After Spate of Executions, Catholic Group Says Ending Death Penalty is a "Sacred Responsibility"
"As Catholics, we believe in the dignity of all human life, no matter the harm one has caused or suffered.”
By Gary Gately
A U.S. execution spree that put five men to death in a single week underscores the "sacred responsibility" to ban capital punishment, says the head of a Catholic organization that advocates for abolition of the death penalty.
Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy, the executive director of Catholic Mobilizing Network, noted that five states had executed death-row inmates in the week-long span ending Thursday. The most recent executions mark the first time since 2003 that five people have been executed in a seven-day span in the U.S.
“In the face of such death-dealing this week, we have a sacred responsibility and the moral agency to usher in the change we seek,” Vaillancourt Murphy said.
“Simply stated, instead of offering real justice or authentic healing that victims and communities need and desire, executions endorse and perpetuate the cycle of violence,” she added in a statement. “As Catholics, we believe in the dignity of all human life, no matter the harm one has caused or suffered.”
The five men who died in death chambers included one whose murder conviction prosecutors sought to overturn, citing questionable evidence. Another death-row inmate had received a clemency recommendation from a parole board because of doubts about conflicting evidence.
A man convicted of murder was put to death after his co-defendant retracted false testimony that the man was present at the murder scene. One of those executed by nitrogen gas — only the second U.S. use of the controversial method — had suffered a botched execution in 2022 when Alabama prison officials could not establish IV lines for a lethal injection.
Among the five men were also multiple instances of serious mental health issues, extreme trauma and abuse and racially biased juries, Vaillancourt Murphy pointed out.
She called on Catholics to speak out against the death penalty. The Catholic Church celebrates Respect Month Life in October and joins dozens of other organizations across the globe to mark World Day Against the Death Penalty on October 10.
“Catholics have a timely opportunity to proclaim that each of us is made in God’s image,” Vaillancourt Murphy. “From campuses to corner stores, from the pews and pulpits, as people of faith and hope, we must shine our light ever brighter in this present darkness. Together, we not only can turn back this regressive tide, but also generate such a groundswell that a tipping point comes to wipe out the unholy and unjust use of state-sponsored killing in America once and for all.”
“Simply stated, instead of offering real justice or authentic healing that victims and communities need and desire, executions endorse and perpetuate the cycle of violence.” — Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy, executive director, Catholic Mobilizing Network
Since 1976, when the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty, 1,600 people have been executed in the U.S., but executions have declined dramatically over the past few decades.
The executions from September 20 to September 26 claimed the lives of Marcellus Williams in Missouri, Khalil Allah in South Carolina, Travis Mullis in Texas, Emmanuel Littlejohn in Oklahoma and Alan Miller in Alabama. The most recent executions bring to 18 the total thus far this year in the U.S.
Attorneys with the Innocence Project, which takes on cases of those it believes have been wrongfully convicted, joined other members of Williams’ defense team in representing him. The state destroyed or corrupted evidence that could “conclusively prove his innocence,” no DNA evidence linked him to the crime, and two prosecution witnesses were paid for their testimony, the Innocence Project said in a statement.
After Williams’ execution, St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell said in a statement: “Marcellus Williams should be alive today. If there is even the shadow of a doubt of innocence, the death penalty should never be an option. This outcome did not serve the interests of justice.”
In January, the St. Louis County prosecutor’s office filed a motion to vacate Williams’ 2001 conviction in the killing of journalist Felicia Gayle in her home in the St. Louis suburbs. Bell wrote that new DNA evidence, growing doubts about the credibility of the state’s key witnesses and constitutional defects — including ineffective counsel and racially discriminatory jury selection at trial — compelled him to ask the county Circuit Court “to correct this manifest injustice.”
Gayle’s family opposed Williams’ execution, and more than 1 million people signed petitions demanding that his life be spared.
Two days before the scheduled execution of Allah, formerly known as Freddie Eugene Owens, his co-defendant in the robbery and murder of Greenville, South Carolina, convenience store clerk Irene Graves signed a sworn affidavit saying: “Freddie Owens is not the person who shot Irene Graves at the Speedway [store] on November 1, 1997. Freddie was not present when I robbed the Speedway that day.”
Littlejohn was executed despite a recommendation of clemency from Oklahoma’s Pardon and Parole Board because of conflicting evidence about whether he or a co-defendant actually killed the victim.
Miller, whose lethal injection execution failed in 2022, became the second person in the U.S. to be executed by nitrogen hypoxia, which replaces oxygen in the body with a high concentration of nitrogen, causing death. State officials had said the method would cause someone to lose consciousness “almost immediately” and die within a few minutes.
But Miller, who was convicted of killing three men in 1999, shook and trembled on a gurney for about two minutes, with his body at times pulling against restraints, then gasped for air for about six minutes, The Associated Press reported.
Miller had a history of serious mental illness and suffered severe abuse at the hands of his father as a child, according to the Montgomery, Alabama-based Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), which represents and advocates for imprisoned and condemned inmates.
EJI said Miller’s interviews with arresting officers and medical personnel, along with an expert witness for the prosecution, suggested he had experienced a dissociative episode and as a result, had no awareness of his actions at the time.
Miller’s appointed trial lawyer withdrew his client’s insanity plea and presented no defense at the first phase of trial, but instead told the jury he was not “proud [to be] representing someone who, the evidence is fairly convincing, I must concede to you, did what he did,” EJI said in a statement. The jury returned a guilty verdict in 20 minutes.
“His lawyer did next to nothing to persuade the sentencer to spare Mr. Miller’s life, presenting only a few sentences of testimony from a psychiatrist who did not even look for mitigating factors to present at the penalty phase,” EJI said.
“Alan Miller’s case illustrates the exceptional failures of Alabama’s death penalty. Even among death penalty states, Alabama stands out for its refusal to provide adequate counsel to people facing the death penalty, its disregard for jurors’ sentencing judgments, its failure to exempt people with serious mental illness from execution, and its unprecedented record of failed and botched executions.”
In July, the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) reported that 200 death-row inmates had been exonerated in the U.S. since 1972. Exonerees spent an average of 13 years on death row, and some spent 40 years fighting to prove their innocence.
Of the 200 cases, the DPIC said, 141 involved official misconduct by police, prosecutors or other government officials; 127, false accusations or perjury; 61, false or misleading forensic evidence; 52, inadequate legal defense; and 42, mistaken witness identification.
Vaillancourt Murphy said after the release of the stats that the number of exonerations shows the need to “end the irreparably broken system of capital punishment in our country.”
“Because of the tireless efforts of faithful advocates and committed lawyers, 200 people have now been saved from the threat of execution after being sentenced to death,” she said in a statement.
But, she added: “While we praise God that these lives have been spared, we also remember the many individuals — both innocent and guilty — who did not, and will not receive the same grace, whose lives are discarded by a system determined to throw them away…. It’s time to end the death penalty, once and for all.”
Pope Francis revised the Catechism of the Catholic Church in 2018 to state: “The death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person.” The Catholic stance against the death penalty applies “even after the commission of very serious crimes,” the Catechism states.
A Gallup poll in November 2023 showed 53% of Americans support the death penalty, the lowest since 1972. The poll also found that half of Americans believe the death penalty is applied unfairly.
A growing number of U.S. states — now 23 — and the District of Columbia have banned the death penalty, while three states have imposed moratoriums on executions.
The U.S. remains an outlier as one of only three modern democracies — the others are Japan and Taiwan — that still execute people. That puts America in the company of countries including Iraq, Saudi Arabia, China, Russia, North Korea and Iran.
President Joe Biden, the nation’s second Catholic president, reneged on his 2020 campaign promise to seek to abolish the federal death penalty.
Vaillancourt Murphy said that pledge heartened death penalty opponents after then-President Trump’s administration carried out 13 federal executions during his last six months in office — the first federal executions in 17 years and the most under one president in more than a century. But Biden never proposed the legislation he promised — to abolish the federal death penalty and “incentivize” states to do so.
Attorney General Merrick B. Garland imposed a moratorium on federal executions in July 2021 while the Justice Department reviewed death penalty policies and procedures.
But the moratorium is not a ban. Federal prosecutors announced in January that they are seeking the death penalty for Payton Gendron, who killed 10 Black people in a racist rampage at a Buffalo supermarket in 2022. And a jury granted federal prosecutors’ request for the death penalty against Robert Bowers, who killed 11 congregants at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue in a hate crime in 2018.
In an August 31 editorial, The New York Times urged Biden to live up to his campaign promise to seek to abolish the federal death penalty.
“It would be an appropriate and humane finale to his presidency for Mr. Biden to fulfill that pledge and try to eliminate the death penalty for federal crimes,” The Times editorial said. “Such an effort would also remind the nation that this practice is immoral, unconstitutional and useless as a deterrent to crime.”
Meanwhile, the Democratic Party’s decision to drop its opposition to the death penalty from its platform for the first time in two decades drew condemnation from opponents of capital punishment, who point out that it’s unjust and ineffective as a deterrent to crime.
Vice President Kamala Harris did not mention the death penalty at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago last month and has not publicly mentioned it during her presidential campaign.
She had vowed as San Francisco district attorney never to seek the death penalty and rejected calls from fellow Democrats and police groups to seek the execution of a man accused of fatally shooting a police officer. But as California attorney general, Harris argued that the death penalty should stand. She then shifted her position again by stating her opposition to capital punishment while a U.S. senator and while campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2019.
The Harris campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
For his part, Trump has repeatedly said he would seek to expand the death penalty if elected president.
For Catholics it’s important to note that Bergoglio’s changing the CCC and statements regarding the death penalty are not binding on conscience since they are contrary to 2000 years of Catholic practice and teaching. The role of the pope is to protect and preserve Church teaching. He does not have the authority to change it. Vatican I is very clear on this matter and its decrees are binding on conscience.