October 20, 1997

As spir­i­tu­al lead­ers in the com­mu­ni­ty we Catholic Bishops of Texas are acute­ly aware of the vio­lence in our state. Despite a grow­ing reliance on longer sen­tences, more pris­ons, and more exe­cu­tions, our state’s crime rate has escalated.

Since the rein­state­ment of the death penal­ty in the United States in 1976, the Catholic Bishops of the United States have repeat­ed­ly con­demned its use as a vio­la­tion of the sanc­ti­ty of human life. Capital pun­ish­ment, along with abor­tion and euthana­sia, is incon­sis- tent with the belief of mil­lions of Texans that all life is sacred.

It is impor­tant that we address this issue at this time. Since 1976 Texas has exe­cut­ed more than 100 men, some of whom were men­tal­ly retard­ed or men­tal­ly ill. We cur­rent­ly have more than 400 men and women on death row.

We sym­pa­thize with the pro­found pain of the vic­tims of bru­tal crimes; nev­er­the­less, we believe that the com­pas­sion­ate exam­ple of Christ calls us to respect the God-giv­en image found even in hardened criminals.

We must now take bold­er steps to change the atti­tude of the American peo­ple regard­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment as a means of deal­ing with a com­plex issue. It is unfor­tu­nate that a large major­i­ty of Americans, includ­ing Catholics, sup­port cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment as a means of deal­ing with crime, even in light of strong evi­dence of its inef­fec­tive­ness, its racial­ly-biased appli­ca­tion, and its stag­ger­ing costs, both mate­ri­al­ly and emotionally.

Capital pun­ish­ment has not proved to be a deter­rent to crime. States which have the death penal­ty do not have low­er rates of vio­lent crime than states with­out the death penal­ty. All oth­er west­ern democ­ra­cies have abol­ished cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and have low­er rates of violent crime.

The impo­si­tion of the death penal­ty has result­ed in racial bias. In fact, the race of the vic­tim has been proven to be the deter­min­ing fac­tor in decid­ing whether to pros­e­cute cap­i­tal cas­es. Of those exe­cut­ed, near­ly 90% were con­vict­ed of killing whites, although peo­ple of col­or are more than half of all homi­cide vic­tims in the United States. More than 60% of the per­sons on death rows in California and Texas are either Black, Latino, Asian, or Native American.

In the State of Texas, it costs $2.3 mil­lion on an aver­age to pros­e­cute and exe­cute each cap­i­tal case as com­pared to $400,000 for life imprisonment.

Tragically, inno­cent peo­ple are some­times put to death by the state. It has been proven in 350 cap­i­tal con­vic­tions over the past 20 years that the con­vict­ed per­son had not com­mit­ted the crime. Of these cas­es, 25 peo­ple were exe­cut­ed before their inno­cence was discovered.

Capital pun­ish­ment does noth­ing for the fam­i­lies of vic­tims of vio­lent crime oth­er than pro­long­ing their suf­fer­ing through many wast­ed years of crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings. Rather than fuel­ing their cry for vengeance, the state could bet­ter serve them by help­ing them come to terms with their grief. We applaud the work of sup­port
groups of vic­tims’ fam­i­lies who have joined togeth­er to work toward rec­on­cil­i­a­tion and reha­bil­i­ta­tion of the peo­ple who caused trag­ic loss in their families.

While human log­ic alone seems to sup­port the abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty, as moral lead­ers we call for alter­na­tives because of its moral incon­gruity in today’s world. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states, ​“If…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 more in con­for­mi­ty with 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 defin­i­tive­ly 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 nonexistent.

In our mod­ern soci­ety, we have means of keep­ing an offend­er from harm­ing oth­ers. Although in pre­vi­ous times peo­ple of faith have employed cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, today we have the abil­i­ty to real­ize bet­ter the prin­ci­ples of mer­cy, for­give­ness and uncon­di­tion­al love for alI peo­ple, as evoked in the Hebrew Scriptures by the Prophet Ezekiel: ​“As I live, says the Lord GOD, I swear I take no plea­sure in the death of the wicked man, but rather in the wicked man’s con­ver­sion, that he may live. Turn, turn from your evil ways!”

We believe that cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment con­tributes to a cli­mate of vio­lence in our state. This cycle of vio­lence can be dimin­ished by life impris­on­ment with­out parole, when nec­es­sary. The words of Ezekiel are a pow­er­ful reminder that repen­tance not revenge, con­ver­sion not death are bet­ter guides for pub­lic pol­i­cy on the death penal­ty than the cur­rent pol­i­cy of vio­lence for vio­lence, death for death.

As reli­gious lead­ers, we are deeply con­cerned that the State of Texas is usurp­ing the sov­er­eign domin­ion of God over human life by employ­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment for heinous crimes. We implore all cit­i­zens to call on our elect­ed offi­cials to reject the vio­lence of the death penal­ty and replace it with non-lethal means of pun­ish­ment
which are suf­fi­cient to pro­tect soci­ety from vio­lent offend­ers of human life and public order.