Philadelphia Archbishop Chaput on the death penalty

UPDATE: When you call the Board of Pardons and hit "0" the person answering the phone will ask you to put your request in writing and either mail it or fax it to 717-772-3135. When you call the Governor's office a real person will answer and take your name and where you are calling from, and put you on the list asking for clemency.

The Capuchin/Franciscan who is my favorite American prelate. Wish he were in New York. Brigid and I will definitely be making the calls as per the contacts below.

Even when a defendant is well defended, properly tried and justly found guilty, experience shows that capital punishment simply doesn’t work as a deterrent. Nor does it heal or redress any wounds, because only forgiveness can do that. It does succeed though in answering violence with violence — a violence wrapped in the piety of state approval, which implicates all of us as citizens in the taking of more lives.

Turning away from capital punishment does not diminish our support
for the families of murder victims. They bear a terrible burden of
grief, and they rightly demand justice. Real murderers deserve
punishment; but even properly tried and justly convicted murderers — men
and women who are found guilty of heinous crimes — retain their
God-given dignity as human beings. When we take a murderer’s life we
only add to the violence in an already violent culture, and we demean
our own dignity in the process.

Both Scripture and Catholic tradition support the legitimacy of the
death penalty under certain limited conditions. But the Church has
repeatedly called us to a higher road over the past five decades. We
don’t need to kill people to protect society or punish the guilty. And
we should never be eager to take anyone’s life. 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.

Last month here in Pennsylvania, execution warrants were signed for
four men. A judge stayed one of the execution warrants, but the three
remaining warrants could potentially result in the first execution in
our state in 13 years. One of the cases in which appeals seem to be
exhausted involves Terrance Williams.

In October, Williams is scheduled to die by lethal injection for the
murder of Amos Norwood in 1984, a crime committed when he was 18 and a
college freshman.  Williams is indisputably guilty of the crime. He’s
also mentally competent. His defense attorneys argue that he was
repeatedly sexually abused as a youth, including five years of abuse at
the hands of the man he murdered, and that this helped motivate his
violence. The state counters that all of Williams’ claims — including
claims of sexual abuse — have had proper judicial review and been
rejected.

Terrance Williams deserves punishment. No one disputes that. But he
doesn’t need to die to satisfy justice. We should think very carefully
in the coming days about the kind of justice we want to witness to our
young people.

Most American Catholics, like many of their fellow citizens, support
the death penalty. That doesn’t make it right. But it does ensure that
the wrong-headed lesson of violence “fixing” the violent among us will
be taught to another generation.

As children of God, we’re better than this, and we need to start acting like it. We need to end the death penalty now.

***

The Archbishop strongly encourages readers to contact the
Pennsylvania Board of Pardons, urging them to recommend commutation of
Williams’ sentence to life in prison. Please also contact the Office of
the Governor and urge the Governor to accept a clemency recommendation
from the board, or, in its absence, to order a temporary reprieve. Use
the Catholic Advocacy Network at www.pacatholic.org to send an email to the Board of Pardons and the Governor. Or call or write them at:

Pennsylvania Board of Pardons, 333 Market Street, 15^th Floor, Harrisburg, PA 17126; phone: 717.787.2596.

        The Honorable Tom Corbett, Governor of Pennsylvania, The Capitol, Harrisburg, PA 17120; phone:         717.787.2500