I received an email today from Dudley Sharp, a pro-death penalty activist. It is a response to the Catholic call to abolish the death penalty that I have signed. Sharp reviews what he thinks are the many errors of the petition. I suppose every signatory received this message. From what I could gather on the Internet and from the way he argues, I do not think that Dudley is Catholic. But I may be wrong.
He insists that Troy Davis was guilty. This is a point that advocates of the death penalty often make: that such a sentence must be given only beyond the shadow of a doubt, that is, it must be applied to persons who the court is sure that are guilty. This is a misguided point. Executing the guilty is still immoral. The guilt of the person does not make the execution morally right. This is a distorted view that confuses justice with punishment and retribution.
The Church does not hold that the guilt of the defendants justifies their execution. Instead, the correct establishment of the culpability of the defendant is simply a condition for us to consider if the death penalty is necessary. What can make it necessary? That it is the “only practicable way to defend the lives of human beings effectively against the aggressor”.[1] The Catechism continues:
If, instead, bloodless means are sufficient to defend against the aggressor and to protect the safety of persons, public authority should limit itself to such means, because they better correspond to the concrete conditions of the common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.[2]
In other words, the only argument for the death penalty considered by the Church does not have to do with the punishment of the guilty, but with prudence and protection. Such a penalty may only be based on a prudential judgment with the intention of keeping someone out of harm’s way. This position urges us to take the historical context into account, given that intentional killing is always morally wrong, even when it is done by the state. Since the 19th century, the modern prison system provides a non-lethal means that is sufficient to defend against aggressors and to protect the safety of persons.
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[1] Catechism of the Catholic Church, par. 2267, http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P7Z.HTM.
[2] Ibid.
