Archbishop's web site Denver Catholic Register Parishes Catholic Pastoral Center
July 10, 2002
Nation showing second thoughts about capital punishment
It's a good time for Coloradans to put all executions on hold
Earlier this week, The New York Times reported that support for capital punishment has dropped by about 10 percent since the mid-1990s. It's now close to a 20-year low.
No one should misread these numbers. Most Americans, including most American Catholics, still strongly support the death penalty. But as a nation, we're beginning to have second thoughts, and for good reasons.
First, studies have already shown that if you're poor, black, brown, uneducated or mentally handicapped, you're far more likely to receive the death penalty. In some states, the inability to hire a private attorney can amount to a death sentence. Calvin Burdine was convicted and sentenced to death despite the fact that his publicly appointed lawyer slept through part of his trial. His conviction was later overturned. Others haven't been so fortunate.
Second, the gravity in every murder trial comes from the fact that a life has been snuffed out — a life that cannot be brought back. Unfortunately, our own justice system has too often colluded in that. Over the last decade, dozens of convicted "murderers" have walked off death row, exonerated by DNA evidence that proved their innocence. Wrongful convictions in capital cases are frightening enough. But even more troubling is what these miscarriages of justice imply: Many other innocent people have almost certainly died, executed for crimes they didn't commit.
Of course, there's more. The death penalty doesn't work as a deterrent. It doesn't give anyone "closure" because only forgiveness can do that. And finally it diminishes us — the executioners — by reducing us to the same violence as the murderer.
We've been blessed this summer with two very important Supreme Court decisions that suggest a new mood about the death penalty. Writing for a 6-3 majority in Atkins v. Virginia, Justice John Paul Stevens said that cruel and unusual punishment — prohibited by the Eighth Amendment — is determined mainly by "evolving standards of decency." He noted a new "national consensus" against executing the mentally disabled. That makes good sense. Americans recoil from hurting the weak. Mentally deficient persons cannot be judged and punished by the same standards applied to fully competent ones.
In Ring v. Arizona, the Supreme Court ruled that, in states where aggravated circumstances need to exist before the death penalty can be imposed, a jury— not a judge or judges — must determine beyond a reasonable doubt whether one or more of the aggravated circumstances do exist. In effect, the Ring decision called into question the sentences of all three men currently on Colorado's death row and helped to trigger the State Assembly's special session this week.
Catholics can respect proposals to make the death penalty contingent on a unanimous jury decision. This approach clearly better protects the rights of the accused and the interests of society. But — more importantly — we should remember that Catholic teaching on the death penalty flows from the sanctity of the human person. All life is sacred. Every person, even the murderer, is a child of God with God-given dignity. As a result, except in the most extreme circumstances, capital punishment cannot be justified. In developed countries like our own, it should have no place in our public life.
This is a good time for Coloradans to put all executions on hold; a good time to think carefully about the kind of justice we want to witness to our young people. We don't need to kill people to protect society. We don't need to kill people to punish the guilty. And we should never be in a hurry to take anyone's life.
As the Assembly meets on this vital issue this week, the governor and legislators could do our state a great service. They could commit themselves to re-examining the death penalty — its justification and its application — in a serious way in next year's regular session.
Colorado has nothing to lose and a lot to gain from the debate. The times call for it. So does common sense.
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