Executions. Will they never end?
An item in the Washington Post last week caught my attention. Here are a couple paragraphs:
Death row inmates in five
states have been put to death in the span of one week, an unusually high number
of executions that defies a years-long trend of decline in both the use and
support of the death penalty in the U.S.
The United States has
reached 1,600 executions since the death penalty was reinstated by the U.S.
Supreme Court in 1976, said Robin Maher, the Death Penalty Information Center’s
executive director.
The story struck a chord with me because, as many of you know, I witnessed the execution of a friend who, I believe, was wrongly convicted in Texas. That experience gives me much appreciation for this quote from Clint Smith:
The death penalty not only takes away the life of the person strapped to the table - it takes away a little bit of the humanity in each of us.
This will not be a long piece. I’ve been beating this drum for years. I am not optimistic in the least that things will ever change, though I pray that they will. Says writer Elie Wiesel;
“With every cell of my being and with every fiber of my memory I oppose the death penalty in all forms. I do not believe any civilized society should be at the service of death. I don’t think it’s human to become an agent of the angel of death.”
The topic is especially meaningful this week, because we are observing International Wrongful Conviction Day. Activist organizations in the U.S. and Canada made this happen to raise awareness about wrongful convictions and their impact on innocent people and their families. The day also honors those who have been wrongfully convicted. A 2014 study estimated that at least 4% of those sentenced to death are innocent.
Are you OK with any of these numbers? Just imagine if this involved someone you know and love! True, we do not have the death penalty in Michigan. My friend Scott Elliott says that, instead, we “have a genteel death penalty” in life sentence without parole. 27 states, however, still kill those convicted of heinous crimes.
The
death penalty is fundamentally a poor person's issue. Over nearly 40 years of
visiting death row facilities across the United States, I have never met a
single person with money or resources. Capital punishment means “those without
the capital get the punishment.”
Sister Helen Prejean
“What
you do to these men, you do to God"
--Mother
Teresa
Comments
I'd like it if every US citizen read this statistic and spend just 15 minutes internalizing it. To open their souls to this reality.
CHINA, IRAN, SAUDI ARABIA, SOMALIA & THE UNITES STATES OF AMERICA.
During every Mass around the world Catholics pray a Penitential Act these words: ""I confess to almighty God, and to you, my brothers and sisters, that I have sinned through my own fault, in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done, and in what I have failed to do".
In what I have failed to do. Sit with that for a while.
Catholic Mobilizing Network is a national organization that mobilizes Catholics and all people of goodwill to value life over death, to end the use of the death penalty & to transform the U.S. criminal legal system from punitive to restorative.
Type Catholic Mobilizing Network into your search engine. Join the effort to end Capital Punishment.
Your words as always are Food for Thought. God Bless your work to bring a little bit of Humanity to an unjust system that is not just.