Leaders of national Latino evangelical groups are calling for an end to the death penalty, citing both religious convictions and practical concerns about the fairness of capital punishment. Reverend Gabriel Salguero (pictured), founder of the Latino Evangelical Coalition, said, “Given studies on how the death penalty is meted out, particularly for people of color, if it’s not a level playing field, we need to speak out. … The needle has moved for Latinos and evangelicals.” According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, Latinos comprise a growing portion of the nation’s death rows, increasing from 11% in 2000 to 13.5% in 2010, with half of the new Latino death row inmates coming from California. A 2014 study of California jurors found that white jurors were more likely to impose death sentences if defendants were Latino and poor. Another California study found that the odds that a capital defendant would be sentenced to death were were more than triple for those convicted of killing whites than for those convicted of killing blacks and more than 4 times greater than for defendants convicted of killing Latinos. “There’s been a shift, not just attributed to religion, but a heightened understanding of the death penalty and its implicit bias in the criminal justice system,” said Thomas Saenz, president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Salguero summarized the religious backing for opposition to the death penalty, saying, “The gospel teaches us that crime has a place, but God has the last word….Christ was an innocent man who was executed. If there’s a possibility that we execute one innocent person we should have pause.”
(R. Sager, “Conservative Latino religious groups make big push to end death penalty,” Fox News Latino, August 10, 2016.) See New Voices and Race.
