Time to Reconsider Capital Punishment

Below is an article that I wrote with a Catholic Priest in 2002. Before reading it, consider the following. Troy Davis was convicted in 1989. Can you imagine how much money in legal fees the state of Georgia has spent trying to kill this man? Guilty or not, it would have been far cheaper to lock him up for the rest of his life and throw the key away. To all my conservative friends. This would be a good way to reduce government spending!
Fred

Time to Reconsider Capital Punishment
Rabbi Fred Guttman & Father Jim O’Neill

As a Jewish rabbi and a Catholic priest, we applaud the decision by Illinois Governor George Ryan to impose a statewide moratorium on the death penalty and to appoint a commission to study the frequency with which inmates sentenced to death have later been found innocent.

In theory, Jewish tradition allows for capital punishment. Nevertheless, the rabbis during the Roman period some 2,000 years ago regulated the Jewish legal system in this area as to make capital punishment virtually non-existent. They even taught that a Sanhedrin (court) which puts to death even one person in 70 years is considered to have blood on its hands. They realized that it was virtually impossible to guarantee that a human legal system would never make a mistake in a capital case. When the stakes are this high - with human life hanging in the balance – we must be doubly certain before imposing a death sentence. In Jewish tradition, to be ‘doubly certain’ requires two unrelated eyewitnesses who separately provide identical accounts of the crime.

As Roman Catholics, we believe that all people are created in the image and likeness of God; we believe that all life is God’s precious gift to be celebrated from the moment of conception until natural death. Therefore, any threat to human life must be clearly and consistently opposed. On the other hand preserving the common good of society requires rendering the aggressor unable to inflict harm. For this reason the traditional teaching of the church has acknowledged, as well founded and right, the duty of legitimate authority to punish malefactors by means of penalties commensurate with the gravity of the crime, not excluding, in case of extreme gravity, the death penalty.

However, there has been an evolution in this teaching and American bishops seriously have questioned the morality of the death penalty. The church wishes to present a consistent pro-life stance and the bishops key argument is that the death penalty leads to an erosion of respect for life in our society. In addition, American bishops also oppose capital punishment because of the discriminatory way it is applied in America with respect to the poor, members of social minorities and the socially impoverished and disadvantaged individuals. Finally, they seriously question whether capital punishment actually deters crime, one of the major arguments advanced by those who support it.

Consequently, in 1974 the National Conference of Bishops went on record against capital punishment. Recently, our present Pontiff, John Paul II, has spoken out against capital punishment and has personally intervened for several persons sentenced to die. Given all of the above, a Roman Catholic who seriously searches for the truth is called to be opposed to capital punishment.

The truth is that, especially with the recent use of DNA evidence, there have been a disturbing number of death row inmates who were convicted and sentenced to death only to be later exonerated. In Governor Ryan's state of Illinois, more inmates have been found innocent after being sentenced to death than have actually been executed. Illinois has learned of these mistaken convictions through the diligence and hard work of a well-funded public defender's office and through the tenacity of a highly publicized university journalism class.

To the best of our knowledge, the state of North Carolina lacks such mechanisms. How many more people would be cleared if our state possessed such mechanisms? How many inmates in North Carolinas currently go to the death chamber for crimes they did not commit?

In December 1999, a resolution co-sponsored by the National Council of Synagogues and the Bishops' Committee for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops call for the end of the death penalty. This resolution stated: “We cannot teach that killing is wrong by killing.' We oppose capital punishment not just for what it does to those guilty of horrible crimes, but for what it does to all of us as a society. Increasing reliance on the death penalty diminishes all of us and is a sign of growing disrespect for human life. We cannot overcome crime by simply executing criminals, nor can we restore the lives of the innocent by ending the lives of those convicted of their murders. The death penalty offers the tragic illusion that we can defend life by taking life…. We have committed ourselves to work together, and each within our own communities, toward ending the death penalty.”

The prophet Zechariah enjoins us: "See that justice is done." It is our solemn obligation not just to promote justice, but also to stand up and decry injustice when we witness it. We are, to be sure, opposed to the imposition of the death penalty. We also believe that the system for administering capital punishment works all too often to the disadvantage, of poor and minority defendants who are unable to mount a defense that would result either in acquittal or in the imposition of a lesser sentence.

The death penalty as it is currently practiced in North Carolina is not just. We lack a sufficient level of certainty in every decision of our state's justice system that would justify the continued usage of the death penalty. Here, one mistake is too many. We encourage Governor Hunt to follow Governor Ryan's lead and impose a moratorium on the death penalty in North Carolina.

Rabbi Fred Guttman Father Jim O’Neill
Temple Emanuel St Paul the Apostle Catholic Church