspirators bombed the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma
City (a tragedy whose 20th anniversary was marked during the Tsarnaev trial).
So the next year, Clinton and Congress went even further, pushing through the
Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act. This package - surely one of the
most deceptively-labeled bills of all time - limited habeas corpus and
otherwise weakened the protections offered to state and federal death-row
prisoners alike, most having nothing to do with terrorism, national security or
anything other than conventional murder.
Between them, these two reforms gutted the federal appeals rights of
conventional death-row prisoners. By putting crimes previously prosecuted by
states onto the federal books, they also enabled U.S. attorneys to push capital
trials into non-death-penalty jurisdictions, occasionally leading to notable
conflicts. In 2011, for instance, federal prosecutors in Rhode Island - a state
without capital punishment since the 80s - insisted on pursuing capital charges
against a gas-station robber who would otherwise have been tried, convicted and
sentenced in state criminal courts. Then-Governor Lincoln Chafee, incensed at
this imposition of a death-penalty trial on his state, committed a singular act
of civil disobedience: for almost 2 years he refused to hand the offender over
to the feds. The dispute was only settled when the robber pleaded guilty in
return for life without parole.
But terrorism? As far as national security is concerned, the federal death
penalty has been meaningless. It did nothing to deter Oklahoma City, the 9/11
attacks, or ideologically motivated lone-wolves like Nidal Malik Hassan, the
Fort Hood shooter, or the Tsarnaevs. Meanwhile Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other
9/11 conspirators won't even be tried under the Antiterrorism and Effective
Death Penalty Act, since the same politicians who clamor for the death penalty
for terrorism suspects are unwilling to entrust Guantanamo prisoners to U.S.
courts.
In 1994, the death penalty could at least be claimed as policy in the
overwhelming majority, if not totality, of states. The Clinton administration's
promotion of capital prosecution could perhaps be defended as effective
electoral politics. Now, with the death penalty abolished in 18 states, that
consensus is over.
Whether the federal government will even have a mechanism for eventually
executing Tsarnaev is now in a matter of debate. The last time a terrorist
bomber was executed was McVeigh, killed by lethal injection in Indiana in June
2001. At his execution, news reporters noted tears streaming from one
otherwise-immobile eye as the court-approved 3-drug poison regimen pumped
through his veins. Those tears caught the attention of a Columbia University
anesthesiologist named Dr. Mark Heath; from operating room experience Heath
recognized it not as a sign of emotion but as a classic scientific indication
that the pain-masking sedative in the federal government's killing cocktail was
wearing off, with McVeigh still paralyzed but now in unspeakable agony. From
McVeigh's teardrop and Heath's diagnosis flowed 15 years of medical journal and
law review articles, lawsuits and worldwide alarm about the procurement of
drugs for America's lethal injections. International pressure led drug
companies to refuse to supply state corrections departments with the cocktail's
ingredients. During the Tsarnaev trial, the lethal-injection debate reached the
Supreme Court, with a fractious and macabre argument among the justices over
whether the injection of substitute death-row cocktails, improvised from
shadowy suppliers, amount to cruel and unusual punishment.
It should be clear by now that the federal death penalty, far from reflecting
social consensus or meaningful deterrence, is entirely political in nature -
designed to sell the capital punishment back to states that clearly rejected
it, and to inoculate Democratic and Republican presidents alike in the
country's most ardently pro-execution regions. But the criminal-justice culture
war has turned around. In a new libertarian wave, Congress, the president and
state legislatures are variously ratcheting down the drug war, reversing
3-strikes criminal laws and trying desperately to empty overcrowded, expensive
and dangerously ill-functioning prisons. In 1994, Bill Clinton Democrats played
the federal death penalty card to retain their hold in divided states. But
since then 6 states, including four that today have Republican governors - New
Jersey, New Mexico, Maryland and Illinois - have since turned back from the
death penalty.
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It's a different time. 3 of Hillary Rodham Clinton's Democratic rivals -
Chafee, Maryland's former Governor Martin O'Malley and Vermont Senator Bernie
Sanders - are death-penalty opponents. Chaffee, who 4 years ago had taken that
principled stand against federal prosecutors, and O'Malley, who as Governor
abolished capital punishment in Maryland, made statements of respect for the
Boston jury, but made clear their determination to stay the abolitionist
course. Sooner or later the federal death penalty will be a Democratic campaign
issue, and Hillary Clinton will be challenged on her views.
While Boston Mayor Marty Walsh and Governor Charlie Baker both expressed hope
that the verdict would bring, in Baker's words, "some kind of closure," they,
like the rest of Boston, kept their response low-key. They understood that this
verdict is not one that most people in their city and state would seek. They
clearly did not want to be part of any national cheering section. And while
closure may be what politicians are expected to seek, there's no evidence the
federal death penalty - or any capital punishment law - provides it. For Boston
Tsarnaev's federal death sentence can only prolong the agony, keeping the
bomber front and center for years to come. In the words of Bill and Denise
Richard, whose son was killed and daughter maimed in the Marathon bombing, "As
long as the defendant is in the spotlight, we have no choice but to live a
story told on his terms, not ours."
(source: Bruce Shapiro, The Nation)
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