June 3, 2002

USCCB committee chair renews call for end to executions

A renewed call for "measures to restrain, restrict and end the use of the death penalty in the United States" was issued April 18 by Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, Archbishop of Washington and chair of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Domestic Policy Committee.

 Cardinal McCarrick's statement came following two recent developments. One was the news that at least 100 people have been exonerated and released from U.S. death rows since executions were resumed in the mid 1970s. The other was an April 15 report by the Illinois Governor's Commission on Capital Punishment that recommended more than 80 necessary measures to lessen the chances that innocent persons may be executed.

 "Pope John Paul II, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and the U.S. Catholic Bishops have made it clear that our society has other ways to protect itself from those who commit terrible crimes and ought to forgo the use of the death penalty," the cardinal said. "Time and time again, Pope John Paul has urged clemency and the end of capital punishment."

 The U.S. bishops, he said, support "many of the recommendations" made by the Illinois Commission, as well as legislation such as the Innocence Protection Act (S.486, H.R.912), a proposed federal law that would promote greater fairness and stronger safeguards in capital cases. The bill has been co-sponsored by more than half the members of the U.S. House of Representatives and by a quarter of the U.S. Senate.

 "We have other means to protect society, and we have an obligation to prtotect the innocent," he said. "There is no way to reverse an execution after new evidence comes to light.

 "The report that at least 100 people have been found to be innocent of the crimes that put them on death row are 100 reasons to turn away from capital punishment," he continued. "The 101st reason is not what was done to them, but what is being done to the rest of us. The increasing reliance on the death penalty diminishes all of us, increases disrespect for human life, and offers the tragic illusion that we can teach that killing is wrong by killing. It's time to 'Choose life, the, that you and your descendants may live.' (Deuteronomy 30:19)"