Former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Newt Gingrich said he is ​“more open” to the abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty after hear­ing Pope Francis’ address to Congress. Gingrich, who con­vert­ed to Catholicism sev­er­al years ago, said he was ​“very impressed” with Pope Francis’ com­ments. In an appear­ance on HuffPost Live, Gingrich high­light­ed the work he has done on crim­i­nal jus­tice reform, say­ing, ​“I very deeply believe we need to pro­found­ly rethink what we’ve done over the past 25 years in crim­i­nal jus­tice.” With regards to the death penal­ty, he raised par­tic­u­lar con­cerns about inno­cence: ​“You do want to be care­ful not to exe­cute some­body who you find lat­er on, as we’ve found, to be inno­cent.” Openness to the idea of abo­li­tion rep­re­sents a sig­nif­i­cant change in Gingrich’s stance on the issue, as he was House Speaker when Congress passed the law (known as the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA)) lim­it­ing the avail­abil­i­ty of fed­er­al judi­cial review of death sen­tences imposed in the state courts and once advo­cat­ed a manda­to­ry death penal­ty for drug smugglers.

(P. Lewis, ​“Newt Gingrich ​‘More Open’ To Ending Death Penalty After Pope’s Address,” Huffington Post, September 24, 2015.) See New Voices. Photo by Gage Skidmore.

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