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Pope Declares Death Penalty Inadmissible in All Cases

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ROME — Pope Francis has declared the death penalty inadmissible in all cases because it is “an attack” on the “dignity of the person,” the Vatican announced on Thursday, in a definitive shift in Roman Catholic teaching that could put enormous pressure on lawmakers and politicians around the world.
Francis, who has spoken out against capital punishment before — including in 2015 in an address to Congress — added the change to the Catechism, the collection of beliefs for the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics.
The revision says the church would work “with determination” for the abolition of capital punishment worldwide.
“I think this will be a big deal for the future of the death penalty in the world,” said John Thavis, a Vatican expert and author. “People who work with prisoners on death row will be thrilled, and I think this will become a banner social justice issue for the church,” he added.
Sergio D’Elia, the secretary of Hands Off Cain, an association that works to abolish capital puni…

How Sister Helen Prejean became a leading advocate for the abolition of the death penalty

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Sister Helen Prejean
Sister Helen Prejean is a leading advocate for abolition of the death penalty. She's written 2 books on the topic, and 1 of them, "Dead Man Walking," became an Oscar-winning film. She's been nominated 3 times for the Nobel Peace Prize. Her new memoir, "River of Fire," will be published by Random House, probably in January.

You grew up in Baton Rouge. What brought you to New Orleans?

I joined the Sisters of St. Joseph in 1957, so I was 18. I've been in New Orleans ever since. Part of that was going to college at St. Mary's Dominican.

Did you know much about the city when you arrived?

Oh, yes. We would come on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. It was a holiday, and that's when we'd go shopping in New Orleans. It was a big deal. We would "motor" to New Orleans with mama and go to D.H. Holmes and Maison Blanche to do shopping.

In high school, we took a bus trip for Mardi Gras one year. ... The convent was kind of limited because we didn't get out much, but (we knew) the spirit of the city.

Life in the convent was sheltered, and your early years as a teacher were spent in Catholic schools. Were you familiar with the plight of the poor here?

I'm the typical kind of person who came up with privilege. My daddy was a successful lawyer in Baton Rouge. I knew there was a problem of poverty. I knew there were problems of racism, but I never attended to them much. They didn't seem to touch me much because I didn't know any real people. But when I moved into St. Thomas (housing project in New Orleans) and worked at a place called Hope House and I lived among the people, African-American people became my teachers.

Part of what privilege did in my life was it separated me from the suffering. I'd never encountered people where the police were beating them up, where they would be arrested and sit in jail for 3 years because they didn't have money for bond. I had no idea that all this was going on simply because of race. But it impassioned me because for the 1st time, I saw the suffering. I sat with people at Charity Hospital with a sick child until, finally, at 2 in the morning, some tired intern took on the job. I said, "There is something wrong. This is the United States."

That must have been a harsh awakening.

The harsh reality is that it was always going on, but I awakened to it and I knew I had to do something. It was at St. Thomas, working there at Hope House, that one day coming down St. Andrew Street, somebody from the Louisiana Coalition on Jails and Prisons said to me, "Hey, Sister Helen, do you want to be a pen pal to somebody on death row?"

I never dreamed this person was going to be executed. It was 1982, and we hadn't had an execution in Louisiana for over 20 years. There had been an unofficial moratorium. I wasn't even aware that in 1976, the Supreme Court put the death penalty back, and here it's the early '80s, so I write him. His name is Patrick Sonnier, and 2 years later, I am with him when he is electrocuted by the state of Louisiana.

It set me on fire. I came out and I realized people were going to read the account (of the execution) and say, "He did a terrible crime. He killed two teenage kids, and he paid with his life. Justice was done." But I got close to the process, and this is the story in "Dead Man Walking." That's the story, when (actor/director) Tim Robbins read it, he realized we had a way here, the journey of 1 person, descending into the depths (to make a film about the death penalty). He loved to say, "and the nun was in over her head." And I was because I didn't know anything about law and what it meant to have a good attorney. ... People could just be railroaded on through.

How many people on death row have you served as spiritual adviser?

I've accompanied 6 people to execution, and I'm with my 7th man now. His name is Manuel Ortiz, and he's innocent. Of the 7, 3 have been innocent. The 2nd book I wrote is called the "Death of Innocents" and I tell about the story of Dobie Gillis Williams, an African-American man with the IQ of 65 executed by the state. He couldn't get the legal help he needed in time, and he was killed. You talk about lighting the fire of your passion - it's to witness an innocent person executed. You can't be neutral anymore.

Look at the way the death penalty has been applied. Most of the executions, like 70 %, have happened in former slave states. Louisiana has the harshest incarceration rate in the U.S.; the U.S. has has harshest rate, especially of people of color, in the world; and Louisiana is at the top of that. And it came out of the legacy of slavery.

You've written books, conferred with popes and been nominated for the Nobel Prize. What do you consider to be your biggest accomplishment?

The privilege of being with human beings when it counted most. When nobody believed in their dignity and (the state) was killing them. And I got to be with them. That's it. That's the heart of it.

How has the city influenced your work?

I love the city. There's a warmth and goodness in New Orleans people. Not just New Orleans but Louisiana. It really is a life state; we love life. Music and food and our stories. We have humor. .. Music is healing and life-giving. The spirit of the people is strong. I wouldn't want to live anyplace else.

Source: The Advocate, Karen Taylor Gist, April 26, 2018


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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
Location: Louisiana, USA

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New Study: Death Penalty Costing Nebraska Taxpayers $14.6 Million Each Year

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“These are costs above and beyond the costs of having life without parole.”
LINCOLN, NE – In a first-of-its-kind study on the cost of Nebraska’s death penalty, a respected economist concluded that the State of Nebraska would save $14.6 million annually if voters replace the death penalty with life imprisonment. 
Dr. Ernie Goss (1), professor of economics at Creighton University, and author of studies for a conservative think-tank founded by Governor Pete Ricketts, said today he was surprised when his study revealed how expensive the death penalty is compared to life in prison.
At a news conference today in Lincoln, Dr. Goss presented a study that revealed Nebraska’s maintenance of the death penalty cost the state, in 2015 dollars, approximately $14.6 million annually above what the state’s cost for life without parole would be, and each additional death penalty arraignment costs the state almost $1.5 million, also in 2015 dollars.“Through our study, we show that the State of Nebraska …
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The Brits on death row around the world hoping to escape execution

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The UK’s opposition to the death penalty has come under question over the case of alleged Isis terrorists, but many other Brits have already been told they will be executed, reports Etan Smallman
Nicholas Ingram declined the offer of a final meal of his choice. Earlier, he had eaten a tiny breakfast, a few spoonfuls of eggs, followed by some crackers and crisps bought from a prison vending machine by relatives.
The Cambridge-born 31-year-old, who had dual British and US nationality, was shaved to remove any stubble that might interfere with his electrocution. He spent his final hours sipping a cup of coffee, “quiet and stone-faced”, according to Georgia prison authorities.
Ingram also turned down the chance to make a final statement, saying impatiently: “Let’s get on with it.” The man who had murdered JC Sawyer, 55, after tying him and his wife to a tree 11 years earlier, spat at the prison warden before he was strapped into a wooden chair and 2,000 volts were passed through his body.
…
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Nebraska executes Carey Dean Moore

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Death row inmate Moore executed by lethal injection
Nebraska carried out its 1st execution since 1997 on Tuesday. Carey Dean Moore was executed Tuesday morning for the 1979 shooting deaths of 2 Omaha cab drivers.
Officials said at around 9:15 a.m. Moore was read an execution order. At 10 a.m. the Nebraska Attorney General's office checked for any last minute legal matters that would've prevented the execution.
Moore was escorted into the room and strapped to the table. IV lines were inserted and a heart monitor was attached.
10 witnesses were then escorted into the viewing room.
Officials said after Valium was administered, the warden checked for consciousness. Witnesses watched as fentanyl citrate was administered. Cisatracurium besylate was then administered to induce paralysis and halt Moore's breathing. Potassium chloride was given to Moore to stop his heart.
The Lancaster County coroner called the time of death. State officials announced the execution was complete at …
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Should 'Late Adolescence' Protect Young People from Execution?

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The years between 18 and 21 are a sort of societal limbo period when, in most states, you can't drink, but you can smoke—and get sentenced to die.
When 15-year-old Luis Cruz joined the Latin Kings in 1991, he was a child by almost any measure: he couldn’t legally drive, drop out of school, or buy a beer. But was he still a child a few years later when—just months after he turned 18—he murdered two people on the orders of gang leaders?
Earlier this year, a federal judge in Connecticut said yes. The judge decided that a 2012 Supreme Court ruling that forbade mandatory sentences of life without parole for juveniles should apply to 18-year-olds like Cruz, and granted his request to be re-sentenced. It’s one of a small but growing number of cases in which courts are grappling with what to do with young adults who commit the most serious crimes.
The years between 18 and 21 are a sort of societal limbo period when, in most states, you can smoke but not drink; make medical decisions for y…
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75 Catholic priests and scholars ask Francis to backtrack on death penalty

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The pope’s revision to the Catechism calls capital punishment “inadmissible.”
A group of 75 Catholic clergy members and scholars have urged Pope Francis to backtrack on his decision to declare the death penalty “inadmissible” in Catholic teaching.
Earlier this month, Pope Francis authorized a change in the Catholic Catechism, the official teaching document of the church, to intensify the language pertaining to the defensibility of the death penalty.
Since the catechism was first published in 1992, the church has said the death penalty should be used only in very rare situations. Francis’s change, though, denied that the death penalty could ever be compatible with Catholic teaching, on the grounds that “the dignity of the person is not lost even after the commission of very serious crimes.”
While the move drew praise from anti-capital-punishment advocates, such as Sister Helen Prejean, who called it a “great day for human rights,” some of Pope Francis’s more conservative critics remain…
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Saudi Arabia’s death penalty

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Six men were pushed before the watching eyes of countless men, women, and children — they were thieves and murders, and they were set to be executed in public. The style of execution? Beheading.
One might expect such a scene from medieval England or ancient China, but this particular anecdote? Early June 2017 in Saudi Arabia.
Six men publicly executed in a single day — it brought the country’s death toll via capital punishment up to 44.
Saudi Arabia remains one of the most prolific users of capital punishment, and it is based on a literal interpretation of Sharia law integrated into the government. Sometimes this is followed up with a crucifixion of the headless body after the execution, as was seen recently during the controversy between the Middle Eastern country and Canada when a man accused of murder was beheaded and then hung on a cross.
Just behind China and Iran, Saudi Arabia takes third place in the number of death penalties carried out in the world, according to Amnesty Inte…
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Fentanyl Used to Execute Nebraska Inmate, in a First for U.S.

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LINCOLN, Neb. — Prison officials in Nebraska used fentanyl, the powerful opioid at the center of the nation’s overdose epidemic, to help execute a convicted murderer on Tuesday. The lethal injection at the Nebraska State Penitentiary was the first time fentanyl had been used to carry out the death penalty in the United States.
The execution, Nebraska’s first since 1997, represented a stunning political turnabout in a state where lawmakers voted only three years ago to ban capital punishment.
The condemned man, Carey Dean Moore, 60, had been convicted of killing two Omaha taxi drivers decades ago and did not seek a reprieve in his final months. But two pharmaceutical companies tried to block the execution in federal court, claiming their reputations would suffer if the killing proceeded.
The companies could not prove that their products would be used, however, because prison officials refused to identify the suppliers of the drugs to be administered to Mr. Moore. So the execution was …
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URGENT APPEAL for Anthony Haynes to be executed in Texas on 18 October

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Anthony Haynes is due to be executed in Texas on 18 October for the murder of an off-duty police officer committed when he was 19 years old. Claims of racial discrimination, inadequate legal representation and judicial misconduct have marked the case.
In 1999, Anthony Haynes was convicted of the fatal shooting of off-duty police officer Kent Kincaid in Houston, Texas on 22 May 1998. To obtain a death sentence, the state had to persuade the jury that Anthony Haynes would be a continuing threat to society, even in prison. Although the defendant had no prior criminal record that the state could point to, its case was helped by the defense lawyers' failure to present a range of available mitigation evidence. For example, the jury was not told that only two days before the shooting, Anthony Haynes had taken crystal methamphetamine for the first time, which affected his ability to make decisions. Neither was the jury told that he has a history of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorde…
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Nevada tells state high court that Nebraska execution had no complications

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Prison officials have told the Nevada Supreme Court that witnesses reported no complications during Nebraska's execution of Carey Dean Moore, which used some of the same drugs that Nevada wants to use to carry out a death penalty.
Nevada state attorneys, on behalf of state prison officials, said in a Wednesday court filing that media witnesses in Nebraska "reported no complications, only some coughing before Moore stopped moving."
The document also noted that Nebraska's 4-drug combination included a sedative, the synthetic opioid fentanyl and a muscle-paralyzing agent like the one Nevada plans to use.
Robert Dunham of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, D.C., said Thursday that it is too soon to know if the Tuesday execution of the 60-year-old Moore in Nebraska was trouble-free.
"Witnesses did not see the death itself," Dunham said, noting that Moore was pronounced dead several minutes after a death chamber blind was closed.
"I think w…
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US state poised for first execution with fentanyl

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Nebraska was scheduled today to carry out America's first execution employing the opioid fentanyl as part of a four-drug combination that has never before been used.
The powerful synthetic painkiller -- a key cause of death in America's opioid and heroin abuse epidemic -- was to be the second injection administered to Carey Dean Moore, sentenced to death for two 1979 murders.
Moore is not contesting his execution, the Midwestern state's first in 21 years. But a last-minute legal challenge filed on his behalf could still cause a delay.
Underscoring the difficulty states across the country have had in obtaining previously employed execution drugs, three of the four intravenous medications Nebraska is scheduled to use have never before been used for lethal injections.
It is a pivotal test for the state, which last performed an execution in 1997 with the electric chair.
The American Civil Liberties Union yesterday asked the state's highest court to delay Moore's execut…
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