Guest editorial by Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia. This column originally appeared at CatholicPhilly.com.
ven when a defendant is well defended, properly tried and justly found guilty, experience shows that capital punishment simply doesn’t work as a deterrent.
Nor does it heal or redress any wounds, because only forgiveness can do that. It does succeed, though, in answering violence with violence — a violence wrapped in the piety of state approval, which implicates all of us as citizens in the taking of more lives.
Turning away from capital punishment does not diminish our support for the families of murder victims. They bear a terrible burden of grief, and they rightly demand justice.
Real murderers deserve punishment; but even properly tried and justly convicted murderers — men and women who are found guilty of heinous crimes — retain their God-given dignity as human beings.
When we take a murderer’s life, we only add to the violence in an already violent culture, and we demean our own dignity in the process.
Both Scripture and Catholic Tradition support the legitimacy of the death penalty under certain limited conditions. But the Church has repeatedly called us to a higher road over the past five decades.
We don’t need to kill people to protect society or punish the guilty. And we should never be eager to take anyone’s life.
As a result, except in the most extreme circumstances, capital punishment cannot be justified. In developed countries like our own, it should have no place in our public life.
Last month in Pennsylvania, execution warrants were signed for four men. A judge stayed one of the execution warrants, but the three remaining warrants could potentially result in the first execution in our state in 13 years. One of the cases in which appeals seem to be exhausted involves Terrance Williams.
In October, Williams is scheduled to die by lethal injection for the murder of Amos Norwood in 1984, a crime committed when he was 18 and a college freshman. Williams is indisputably guilty of the crime. He’s also mentally competent.
His defense attorneys argue that he was repeatedly sexually abused as a youth, including five years of abuse at the hands of the man he murdered, and that this helped motivate his violence. The state counters that all of Williams’ claims — including claims of sexual abuse — have had proper judicial review and been rejected.
Terrance Williams deserves punishment. No one disputes that. But he doesn’t need to die to satisfy justice.
We should think very carefully in the coming days about the kind of justice we want to witness to our young people. Most American Catholics, like many of their fellow citizens, support the death penalty. That doesn’t make it right.
But it does ensure that the wrong-headed lesson of violence "fixing" the violent among us will be taught to another generation.
As children of God, we’re better than this, and we need to start acting like it. We need to end the death penalty now.
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Apparently capital punishment is also more costly than a life sentence because of the appeals process etc. However, the major challenge for justice is the proper and just use of the justice system and the return to a respect for God and life among society. Too often laws are being ignored and sentences applied that are significantly different for various offenders of similar crimes. Lawyers appear to be schooled, not in the spirit and letter of the law, but in changing the meaning of words to achieve an end not justified by those who understand the law and it’s original intent. We have judges who abuse their power and prosecutors whose motivation leaves the defendent at the luck of the draw.
As for a deterrent, today we read of crimes being committed in prison because of lenient rules and privledges (phones, TV etc) not merited by those who are in prison. Sheriff Joe in Az has the best model for how a prison system should be run. While we need a program to rehabilitate prisoners for return to society, we need also to make sure that repeat offenders are, indeed, punished and not given privledges that they will merely abuse and ready themselves for another round of crimes when they get out. Compassion and forgiveness is necessary but responsibility is a two way street.
As a member of the Philadelphia Archdiocese, I commend Archbishop Chaput for speaking out against the death penalty. Although the traditional teaching of the Church does allow capital punishment for the protection of society, I agree that we are called to a higher standard and preserve the lives of even the most heinous murders, while attending to the needs of murder victims and their families. They do have suffered horribly, and need support and compassion. I do think that life imprisonment without the possibility of parole is the best solution. However, recently Philadelphia Mayor Michaell Nutter, a Catholic, was allowed by Archbishop Chaput to visit and speak in several Catholic Schools. Mayor Nutter is a Catholic School graduate. However, he also endorses a city health policy of mailing condoms to public school students, even those in their early teens. I know that an Archbishop can’t control everything that goes on in his diocese. Further, we can’t shut off lines of communication with those with whom we disagree. Still, I’m disappointed that Archbishop Chaput has given Mayor Nutter an opportunity to speak at Catholic schools, given this policy which is clearly contrary to Catholic teaching.
The very first sentence is wrong. Professional, rigorous, peer-reviewed studies have shown, again and again, that several murders are prevented by each execution of a murderer. Unfortunately, those who would be murdered but for the exercise of the death penalty cannot easily be identified, and so they go without any voice.
If we are intent on saving innocent human life, then we must execute those who encompass the deliberate, malicious, and premeditated killing of an innocent human being. To forgo that punishment is to save the guilty at the expense of the innocent.
Archbishop Chaput claims, “experience shows that capital punishment simply doesn’t work as a deterrent.” Cold statistics disagree. Murder rates have been found to drop in the period after a capital punishment has been carried out.
When the Archbishop says, “retain their God-given dignity as human beings” I wonder how he squares that true belief with the practice of keeping convicts caged for a lifetime in conditions that would not be considered inhumane if imposed on zoo animals.
Words of wisdom. Thank you.
What about several cases in the past where denying Capital punishment has allowed two or more victims for the same murderer? What about God’s covenant with Noah. I don’t believe Pope John Paul II abrogated it. If Capital punishment saves even one life, is it not worth permitting in the case of extremely violent crimes? Prisons are obviously not immune to jailbreak.
Your Eminence, you said, “We don’t need to kill people to protect society….” What evidence do you have to prove that?
” ... experience shows that capital punishment simply doesn’t work as a deterrent.”
No proof is give for this statement. It’s merely an assertion.
I suppose it means that since some states like Texas and Ohio use capital punishment and there are still murders in those states that the death penalty is not a deterrence.
Well, then laws against rape and robbery are not deterrence as those crimes still occur with appalling frequencies.
Chaput would be better advised to clean up the Catholic clergy and focus on things like teaching sexual morality and leave matters such as the use of capital punishment—which is not an intrinsic evil like abortion and homosexual marriage are—in the hands of the state.
And I wonder, what is to stop a convicted murder from serving a life sentence in prison from killing a guard or another inmate—another life sentence? Or maybe take away his smoking privileges for a while?
The death penalty leads to cooperation as a bargaining tool of police wherein felons can have it taken off the table if they implicate others involved in their crime.
The removal of the death penalty as a bargaining tool by prosecutors also leads some felons to tell police the whereabouts of the body for the good of the victim’s family.
The abolition of the death penalty endangers inmate and guard lives. Both Fr. Geoghan and Jeffrey Dahmer were killed by lifers in states that had bolished the death penalty. Inmate murders within prison by other inmates are about 70 per year which exceeds slightly the number of those executed by the state.
This recent trend against the death penalty in Catholicism is, like the Inquisition, a negative side trail into the woods.
The Death Penalty may never be used for revenge.
This is what the Catholic Church teaches-
QUOTE - CCC: ” 2267 Assuming that the guilty party’s identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.
If, however, non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people’s safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means, as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.
Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm - without definitely taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself - the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity “are very rare, if not practically non-existent.” UNQUOTE
The lives of prison employees and other prisoners must be protected from the unjust aggressor as well. Murders are committed in prison.
Since none of us has read the Court case transcripts in every individual case, we are not able to speak to specific cases. The Jury was there to hear all the evidence, we were not.
Certainly if new scientic evidence can be presented to a Judge that can prove reasonable doubt, the death penalty must be stopped immediately regarding that convicted person.
Many people are abused as children, yet to do not murder others. So this defense does not hold water.
The Death Penalty can never be used for revenge.
However, this is what the Catholic Church teaches -
QUOTE - - - CCC: ” 2267 Assuming that the guilty party’s identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.
If, however, non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people’s safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means, as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.
Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm - without definitely taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself - the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity “are very rare, if not practically non-existent.” UNQUOTE
The lives of those in general prison populations must be protected as well. Employees and other Prisoners alike.
Many murders are committed in prisons. And we don’t have the funds to give everyone a private room on a permanent basis.
Since we have not read the actual transcript of Court cases for all the details, none of us are equipped to speak to specific cases, like Jury members could.
Many people are abused in childhood. This does not mean that the abused run around killing others. The defense that mommy or daddy made me do it, does not hold water.
It would be more helpful if Bishops and Priests our teachers would stick to the teachings of the Church exactly as stated in the CCC, so confusion would not proliferate among the faithful.
Am I the only one who wonders why more US Bishops do not promote the teaching to read the CCC within his own Diocese?
A truly Gospel challenge that has been sounded for decades now in the Catholic Church. Catholics who support right to life of the unborn are challenged to allign their views of life issues in our American society. Who can we count on to promote life from the unborn to elders in our political life. May it eventually be informed Christians like Archbishop Caput.
@Tim…found your post informative. Could you please tell me where I could learn more about the school visits? I would appreciate it.
Hi Kellyanne. Glad to respond to you. You can find the information about Mayor Nutter’s visit to Little Flower High School for Girls in the Sept.30,2012 issue of Our Sunday Visitor news paper on page 2.
Anywhere int he planet could possibly be one person, yet to at least one personal could possibly be modern society. spartoo spartoo
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