Religion News and Developments: 2007
(See Pew Forum, December 19, 2007). See Public Opinion. In polls that ask respondents to compare the death penalty with a sentence of life without parole, support for the death penalty is considerably lower, and often below support for full life sentences.
Jews join struggle against NJ death penalty by Michal Lando
December 13, 2007
Jerusalem Post
New Jersey is on its way to becoming the first state to repeal the death penalty since 1976, when the US Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment, and Jews are using tradition to weigh in on the process.
On Monday, a bill to replace the death penalty with life in prison with no parole was approved by the New Jersey Senate, largely seen as the greatest obstacle to repeal. State legislators expect the Democrat-controlled General Assembly, which votes Thursday, to approve the measure as well, almost guaranteeing an end to the death penalty in the state's judicial system.
The vote is the result of a commission charged in 2006 by the New Jersey legislature with studying all aspects of the death penalty as currently administered in the state. The New Jersey Death Penalty Study Commission, which looked at deterrence, accuracy and financial costs among a number of other death penalty-related issues, found that the system was ineffective and recommended that it be replaced with life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Leading up to the vote, several Jewish efforts were under way in support of the repeal.
Rabbis from across New Jersey wrote to the members of the State Senate and Assembly urging them to follow the commission's recommendations.
"The Jewish ethical tradition guides me to oppose New Jersey's death penalty, which is unnecessary and poses an unacceptable risk of executing someone innocent," said Rabbi Robert Scheinberg, a member of the commission and a signer of the letter to the legislature. "I'm heartened by how much support the process in New Jersey has gotten from Jewish communal leadership."
Jewish law allows for the death penalty, but sets numerous conditions that must be met before an execution can be allowed to go forward. The standards are so strict that executions under Jewish law were rare.
Since 1959, the Reform Movement and the Union of American Hebrew Congregations have officially opposed the death penalty. In 1996, the Rabbinic Assembly of the Conservative Movement approved a resolution opposing the adoption of any new death penalty laws and urging the abolition of existing laws. And in 2000, the Union of Orthodox Congregations of America endorsed a call for a nationwide moratorium on executions pending a comprehensive review of how the penalty is administered in American courts.
In the letter to the legislature, which was signed by 50 rabbis from across the denominations, the signers wrote that "Jewish law guides us to take unprecedented steps to prevent the execution of an innocent person."
"The Talmud teaches that "a doubt in capital charges should always be for the benefit of the accused" (Baba Batra 50b, Sanhedrin 79a). The Torah's injunction "You shall have one law, for the native and the stranger alike" (Leviticus 24:22) commands that criminal penalties be applied fairly, not capriciously," the rabbis wrote.
The letter concluded by urging the lawmakers to enact the New Jersey Death Penalty Study Commission's call to change the death penalty to life without parole, and to use the funds saved to provide services to murder victims' family members.
"I'm not opposed to the death penalty in principle, but have felt for a long time that I don't have confidence in our courts to carry it out," Scheinberg said. "I think a lot of people who have spent time to think seriously about it and study it, whether on the right or left of the political spectrum, come to simply see it as problematic."
Though legislatures around the country have tried to repeal the death penalty, none have succeeded. This year, bills to repeal capital punishment failed in Nebraska, Montana, Maryland and New Mexico. Some states, such as New York, have succeeded in doing so through the courts or through governor-imposed moratoriums.
But repealing the death penalty through the legislature holds more weight. In terms of assessing a consensus on capital punishment, action by state legislatures serves as valid indicators of popular will.
Capital punishment in the US is determined state by state, at the local legislative level. Currently, 37 of the 50 states have a death penalty. Since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976, there have been 1,099 executions in the United States. There were 53 executions in 2006. The country's last execution was in September in Texas. Since then, executions have been delayed pending a US Supreme Court decision on whether execution by lethal injection violates the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
Many hope that a repeal in the New Jersey legislature will lead other states to follow suit.
Eight men are currently on death row in New Jersey, though no one has been executed in the state since 1963 and the process for carrying out an execution was declared unconstitutional by a state appeals court in 2004.
"It is symbolic more than anything else, but there are practical aspects [to a repeal]," said Rachel Barkow, a law professor at New York University. "By abolishing it, you take it off the table as something to threaten with, and you get rid of the expense of a capital trial."
Kenneth Fox, vice president of the Jewish Social Policy Action Network, which lobbied on behalf of the New Jersey legislation, said it was consistent with the "overwhelming" position of Jews.
"As different states go along, they will come to the same conclusion," said Fox. "More and more, when people put emotions aside and look at the facts, they will see it is not worth it to us as a society because of what it costs in financial, spiritual and moral ways."
Death Penalty Tests a Church as It Mourns By ALISON LEIGH COWAN October 28, 2007New York Times
CHESHIRE, Conn., Oct. 25 — The United Methodist Church here is the kind of politically active place where parishioners take to the pulpit to discuss poverty in El Salvador and refugees living in Meriden. But few issues engage its passions as much as the death penalty.
The last three pastors were opponents of capital punishment. Church-sponsored adult education classes promote the idea of “restorative justice,” advocating rehabilitation over punishment. Two years ago, congregants attended midnight vigils outside the prison where Connecticut executed a prisoner for the first time in 45 years.So it might have been expected that United Methodist congregants would speak out forcefully when a brutal triple murder here in July led to tough new policies against violent criminals across the state and a pledge from prosecutors to seek capital punishment against the defendants.
But the congregation has been largely quiet, not out of indifference, but anguish: the victims were popular and active members of the church — Jennifer Hawke-Petit, 48, and her two daughters, Hayley, 17, and Michaela, 11. On July 23, two men broke into the family’s home. Mrs. Hawke-Petit was strangled and her daughters died in a fire that the police say was set by the intruders.
The killings have not just stunned the congregation, they have spurred quiet debate about how it should respond to the crime and whether it should publicly oppose the punishment that may follow. It has also caused a few to reassess how they feel about the punishment.
At the heart of the debate are questions about how Mrs. Hawke-Petit’s husband, William, who survived the attack, feels about the death penalty. The indications are conflicting. Sensitive to his grief, many of the church’s most ardent capital punishment opponents have been hesitant to speak against the capital charges brought against two parolees charged with the killings, Joshua Komisarjevsky and Steven Hayes.
“I’m treading lightly out of respect for the Petit family,” said the church’s pastor, the Rev. Stephen E. Volpe, a death penalty opponent. “I do not feel we, in this church, ought to make this tragedy the rallying cry for anything at this point.”
At the same time, there is a widespread belief that Mrs. Hawke-Petit was opposed to capital punishment. Having her killers put to death would be the last thing she would want, many say.
“It’d be so dishonoring to her life to do anything violent in her name,” said Carolyn Hardin Engelhardt, a church member who is the director of the ministry resource center at Yale Divinity School Library. “That’s not the kind of person she was.”
At least two church members say they think that Mrs. Hawke-Petit endorsed an anti-death-penalty document known as a Declaration of Life. The declaration states a person’s opposition to capital punishment and asks that prosecutors, in the event of the person’s own death in a capital crime, do not seek the death penalty. The documents have been signed by thousands of people, including Mario M. Cuomo, the former governor of New York, and Martin Sheen, the actor.
“She was a nurse and she would not cause harm to anyone,” said Lucy Earley, a congregant who notarized at least a dozen declarations during an appeal at the church and said she thought Mrs. Hawke-Petit’s was among them.
Declarations of Life are often kept with a person’s will or other important papers; sometimes they are filed with registries. But it could not be independently determined whether Mrs. Hawke-Petit had signed one. Although the family’s home was heavily damaged in the fire and no independent copies have surfaced, death penalty opponents both inside and outside the church have kept trying to find one. A clear indication that Mrs. Hawke-Petit rejected capital punishment could help them mobilize, they say, not only in the Cheshire case but also on behalf of the nine people on Connecticut’s death row in Somers.
The opponents also say that a signed declaration by Mrs. Hawke-Petit opposing capital punishment could help counter the public outrage to the killings — outrage that has pressured state officials to suspend parole for violent criminals.
Still, if proof of Mrs. Hawke-Petit’s sentiments did surface, it would have little standing in court, lawyers and prosecutors say.
“Our job is to enforce the
law no matter who the victim is or what the victim’s religious beliefs
are,” said John A. Connelly, a veteran prosecutor in Waterbury who is
not involved in the Cheshire case. “If you started imposing the death
penalty based on what the victim’s family felt, it would truly become
arbitrary and capricious.”
Michael Dearington, the state’s attorney who is prosecuting the suspects in the Petit killings, said he did not know whether Mrs. Hawke-Petit had signed a Declaration of Life. Asked if he knew Dr. Petit’s views on the death penalty, he replied, “I have a no comment on that.”
Not surprisingly, there has been much speculation within the church about whether William Petit, a physician, supports capital punishment. Though he has participated in tributes to his family and has attended church in recent weeks, Dr. Petit has not granted interviews since the killings. “He’s just not ready,” his mother, Barbara Petit, said recently.
A friend and member of United Methodist, Dr. Phil Brewer, said he came away from a recent meeting with Dr. Petit with the impression that his friend “was strongly in favor of executing these guys, once they were found guilty.”
Dr. Brewer said that Dr. Petit had no quarrel with individuals from United Methodist speaking out against the death penalty. But he would “not take it kindly if our congregation as a whole took a position against the death penalty,” Dr. Brewer said.
“It would be seen as an effort to force him into choosing between being part of the congregation or wanting to have the death penalty,” he added.
At a memorial service in September for his family, Dr. Petit read from the Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi, which included the passage, “Where there is injury, pardon.”
Some members took that as a sign that he was grappling with his feelings about capital punishment.
“What really took my breath away when he cited the Prayer of St. Francis and either lingered on the word ‘pardon’ or got stuck on the word ‘pardon,’ ” Dr. Brewer said. “There was a long pause after he spoke the word, and to me, that signaled that this was on his mind.”
Dr. Brewer’s wife, Dr. Karen Brown, said, “I think it’s what he wants to feel, but it’s hard to get there.”
The killings have prompted the church to slow down in other ways. Because of sensitivities about Dr. Petit’s feelings, church members called off plans to invite a prominent death penalty opponent to address the congregation. There was also talk of skipping the church’s annual collection of goods for holiday packages for local prison inmates, though congregants decided to undertake the drive after all. The killings have even caused some congregants to reconsider their personal views.
“I think we’ve all rethought it because it’s pretty easy to believe something when it’s far away and then when something happens and it’s a real situation you have to examine what you believe,” said Dr. Brown. She said she remained opposed to capital punishment.
The Rev. Diana Jani Druck, who led the Cheshire congregation from 2001 to 2005, said the Petit case would be an interesting test for the congregation and the state.
The case, she said, lacks some of the factors that make some people object to the death penalty as patently unfair, like race. (The suspects are white, as were the Petits.) Because both defendants were caught fleeing the crime scene, there may be fewer questions about mistaken identity. And the gruesome nature of the crime, combined with the kinship many congregants felt for the Petits, may stir feelings of vengeance even in death penalty opponents, she said.
She herself acknowledged feeling “real violent anger” when first shown photographs of the suspects. But on reflection, she said, “I just don’t see what purpose is served in putting them to death.”
United Methodists have a long tradition of embracing those on the fringes of society, and concern over the death penalty has long found a home on the denomination’s social agenda. Dissent is permitted, but those who agree with the policy are encouraged to work to end capital punishment.
Mrs. Hawke-Petit was raised in that tradition. Her father, the Rev. Richard Hawke, led six Methodist congregations in western Pennsylvania and was the district superintendent in Pittsburgh before retiring in 1994. He is an opponent of capital punishment.
Four years after Jennifer and William Petit married in 1985, they bought a house in Cheshire and began to attend the local Methodist church regularly. Though William remained a Roman Catholic, “he was a member in everything but name only,” said the Rev. George C. Engelhardt, who was the congregation’s pastor for 29 years before becoming superintendent for several churches in the region.
Mrs. Hawke-Petit taught Sunday school. Michaela played the flute and sang in the church’s musical programs. Hayley learned how to wield a drill while doing home improvements for the disabled with the church’s summer teen brigade.
All four Petits participated in the church’s annual Living Nativity pageant, posing as human statues in the parking lot for 20-minute shifts in support of local charities. Mrs. Hawke-Petit often played Mary or a shepherdess. The girls were angels and Dr. Petit often played a king.
These days, when Dr. Petit attends church, his daughters’ friends sit by him and take turns placing a hand on his shoulder.
Many congregants expect the congregation’s strong anti-death-penalty sentiments to become more public as the Petit case develops.
“Eventually,
it’s something that has to be talked about,” said Carol Wilson, a death
penalty opponent who leads several church community projects. “We’re
just not there yet.”
Oct 29, 2007
IPS
BRUSSELS - On March 23, 1931, an Indian Sikh named Bhagat Singh attained martyrdom when he was hanged by the British for his role in the militant freedom struggle against the colonial rulers.
About 75 years later, Professor Jagmohan Singh, a nephew of the liberation hero, preaches peace and mercy as he joins a worldwide campaign, especially in Europe, by his Sikh community against death penalty.
The life and work of Indian freedom fighter Bhagat Singh and his death by hanging in Lahore (now Pakistan) at the hands of British imperialism has been a great saga of patriotism for generations of Indians.
But while Bhagat Singh trod a path of violence to achieve freedom, his Sikh community, though known as a courageous warrior race, today believes more in the non-violence preaching of Mahatma Gandhi, the man who brought India independence from British rule by peaceful non-cooperation. Gandhi was vocal against death penalty, saying: "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind."
"We wish to argue that our country can honour Mahatma Gandhi, the apostle of peace and non-violence and (the) martyr Bhagat Singh by doing away with the death penalty altogether," says Professor Singh, a Sikh politician, and in the forefront of the current campaign.
"A civil society should not descend to the status of murderers by preferring revenge over far better forms of justice. All investigations, however meticulous, are subject to human error. Such errors become irreversible in a case where the death penalty is imposed. All over the world, there have been cases of executed people being proved innocent after their death."
Since early 2006, Sikhs in France have joined the campaign, organising protests and lodging petitions with the Indian embassy in Paris expressing their opposition to the death penalty. They are also calling for release of all Sikhs they claim have been jailed "unjustly" for political reasons in India. In August 2007, a Europe-wide protest by Sikhs calling for an end to the death penalty in India commenced in Brussels outside the European Commission headquarters and the European Parliament building.
The Sikhs then urged European Parliament president Hans-Gert Poettering and the EC Commissioner for External Relations Benita Ferrero-Waldner to link future trade with India with abolition of the death penalty and respect for the rights of minorities, such as the Sikhs.
The EU is India's largest trading partner, responsible for about 25 percent of its exports.
Although India's highest courts have ruled that the death penalty can only be applied in the "rarest of rare" cases, there are believed to be as many as 700 people on the death row in India awaiting execution. Last July, death sentences were handed down to six convicted of involvement in the 1993 serial blasts in Mumbai, India's financial capital.
The EU did lobby strongly, but unsuccessfully, before the execution of Dhanonjoy Chaterjee on Aug. 14, 2004. This was India's last execution, and ended a nine-year-long moratorium on executions in India.
Bhai Amrik Singh, chair of the Sikh Federation (UK) comments: "The ending of the moratorium was a backward and retrograde step by the Indian regime, and a show of defiance to the EU."
The current campaigning in Europe is highlighting the case of Professor Davinderpal Singh Bhullar where Germany, a prominent EU member, is directly involved.
The Bhullar affair is one of the most controversial and high profile death penalty cases in recent Indian history. Almost 12 years ago, Bhullar, a Sikh political activist, was deported from Germany to India on the basis that he had nothing to fear on his return.
But Bhullar was arrested immediately he landed in Delhi. In prison he was allegedly tortured to obtain a false confession, and in 2001 he was sentenced to death by hanging for a crime he allegedly did not commit. Sikhs say Germany's deportation of Bhullar to a country still retaining the death penalty was a violation of the European Convention on Human Rights.
The latest death sentences to be handed down by Indian courts were on Jul. 30. Jagtar Singh and Balwant Singh, both Sikhs, were convicted of the August 1995 assassination of then Punjab chief minister Beant Singh and 17 others. The sentences triggered worldwide Sikh protest, including leading figures in the community in the Punjab province of India.
The European Commission, European Parliament and Council of the European Union are now being urged to press for the death sentences to be lifted. According to Professor Jagmohan Singh, in a country like India, where there is a huge gap between the privileged and the dispossessed, the death penalty becomes the final method for implementing class injustice.
"A cursory glance at the list of all those executed in our country will reveal that almost all of them were poor. The rich are rarely found guilty, and even if they are, they are rarely executed.
"There is no international evidence to suggest that the death penalty is a deterrent to violent and heinous crime. Countries like Britain that did away with the death penalty did not see a rise in such crimes, while countries like the U.S., which continue to impose the penalty, show no decline," Jagmohan Singh says.
To underline that the current anti-death penalty campaign is not only about Sikhs on the death row, Singh also calls for the sparing of another high-profile death row inmate in India, the alleged terrorist Mohammed Afzal, also known as Afzal Guru, a Muslim from India's trouble-torn state of Jammu and Kashmir.
Afzal was convicted of conspiracy in the December 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament. In 2004, he was sentenced to death by the Supreme Court of India, but his sentence was stayed after his family filed a mercy petition to the President of India.
"If Afzal is a terrorist today, he was surely not born one. And he need not die one. Circumstances made him what he is. And circumstances may change him. The death penalty will change no one. Far from being a deterrent, martyrdom, as some will surely perceive his death, can only achieve the opposite effect," says Singh.
He adds: "I believe that the Sikh ethical approach of compassion, forgiveness and scope for reformation of one's life is a prerequisite for a progressive civil society. It is significant to mention that Maharaja Ranjit Singh, the famous Indian Sikh ruler, in his 40-year-reign (1799-1839) did not use the death penalty, even in cases where he was the subject of attack. It is high time we end this inhuman practice." (END/2007) Religious leaders plead to end death penalty in N.J. By BOB MAKIN
STAFF WRITER
November 28, 2007
Home News Tribune
TRENTON — More than 550 New Jersey religious leaders — including 135 from Middlesex, Somerset, Union and Hunterdon counties — are calling on state lawmakers to abolish the death penalty.
The religious leaders from varying faiths made their pleas in two
letters delivered Tuesday to all 120 legislators and Gov. Jon S.
Corzine. They say the death penalty fails the state legally, morally
and economically.
One letter, signed by more than 500 leaders from various faiths, was delivered and organized by New Jerseyans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. The other was signed by the state's five Roman Catholic bishops, three auxiliary bishops and two Byzantine Catholic bishops and delivered by the New Jersey Catholic Conference.
"We write to you with the sound moral backing of official positions taken by the leadership bodies of our various denominations and faiths," the larger petition said. "We wish to be clear, however, that our concerns are secular and pragmatic, just as much as they are rooted in our religious traditions. The death penalty is not in the best interests of our state, our justice system, or the safety of our people."
The exoneration of more than 200 death-row inmates throughout the country led many to sign the larger petition, including Rabbi Arnie Gluck of Temple Beth-El, Hillsborough; the Rev. Charles Cicerale, administrator of St. James Parish, Woodbridge, and many of the Sisters of Mercy in Watchung.
"God help us if we ever were to execute an innocent person," Gluck said Tuesday. "That requires moral certainty and judicial propriety the likes of which our society is incapable of administering given all the realities of our lives and our world. And there have been so many examples in the last decade alone where it has been proven people on death row have been exonerated. It leaves one in gaping horror at the likelihood that numerous innocent people have been executed in our society."
Sister Theresina Flannery, one of the many Sisters of Mercy who signed the Alternatives letter, added, "Often the greater percentage on death row are minority people or the poor and uneducated who don't have correct counsel to present their case."
Cicerale said his position is influenced by saying Mass monthly at East Jersey State Prison in Rahway.
While there are no death-row inmates there, prisoners often speak of injustice, he said.
"There's always more to the reason why they're behind the wall than the court would acknowledge," Cicerale said. "I just know and have heard of the stories of injustice, especially when it involves the potential extermination of their life."
Clergy members said that the death penalty does not serve as a deterrent, including the Rev. Susan Veronica Rak of the Unitarian Society in East Brunswick.
"I don't know that it brings the closure that people think that they are looking for. It seems to be more revenged-based than rehabilitation- and reconciliation-based," Rak said.
Sister Eileen Smith, another Sister of Mercy, added, "I feel very badly for those who suffer the loss of a loved one, but I don't believe taking the life of another in any way solves anything."
The Most Rev. Paul G. Bootkoski, the bishop of Metuchen, co-signed the separate bishops' statement, which read:
"Because the state of New Jersey has other means to redress the injustice caused by crime and to effectively prevent crime by rendering the one who has committed the offense incapable of doing harm and because we recognize the dignity of all human life, we continue oppose the use of capital punishment vigorously. Life in prison without the possibility of parole is an alternative to the death penalty."
The clergy's pleas come as legislators prepare to vote in coming weeks on replacing the death penalty with life in prison without parole. If it did, New Jersey would become the first state to abolish the death penalty since it was reinstated in 1976 by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Legislators will begin to discuss the issue on Monday based on the recommendations released in January by the New Jersey Death Penalty Study Commission. The bipartisan commission also suggested that savings from repealing the death penalty be used to assist homicide survivors in New Jersey, which also was recommended by the signers of the letter delivered by New Jerseyans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.
For a complete list of participating clergy, log on to thnt.com.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
IN THEORY: Opinions on the death penalty June 17, 2007The Daily Pilot
Many academics in recent years have been arguing that their studies prove the death penalty deters murder. The various studies show that between 3 and 18 lives could be saved by executing a convicted killer. Critics question the data, saying that the experts made mistakes in their methodology. What do you think of this recent data? Has it affected your position on the issue?
Judaism has always believed in capital punishment based upon Biblical Law.
A man must stand trial according to due process of law. You shall not murder is the sixth of the Ten Commandments. It is followed by another of God's Decrees that "if you shed the blood of your brother, then your blood shall be shed in its place."
It should be noted that "one should not bear false witness against his neighbor." Therefore, capital punishment is enforced based upon a witness, evidence and a unanimous judge decree.
Recent public opinion of the 21st century has not changed my view of opinion on the matter of capital punishment. It should be carried out in cases of premeditated murder.
- RABBI MARC RUBENSTEIN
Statisticians cite research on capital punishment as examples of people deciding what point they want to make before collecting data in ways that will prove their point. Not only are there conflicting studies as to whether or not the death penalty deters murder, there is also data on different sides as to whether or not capital punishment is applied justly to minorities, the poor and those who cannot afford adequate legal representation.
I appreciate the conclusion of the American Bar Assn. that administration of the death penalty is "a haphazard maze of unfair practices with no internal consistency;" the ABA has called for a moratorium on executions.
Jesus called for redemptive and reconciling love of neighbor, even of one's enemies; retribution and vengeance have no place for his beloveds. Personally, I don't understand how those of us who worship a God who in human life suffered capital punishment can support the death penalty; I think that life imprisonment without any possibility of parole should be a sufficient "deterrent." The Episcopal Church has consistently opposed capital punishment.
The American Jewish Committee covers the most bases best for me in its statement of May 6, 1972: "Whereas capital punishment degrades and brutalizes the society which practices it; and whereas those who seek to retain the death penalty have failed to establish its deterrent effect or to recognize the fallibility of criminal justice institutions; and whereas capital punishment has too often been discriminatory in its application and is increasingly being rejected by civilized peoples throughout the world; and whereas we agree that the death penalty is cruel, unjust and incompatible with the dignity and self respect of man; now therefore be it resolved that the American Jewish Committee be recorded as favoring the abolition of the death penalty."
I, too, continue to favor abolition of the death penalty.
- PETER D. HAYNES (THE VERY REV'D CANON)
I stand firmly in the anti-death penalty camp. The statistics that show that capital punishment can significantly reduce murder is certainly appealing. After all, who doesn't want to reduce the number of homicides? While the concept of violent retribution may have worked in an ancient society, my Christian faith challenges me to respond differently. The God that punishes acts of murder by murdering is not the God I believe in. I believe that Jesus calls us to take responsibility for our actions, petitioning us to make the wrongs right, begging us to work for a world where oppression, hatred and acts of cruelty and murder do not reign. However, he says very clearly that we should not attempt to right a wrong with another wrong.
One of my parishioners said it plainly: "We cannot become that which we abhor."
I'm not convinced of the accuracy of the statistics, but even if it were correct that the death penalty is an effective deterrent, it still does not sway my belief that capital punishment is inhumane. I believe that whether we like it or not, when we condone the death penalty, corporately we all become the murderers we so long to eradicate from our society.
- REV. SARAH HALVERSON Vatican Says Death Penalty Is "Affront to Human Dignity"
In a position paper
issued this month during the World Congress
Against the Death Penalty in Paris, the Vatican said that
the death penalty "is not only a refusal of the right to life, but
it also is an affront to human dignity." Echoing the Catechism of
the Catholic Church, the paper noted that while governments have an
obligation to protect their citizens, "today it truly is difficult to
justify" using capital punishment when other means of protection, such
as life in prison, are possible. The Vatican also gave support to all
international campaigns to proclaim a moratorium on the use of capital
punishment and the abolition of the death penalty worldwide."The Holy See takes this occassion to welcome and affirm again its support for all initiatives aimed at defending the inherent and inviolable value of all human life . . . . Consciences have been awakened by the need for a great recognition of the inalienable dignity of human beings and by the universality and integrity of human rights, beginning with the right to life," the Vatican stated. The Holy See added that the death penalty carries "numerous risks," including the danger of punishing innocent people, and that capital punishment promotes "violent forms of revenge rather than a true sense of social justice." The paper concluded that the death penalty contributes to a "culture of violence" and that for Christians it shows "a contempt for the Gospel teaching on forgiveness."
(Catholic News Service, February 7, 2007). See New Voices and Religion.
RELIGIOUS VIEWS: Leading Baptist Theologian Calls for National Halt to Executions
Professor David Gushee, Graves Professor of
Moral Philosophy at
Union University in Jackson, Tennessee, called for a national halt to
executions because the death penalty as a public policy "fails
the most basic standards of justice." Prof. Gushee, writing for the Associated
Baptist Press, stated that the recent moratorium in Tennessee
surrounding lethal injection problems should be extended to review the
entire application of the death penalty, and that other states should
take similar action. Prof. Gushee wrote:
In a move that received very little attention, Gov. Phil Bredesen recently suspended all executions in Tennessee until May, pending a full review of what he called our “sloppy” execution procedures. The governor is to be commended for this brave and wise decision.
But I suggest that he take this opportunity to review not just the execution procedures, but the entire application of the death penalty in this state. That will take far longer than a few months. We need a death penalty moratorium—not just in Tennessee but in all states.
When the Supreme Court ruled in 1976 that states could resume executions, they mandated that any state doing so must apply this ultimate penalty in a fair and consistent, rather than arbitrary and capricious, manner. No one can honestly look at the current application of the death penalty in Tennessee and believe that we have met that test.Tennessee’s death-penalty sentencing is rife with error. Half of all death sentences in our state are overturned on appeal due to serious constitutional error, according to a study by the Tennessean. That number does not include those sitting on death row who are, in all likelihood, innocent of the crimes for which they were convicted. One example is Paul House, awaiting execution for over 20 years despite uncontested DNA evidence that he did not rape the woman he was accused of murdering (rape being the state’s theory of the crime). In June 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court found that “viewing the record as a whole, no reasonable juror would have lacked a reasonable doubt.”
Then there’s the way that race affects the use of the death penalty. It is really no coincidence that public-opinion polling finds far less support for capital punishment among blacks than among whites. National studies repeatedly find both race-of-perpetrator and race-of-victim bias in death-penalty sentencing. In Tennessee and most states, racial/ethnic minorities are vastly over-represented on death row, and a full quarter of African-Americans on Tennessee’s death row were sentenced by all-white juries.
Besides race, social class is another distorting factor in the use of the death penalty. If you don’t have money for an attorney, your goose is cooked. In Tennessee, nearly every one of the 102 people on death row could not afford an attorney at trial. With all due respect to our public defenders, if my life were on the line I would want the best private attorney that money could buy. But that is not an option for almost anyone who faces this situation in our state—with predictable results.
We have to be careful and systematic in our thinking here. It is not logical to respond to this evidence by affirming one’s visceral support for the principle of life-for-life. Fine, for argument’s sake, let’s grant that for a moment. Would not such a passion for justice also require the fair application of this penalty? Would we not also want to assure such basics as the actual guilt of the people we are executing, the class-blind and color-blind application of this penalty and the opportunity for adequate legal representation? Would we also want to be sure that the people we are executing are morally responsible for their actions, rather than clinically insane, as are a number of our death row inmates?
Nationally, the application of the death penalty is about as rational and orderly as who wins the lottery. Thousands of people murder and are murdered each year. A small number of (mainly southern) states execute the great majority of those convicted of murder. Evidentiary requirements vary. Which particular types of murder are eligible for capital sentencing vary. Appeals processes vary. Quality of legal representation varies. In the end, a small percentage of convicted murderers get the death penalty, and an even smaller group is actually executed. And more and more, across the country, DNA evidence is showing up to exonerate a significant minority of those executed. How many innocent executed persons is too many?
It would take another column to review the biblical arguments, which in the South are a profound factor in support for the death penalty. Even if we were to take the Old Testament alone as our guide, it requires the eyewitness testimony of two or three witnesses (Deut. 17:6), a stricter standard than our own. It also requires that the justice system “not show partiality” (Deut. 16:19) and therefore that every accused person be treated similarly. And this is not even to consider the profound issues raised by the New Testament’s focus on mercy.
As of now, at least, the death penalty is a public policy that fails the most basic standards of justice. It is time for a moratorium and a comprehensive review.
(Associated Baptist Press, February 8, 2007). See New Voices.