In
an unsigned, 5-4 opinion issued around 2 a.m., the Supreme Court found
that the prisoners on death row had “not made the showing required to
justify last-minute intervention.” Justices Stephen Breyer and Sonia
Sotomayor each wrote dissents, which Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and
Elena Kagan joined.
That makes the approving five Chief John Roberts and Justices Sam Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. Catholics to a man.
From the Justice Department press release of June 15:
In July 2019, Attorney General Barr [
Catholic to a man] directed the BOP to revise the
Federal Execution Protocol to provide for the use of a single-drug,
pentobarbital — similar to protocols used in hundreds of state
executions and repeatedly upheld by federal courts, including the
Supreme Court, as consistent with the Eighth Amendment. A district
court’s preliminary injunction prevented BOP from carrying out
executions under the revised protocol, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for
the D.C. Circuit vacated that injunction — clearing the way for the
federal government to resume capital punishment after a nearly
two-decade hiatus.
“The American people, acting through Congress and Presidents of both
political parties, have long instructed that defendants convicted of the
most heinous crimes should be subject to a sentence of death,” said
Attorney General William P. Barr. “The four murderers whose executions
are scheduled today have received full and fair proceedings under our
Constitution and laws. We owe it to the victims of these horrific
crimes, and to the families left behind, to carry forward the sentence
imposed by our justice system.”
From The Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 2267 :
Assuming that the guilty party's identity and responsibility have been
fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not
exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way
of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.
If, however, non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect
people's safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such
means, as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the
common good and more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.
Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state
has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed
an offense incapable of doing harm - without definitely taking away
from him the possibility of redeeming himself - the cases in which the
execution of the offender is an absolute necessity "are very rare, if
not practically nonexistent."
Paragraph 2267 of the Catechism has been revised and made stronger by Pope Francis, and now reads as follows:
ReplyDelete2267. Recourse to the death penalty on the part of legitimate authority, following a fair trial, was long considered an appropriate response to the gravity of certain crimes and an acceptable, albeit extreme, means of safeguarding the common good.
Today, however, there is an increasing awareness that the dignity of the person is not lost even after the commission of very serious crimes. In addition, a new understanding has emerged of the significance of penal sanctions imposed by the state. Lastly, more effective systems of detention have been developed, which ensure the due protection of citizens but, at the same time, do not definitively deprive the guilty of the possibility of redemption.
Consequently, the Church teaches, in the light of the Gospel, that “the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person”, and she works with determination for its abolition worldwide.
Thanks, David. I went on line to get a later version than my print version and still wound up behind the curve.
DeleteJust for the record, even though Gorsuch was raised Catholic by his Catholic mother, he has been an active member of Episcopal churches for many years, ever since he returned to the US from Oxford. His father was not religious in a formal way, but Gorsuch has said that it was his father who taught him to see that God is everywhere, especially present in nature. He was very close to an uncle (his father's brother) who was an Episcopal priest. He died a few years ago
ReplyDeleteLike the official RCC, the ECUSA supports the repeal of the death penalty.
Gorsuch is apparently not in agreement with either church's official stance on the death penalty.
I think it's entirely plausible that the Catholic members of the Supreme Court haven't "received" Francis's abrogation, nor John Paul II's nearly complete dialing-down, of the traditional teaching. That could mean that they're blissfully unaware of this doctrinal development, or that they're aware but don't consider themselves bound to it for purposes of this judicial function. Or it could mean that they simply disagree with it. Or different justices could have different attitudes toward it.
ReplyDeleteI guess we could classify this result as an "un-pro-life" decision. There are many pro-life conservatives who would note with bitterness that this is not the first un-pro-life decision to come out of this year's term.
Had the Catholic justices voted to prevent the execution based on JP II's and Francis's magisterial principles, surely there are those in this country who would have cried out, "Theocracy! Theocracy!" Probably there are some today (although probably not the same ones) who are crying "Theocracy!" in the wake of the Little Sisters of the Poor decision. All of which is to say, translating religious principle into public policy is a complicated and fraught business.
There is nothing to prevent Congress from passing a law suspending the federal death penalty. It's quite likely that, come January, a Democrat will be residing along Pennsylvania Avenue, and Democrats will be in control of both houses of Congress. There is a news item today that Biden supports the elimination of the filibuster. If those circumstances transpire, and they seem reasonably possible, then Congress and the President certainly could proceed with this program.
Well, considering that a) most states have abandoned the death penalty, and b) all civilized countries have abandoned the death penalty, and c) saying "I am sorry about the death penalty" has become a constant refrain of retiring judges and d) the method used in the Lewis execution was illegal in the states with the death penalty until they could no longer get the drugs that were legal... I don't think anyone has to know or quote the Catechism to lay out a case for suspending it.
DeleteI think, in fact, that if you want to carry them out you need to come up with a better explanation than St. Robert provided, with crocodile tears over "the families left behind," especially in this case when said family a) objected to executing Lewis and b) is pissed because Barr used coronavirus to keep them away from the execution, which they had intended to attend to express their disapproval.