Prosecutors in Augusta, Georgia are seek­ing the death penal­ty against a man accused of mur­der­ing the Rev. Rene Robert (pic­tured), despite their knowl­edge that the Franciscan priest had request­ed that the death penal­ty not be used ​“under any cir­cum­stances” if he were killed. On January 31, Catholic Bishops from Georgia and Florida trav­eled to Augusta to meet with Hank Sims, the act­ing dis­trict attor­ney for the Augusta Judicial Circuit, ask­ing him to respect Reverend Robert’s wish­es and to with­draw cap­i­tal charges against Steven Murray. They also deliv­ered a peti­tion signed by more than 7,400 peo­ple from Rev. Robert’s dio­cese in St. Augustine, Florida, ask­ing that the Reverend’s wish­es be hon­ored. In his work as a Catholic priest, Rev. Robert had devot­ed his life to serv­ing peo­ple con­vict­ed of crimes and those strug­gling with addic­tion and men­tal health prob­lems. He had worked with Murray through his min­istry. Twenty years before he was killed, Rev. Robert signed a ​“Declaration of Life” that stat­ed: ​“I here­by declare that should I die as a result of a vio­lent crime, I request that the per­son or per­sons found guilty of homi­cide for my killing not be sub­ject to or put in jeop­ardy of the death penal­ty under any cir­cum­stances, no mat­ter how heinous their crime, or how much I have suf­fered.” His dec­la­ra­tion also request­ed that the Declaration of Life be admit­ted as evi­dence at tri­al if the pros­e­cu­tion sought the death penal­ty for his mur­der, and asked that the Governor ​“take what­ev­er action is nec­es­sary” to pre­vent any per­son con­vict­ed of his mur­der from being exe­cut­ed. ​“During my life,” he wrote, ​“I want to feel con­fi­dent that under no cir­cum­stances what­so­ev­er will my death result in the cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment of anoth­er human being.” At a press con­fer­ence before the meet­ing, St. Augustine Diocese’s Bishop Felipe Estevez expressed the bish­ops’ oppo­si­tion to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. ​“Imposing a death sen­tence as a con­se­quence of killing wrong­ly per­pet­u­ates a cycle of vio­lence in our com­mu­ni­ty,” he said. ​“The death penal­ty only con­tributes to an ever-grow­ing dis­re­spect for the sacred­ness of human life. … Societies remain safe when vio­lent crim­i­nals are in prison for life with­out parole.” The views of Rev. Robert and the bish­ops reflect the Catholic Church’s long­stand­ing oppo­si­tion to the death penal­ty, which Pope Francis reit­er­at­ed in an address to Congress in 2015.

(K. Guerra, ​“Priests don’t want a man to be on death row. Even if he’s accused of killing one of their own.” The Washington Post, January 31, 2017; K. Brumback, ​“BISHOPS URGE PROSECUTOR TO DROP DEATH IN PRIEST’S KILLING,” Associated Press, January 31, 2017.) See Religion and Victims.

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