When Pope Francis asked Catholics to hope this September for an end to the death penalty, I in turn asked my flock to affix him, stating: “It’s well past time that the death penalty be stricken from the books.”
Such a prayer request is especially called for within the Archdiocese of San Francisco, which incorporates inside its boundaries San Quentin State Prison, the regrettable home of California’s death row for male inmates. Although recently Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered it to be dismantled and the condemned sent to other prisons, the irony shouldn’t be lost: The death row at San Quentin has consistently been one among the biggest in the USA (which had, as of earlier this 12 months, over 700 men awaiting execution), although the overwhelming majority of us here within the Bay Area are against capital punishment.
As we learn more in regards to the death penalty in its practical operation, we must always ask ourselves a key query: Is it vital to kill with the intention to protect society?
While the residents of deep-blue California have twice voted to maintain the death penalty on the books, nobody in California has been executed since 2006. And the practice is now officially on hold after Governor Newsom issued a moratorium on its use. Nevertheless, a moratorium is simply a short lived solution; the legal struggle over the death penalty will proceed since a moratorium can easily be lifted later by a future governor (and even by the identical governor, for that matter).
The pope and his predecessors, along along with his brother bishops throughout the world, hold the strong view that the death penalty must be abolished not since it is an intrinsic evil, similar to murder or abortion (which involve the killing of innocent human life). It shouldn’t be; that’s, it shouldn’t be at all times and in all places flawed. But as we learn more in regards to the death penalty in its practical operation, we must always ask ourselves a key query: Is it vital to kill with the intention to protect society? We will once more take our cue from Pope Francis, who revised the Catechism of the Catholic Church in 2018, declaring that the death penalty “is inadmissible since it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person” and stating that the church works “for its abolition worldwide.”
Death penalty advocates argue that executing murderers will deter future murders. The evidence for this claim may be very difficult to ascertain. The truth is, countries that abolish the death penalty are inclined to see declines in murder rates. So it’s with the various states inside our country: Those with the death penalty typically have more murders than states without it.
Most social science evidence each here and abroad suggests that the deterrent effect from the death penalty, if any, is vanishingly small.
Most social science evidence each here and abroad suggests that the deterrent effect from the death penalty, if any, is vanishingly small. For instance, a 2020 study of the death penalty in Japan, published within the journal Supreme Court Economic Review (published by the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University), concluded that “neither the death sentence rate nor the execution rate has a statistically significant effect on the homicide and robbery-homicide rates, whereas the life sentence rate has a major negative effect on the robbery-homicide rate.”
Capital punishment also carries inside it the grave possibility of wrongly executing an innocent man or woman. Since 1973, based on the Death Penalty Information Center, 190 former death-row inmates have been exonerated of all charges related to the wrongful convictions that had put them on death row.
Those of us who follow Jesus Christ must also consider this: Our Lord—who from the cross where he was wrongly executed called out, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” —teaches us that we should be concerned with the soul of the guilty. The death penalty abruptly ends the potential of conversion and mercy.
Recently I had the privilege to look at via Zoom a latest play by Ruth Pe Palileo, “Sons of Columbus” (commissioned by the Benedict XVI Institute), which centered on Blessed Father Michael McGivney’s patient ministry to Chip Smith, a young man on death row for killing the local chief of police. Even in 1880, to my surprise, voices in society were raised against the death penalty for this young man.
We should be concerned with the soul of the guilty. The death penalty abruptly ends the potential of conversion and mercy.
Five days before Chip Smith’s execution, Father McGivney said a High Mass for him on the jail. “I’m requested by Mr. Smith to ask pardon for all faults he could have had and all offenses he could have committed, and at his request I ask for the prayers of all of you, that when next Friday comes he may die a holy death,” Father McGivney said at the top of the Mass.
He asked for prayers for everybody collaborating within the execution, including himself: “To me this duty comes with an almost crushing weight. If I could consistently with my duty be far-off from here next Friday, I should escape perhaps essentially the most trying ordeal of my life, but this sad duty is placed in my way by Windfall and should be fulfilled.”
A holy death, reconciled to God, is what we must always wish for each prisoner on death row, and while there may be life, there may be hope for repentance and reconciliation.
The excellent news is that support for capital punishment has declined markedly from its peak in 1994, when Americans told Gallup they were in favor of the death penalty for convicted murderers by a margin of 80 percent to 16 percent. By 2021, just 54 percent of Americans favored the death penalty.
Yes, we want effective policing and enforcement measures to guard the innocent. We’d like good law enforcement officials to place their lives on the road. We’d like district attorneys willing to implement the laws. We also need restorative justice ministries to bring healing to victims and to encourage reform of the penitent.
Criminal justice can also be social justice. When crime rates soar, it’s the least amongst us, the poor and minorities, who pay the very best price.
But today we now not need capital punishment to guard the common good. If it shouldn’t be vital to kill to defend innocent life, then it’s time for us to say the upper moral ground and abolish the death penalty once for all. It’s a reminder to us that the inherent dignity of each human being calls for us Americans to do higher.
[Read next: “Archbishop Cordileone: Racism is a virus. The Acts of the Apostles shows us how to fight it.”]
