Catholic activism on the death penalty

The all-star lineup included top officials from the United Nations and the European Union, cabinet-level officials from Zimbabwe and the Central African Republic, a senior counselor to the president of Mongolia, and testimonies from attorneys general in Nicaragua, Mozambique and Tanzania.

Sant’Egidio, of course, is one of the new movements in the church, created by progressive young Catholics in the 1960s who wanted to translate the faith into social change. It’s a global leader in conflict resolution, ecumenism and interfaith dialogue, and a wide range of other causes, and tends to be especially adept at building strong ties both with the hierarchy and secular movers and shakers.

Tuesday’s conference was timed to coincide with the annual Sant’Egidio-inspired “Cities for Life/Cities against the Death Penalty” event, now in its 10th edition. About 1,600 cities around the world are scheduled hold rallies, marches, speeches and an assortment of other happenings Friday to promote the end of capital punishment. Its symbol is Rome’s Colosseum, which lights up every time a jurisdiction somewhere in the world abolishes the death penalty.

The following are a few snippets from Tuesday’s event.

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A dossier compiled for the conference asserted there’s a “clear global trend toward abolition of the death penalty.”

As of October, according to the documentation, more than two-thirds of nations on earth have eliminated capital punishment either by law or in practice. Ninety-six nations have abolished the death penalty entirely; nine have eliminated it except for exceptional crimes committed during wartime; and 35 nations are considered to have ended capital punishment in practice because they haven’t executed anyone in at least 10 years.

Although the United States remains the lone member of the G8 to practice capital punishment, 17 American states have legally abolished the death penalty, most recently Connecticut in April.

Veteran activists called that a remarkable shift in a short arc of time. Robert Badinter, a French politician who served as Minister of Justice in the years of Francois Mitterand, said when he introduced a bill in 1981 outlawing the death penalty in France, only 35 other nations had done so. Today, almost 150 countries have followed suit, which he called “unthinkable” not long ago.

Badinter also argued that for all practical purposes, the death penalty has been eliminated from international law. Even the International Criminal Court, set up to prosecute genocide and other crimes against humanity, has no provision for capital punishment, and Badinter said no international judge these days would agree to sit on any court that does.

Given that trajectory, Jan Jarab of the U.N.’s High Commissioner for Human Rights described total abolition of capital punishment as “an achievable goal.”

Several speakers suggested Sant’Egidio has contributed to this momentum — perhaps especially in Africa, where the credibility the community gained through successful conflict resolution efforts, notably the 1992 Mozambique peace accords, gives it leverage with both governments and civil society. At the end of 2011, 16 African nations had abolished the death penalty by law and another 22 had ended it in practice, representing two-thirds of the continent.

At the same time, the conference confirmed that the death penalty is hardly on the brink of becoming obsolete. Among the salient data:

• 58 nations still have the death penalty on the books, though the number in which executions are actually carried out is smaller. In 2011, executions were performed in 20 nations.
• In 2011, there were an estimated 5,000 people executed around the world, of whom roughly 4,000 were put to death in China.
• Four nations in 2011 and early 2012 returned to using the death penalty, bucking the abolitionist trend: Afghanistan, the United Arab Emirates, Botswana and Japan.
• In 2011, 1,923 death sentences were handed down in 63 nations.
• Also in 2011, there were at least 18,750 persons on death row, an estimate experts stressed is conservative, given that only a few nations release complete data on whom they have in jail, and in countries such as Belarus, China, Mongolia and Vietnam, death sentences are actually considered state secrets.
• The United States was in fifth place worldwide in 2011 in the number of people it put to death, with 43. The U.S. trailed China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Iraq. (As a footnote, that was the third-lowest annual total of executions in America in the last 17 years.) At the moment, 3,189 people are on America’s death rows.

Of particular concern, according to participants, is the application of the death penalty to minors (as in Iran) and in cases of mental illness or mental disability (including in the United States). Participants also flagged pressure in some countries to expand use of the death penalty to combat drug trafficking, terrorism and even homosexuality. (In 2011, Liberia and Uganda both launched efforts to impose the death penalty for certain homosexual acts.)

Laurence Argimon-Pistre spoke on behalf of the European Union, saying it intends to spend about $15 million next year on lobbying efforts against the death penalty. As preliminary steps toward total abolition, Argimon-Pistre laid out five priorities:

• Legal assistance to prisoners awaiting execution, to ensure they get a fair trial
• Promoting legal and constitutional reform in states that still use the death penalty — for instance, making sure the right of appeal is upheld
• Monitoring detention conditions and the treatment of prisoners on death row
• Studies and reports on “miscarriages of justice” and abuse of the legal system
• Restricting the trade of goods and technical assistance necessary to carry out capital punishment — for instance, Pistre said, tightening up the sale of “new generation medicines used for lethal injection”

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The four core arguments against the death penalty surfaced repeatedly:

• It’s morally corrosive. Mario Marazziti of Sant’Egidio argued that “when the state kills in the name of the entire community, it lowers the community to the level of the murder.”
• It doesn’t deter crime or keep society safer. George Kain, police commissioner in Ridgefield, Conn., told the conference that if he thought the death penalty kept police and correctional officers from harm, he’d be all for it. Instead, he said, research shows it doesn’t.
• It’s applied in a disproportionate manner to minorities and the poor, thereby encapsulating the prejudices of a society. For instance, Marazziti cited an exhaustive study of every execution in the United States for the crime of murder up to 1989. Out of 15,978 executions, only 30 involved a white person sentenced to die for killing a black person.
• It’s a definitive and irrevocable penalty applied by a fallible legal system that can and does make mistakes.

[John L. Allen Jr. is NCR senior correspondent. His email address is jallen@ncronline.org.]

Be sure to read the full reflection Catholic activism on the death penalty