St. Dismas, Forgive Us

In the past seven months, the federal government as executed 13 people. While many places, including 22 states within the U.S. are moving away from the death penalty, the current administration has rushed to increase deaths at the hands of the government. To what end? We are so safer with these people, who have sat in prison for years, gone. A spree of executions looks more like violence than justice.

“To put that in historical context, the Federal Government will have executed more than three times as many people in the last six months than it had in the previous six decades,” Justice Sotomayor wrote in her dissent.

Almost 50 years ago, in 1972, the U.S. halted executions. They resumed in 1976 with stricter rules on which crimes were eligible for the death penalty. Between 1963-2001 there were no federal executions. In the late-80s, however, the crimes eligible for death penalty began to increase, not decrease. The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988, Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, and Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 all expanded eligibility. So in June 2001, with the execution of domestic terrorist Timothy McVeigh, the country resumed federal executions.

There was another long hiatus 2003-2020 before federal executions resumed. Since June 2020, 13 people have been executed, including the first woman in 67 years. But you’d have to go back further, to 1896, to find the last time the federal government executed more than 10 people in one year. Even further back, 1889, was the last time a federal execution took place during a presidential transition.

We are a civilized society, capable of keeping dangerous people out of society without taking their life. We must be better than murderers. The continuation, especially the escalation, of the death penalty is cruel.

The pope has spoken out against the death penalty, calling it “an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person” in 2018.

There are so many reasons to oppose the death penalty.

• First, and least important, is that it is expensive. It is cheaper for the state to pay for someone to stay in prison for life than to pay for all the legal appeals of someone on death row. It ties up already-burdened courts. 
• According to the ACLU about 1 in 10 people are death row are exonerated, showing how often innocent people can be sentenced to death.
• The death penalty is applied disproportionately to the poor, the mentally ill, those with intellectual disabilities, and people of color.
• The death penalty denies opportunity of due process (proving innocence at a later time) and opportunity of repentance. One aspect of respecting life is that our lives are our opportunities to know God and go own our spiritual journeys before Judgement. Cutting someone’s life short denies them of time where they may have encountered God’s mercy and truly converted.
•  And, it does not even deter crime. Only prompt and consistent punishments have been shown to deter crime; the death penalty is neither. It does not reduce crime or make our society any safer. It looks “tough on crime” but doesn’t do anything to stop it.  

On Christmas Eve, the Justice Department issued a ruling that the federal government could widen its methods of execution to whatever is allowed in the state where it takes place. This is partly due to other countries trying to limit providing the U.S. with the drugs needed for lethal injection. But it also partly seems just so unnecessarily cruel. So now along with lethal injections, federal executions can include poisonous gas, electrocution, or firing squads.

Six Catholics sit on the Supreme Court. Yet Catholic, “prolife” judges have allowed this execution spree to continue. It does not affect as many lives as the unborn or ill, but its victims are still people. They aren’t conveniently innocent and cute and easy to defend, but they are still people. Prolife means all life, even the criminal and guilty. There are lots of murderers in heaven.

Each execution, by the federal government or a state, should firstly be opposed and secondly remind us that revenge doesn’t beget justice. Violence doesn’t justify violence. Every life has dignity. Each of us is made in the image of God.