[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA

[Rick Halperin]

March 27



USA:

Executions, Doctors, The U.S. Supreme Court, And The Breath Of Kings



Editor's note: This post is part of a series stemming from the 3rd Annual 
Health Law Year in P/Review event held at Harvard Law School on Friday, January 
30, 2015. The conference brought together leading experts to review major 
developments in health law over the previous year, and preview what is to come. 
A full agenda and links to video recordings of the panels are here.

The relationship between medicine and capital punishment has been a persistent 
feature of this past year in health law, both at the level of medical ethics 
and Supreme Court review.

Our story starts in Oklahoma, where the execution of Clayton Lockett was 
botched on April 28, 2014. National Institutes of Health (NIH) bioethicist 
Seema Shah described the events in question:

Oklahoma was administering a new execution protocol that used the drug 
midazolam, a sedative that is often used in combination with other anesthetic 
agents. Oklahoma had never used this drug in executions before; in fact, only a 
few states had experience with using the drug in lethal injection. Florida had 
previously used this drug in lethal injections, but with a dose five times 
higher than what was indicated in Oklahoma's protocol.

If the execution had gone as planned, Clayton Lockett would have first received 
midazolam; been declared unconscious, then received vecuronium bromide (a 
paralytic/neuromuscular blocking agent that would restrict his movements), and 
finally received potassium chloride (the drug likely to end his life). A few 
minutes after officially being declared unconscious, Lockett mumbled statements 
including the word, "Man." He "began breathing heavily, writhing, clenching his 
teeth and straining to lift his head off the pillow." Prison officials 
prevented the witnesses from seeing the rest of the proceedings by closing the 
curtains.

The Department of Corrections then called off the execution and unsuccessfully 
tried to resuscitate Lockett, and Lockett eventually died of a heart attack 
more than 45 minutes after the execution began. Although a Department of 
Corrections official stated that Lockett's veins "exploded," an autopsy 
examination performed by a forensic pathologist hired by death row inmates 
appears to contradict official reports. This report concluded that even though 
prison officials decided to inject the drugs into Lockett's femoral vein (which 
is a more difficult and risky procedure), Lockett's surface and deep veins had 
"excellent integrity." Another execution that was scheduled to occur that same 
night has now been stayed for 6 months, pending an investigation into Mr. 
Lockett's execution.

On July 23, 2014, Arizona encountered a problem with the same drug in the 
execution of Joseph Wood, wherein the condemned inmate allegedly gasped for 
almost 2 hours before dying.

The executions have prompted 2 important but different kinds of responses. In 
this post I write about the role of medical ethics and the U.S. Supreme Court's 
response.

Medical Ethics

In an opinion from 1994, dissenting from the denial of certiorari in the death 
penalty case of Callins v. Collins, Justice Harry Blackmun famously wrote, 
"From this day forward, I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death," 
and concluded that he was instead "obligated simply to concede that the death 
penalty experiment has failed."

2 decades later, in May 2014, shortly after the botched Oklahoma execution, Bob 
Truog, Mark Rockoff, and I argued in The Journal of the American Medical 
Association (JAMA) that physicians should take a similar position: that they 
should no longer tinker with the machinery of death and avoid participation in 
executions altogether. Our argument received significant discussion in the 
media, on Rachel Maddow's MSNBC show, and elsewhere. We hope it will prompt 
further changes.

In our article, we advance several reasons why physician involvement in 
execution is problematic. This involvement co-opts the medical profession in a 
problematic way: "History is replete with examples of efforts by governments to 
co-opt the power and status of the medical profession for state purposes that 
are not aligned with the goals of medicine. For example, physicians have 
engaged in interrogations involving torture, at least in part because the 
skills and knowledge of these professionals enables them to maximize the 
prisoner's temporary pain and suffering while minimizing the risk of permanent 
disability or death."

It also medicalizes retribution. That is, "[e]xecution is, intrinsically, the 
involuntary taking of the life of another human being, an act that can never be 
aligned with the goals of medicine. Regardless of whether execution is 
justified - and there are those who contend that in some circumstances capital 
punishment may be - it must never be perceived as a medical procedure. By 
playing on the imagery of a scene that is almost indistinguishable from the 
everyday practice of anesthesiologists when they 'put a patient to sleep,' 
there is an attempt to cover the procedure with a patina of respectability and 
compassion that is associated with the practice of medicine."

In this respect (and now I am speaking only for myself not my co-authors), this 
is a kind of kabuki theater. It would be far better to go to what we 
instinctively view as more barbaric methods, for example, the firing squad, 
that are decidedly non-medical, if we could ensure painless death. The patina 
of medicine helps us avoid confrontation with the barbarism of what we are 
doing, killing someone against their protestation.

There is also the matter that medicine needs to live up to its own professional 
standards. The Code of Ethics of the American Medical Association (AMA) has for 
decades "specifically forbidden participation by physicians in executions" and 
similar "positions are held by professional societies of nurses, emergency 
medical technicians, and correctional health care workers."

But these prohibitions are not being fully enforced. Again in our May 2014 JAMA 
article, we argue that a more effective pathway to enforce ethical standards is 
through the system of board certification.

"Even though board certification is not required to practice medicine, in many 
fields it is a de facto requirement for physicians to practice within their 
specialties. For example, the American Board of Anesthesiology has taken the 
courageous step of adopting a policy that its certified members who participate 
in lethal injection for capital punishment are subject to having their board 
certification revoked. The boards of other specialties should consider taking 
the same action."

That said we note the potential for legal challenges to this approach: "Whether 
this approach will ultimately withstand inevitable legal challenges remains to 
be seen, but unless the profession is willing to stand up in defense of its own 
ethical principles, it will lose the authority to call itself a profession."

Supreme Court Review

The Supreme Court has also agreed to take a look at the Oklahoma drug protocol 
in a case now captioned Glossip v. Gross.

4 men initially asked for a stay of execution while the Supreme Court could 
review the petition for certiorari to analyze their case. That stay was denied 
on January 15, over a written dissent authored by Justice Sotomayor joined by 
Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, and Kagan.

After this decision most (including this author) thought the case was over, 
since the denial of a stay is usually an extremely good predictor of denial of 
certiorari in a capital case. However, very surprisingly, certiorari was 
granted a week later. This probably means that one justice (whose identity we 
will never know) voted against the stay, only to later vote for certiorari. In 
the interim one of the men was put to death. In other words, the delay between 
the stay and granting certiorari meant that 1 of these 4 men was treated 
differently from the other 3 and he is now dead. To quote the Bard from Richard 
II: "Such is the breath of kings."

Arguments in the case will now be heard on April 29, 2015, with a decision 
expected in June. I want to draw a contrast with my earlier medical ethics 
discussion because, as is often the case when medical ethics makes it to the 
Supreme Court, the Court has agreed to take on a much narrower legal question. 
Here is how the Court wrote the questions presented:

(1) Whether it is constitutionally permissible for a state to carry out an 
execution using a 3-drug protocol where (a) there is a well-established 
scientific consensus that the 1st drug has no pain relieving properties and 
cannot reliably produce deep, coma-like unconsciousness, and (b) it is 
undisputed that there is a substantial, constitutionally unacceptable risk of 
pain and suffering from the administration of the second and third drugs when a 
prisoner is conscious;

(2) Whether the plurality stay standard of Baze v. Rees applies when states are 
not using a protocol substantially similar to the one that this Court 
considered in Baze; And

(3) Whether a prisoner must establish the availability of an alternative drug 
formula even if the state's lethal-injection protocol, as properly 
administered, will violate the Eighth Amendment.

To help digest these questions, it is useful to go through Justice Sotomayor's 
opinion dissenting from the refusal to grant a stay since it gives us a good 
clue about how she and the other 3 who joined her will approach this case.

Let me quote her opinion's account of the botched execution and its aftermath:

Soon thereafter, the State adopted a new execution protocol. The protocol 
contains a number of procedures designed to better ensure that execution team 
members are able to insert properly an IV line and assess the condemned 
inmate's consciousness. The protocol also provides for 4 alternative drug 
combinations that can be used for lethal injections, 1 of which is the same 
midazolam/vecuronium bromide/potassium chloride combination that was used in 
the Lockett execution. Whereas the prior protocol called for the injection of 
only 100 milligrams of midazolam, the new protocol now calls for the injection 
of 500 milligrams of that drug. The State has announced that it plans to use 
this particular drug combination in all upcoming executions.

The petitioners challenged this in court as a violation of their Eighth 
Amendment under Section 1983. Sotomayor characterizes what happened:

2 expert witnesses for the plaintiffs testified that although midazolam could 
be used to render an individual unconscious, it was not and could not be relied 
on as an anesthetic because the patient could likely regain consciousness if 
exposed to noxious stimuli - such as the injection of potassium chloride.

For that reason, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has not approved the 
drug for use as an anesthetic. One expert argued that "midazolam is subject to 
a "'ceiling effect'" such that, no matter the dosage, it reaches a point of 
saturation and has no more effect, and at this saturation point the drug cannot 
keep someone unconscious.

According to these experts, this feature distinguishes midazolam - a 
benzodiazepine, like Valium or Xanax???from barbiturates such as pentobarbital 
or sodium thiopental, which are often used as the 1st drug in a 3-drug lethal 
injection protocol. The State's own expert argued to the contrary.

The district court ultimately agreed with the state and denied a preliminary 
injunction finding inmates to be unlikely to succeed on the merits because "The 
proper administration of 500 milligrams of midazolam . . . would make it a 
virtual certainty that any individual will be at a sufficient level of 
unconsciousness to resist the noxious stimuli which could occur from the 
application of the 2nd and 3rd drug."

Therefore, the lower court found that the challengers failed to establish a 
likelihood of being able to show that the protocol "presents a risk that is 
'sure or very likely to cause serious illness and needless suffering.'" That is 
a standard from Baze v. Reese, 2008, the last major Supreme Court case on 
lethal injection.

According to Sotomayor's dissent, the lower court also concluded:

That there was a 'separate reason' the plaintiffs had failed to establish a 
likelihood of success: They had not identified a "'known and available 
alternative'" by which they could be executed, as the State had 'affirmatively 
shown that sodium thiopental and pentobarbital, the only alternatives to which 
the plaintiffs ha[d] alluded, are not available to the' State.

An aside, why a shortage? Amid intense pressure by anti-death-penalty 
activists, the last American drug maker to produce sodium thiopental withdrew 
from the market in 2011. State officials scrambled to find alternative sources 
in overseas markets, leading to a European Union embargo of lethal-injection 
drugs and raids by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency to seize stockpiles of 
sodium thiopental that had been imported without a license.

The Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit affirmed, and that is how the case 
made it to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Sotomayor's opinion argued that there were serious constitutional questions 
with the way Oklahoma had proceeded. Here are her key points:

--The Baze opinion said that a challenger must show that the risk of severe 
pain is "substantial when compared to the known and available alternatives." 
That, however, "pertained to an Eighth Amendment claim that the procedures 
employed in a particular protocol were inferior to other procedures the State 
assertedly should have adopted." By contrast, "the same requirement should not 
necessarily extend to a claim that the planned execution will be 
unconstitutionally painful even if performed correctly; it would be odd if the 
constitutionality of being burned alive, for example, turned on a challenger's 
ability to point to an available guillotine."

--Second, both lower courts alternatively held that the use of midazolam did 
not create a substantial risk of unnecessary pain. But in the Court's earlier 
case, Baze, the Court "understood that the 1st drug in the 3-drug cocktail - 
there, sodium thiopental - would work as intended." But Sotomayor and her 
fellow Justices in the dissent found "the District Court's conclusion that 
midazolam will in fact work as intended difficult to accept given recent 
experience with the use of this drug. Lockett was able to regain consciousness 
even after having received a dose of midazolam - confirmed by a blood test - 
supposedly sufficient to knock him out entirely. Likewise, in Arizona's July 
23, 2014, execution of Joseph Wood, the condemned inmate allegedly gasped for 
nearly 2 hours before dying, notwithstanding having been injected with the drug 
hydromorphone and 750 milligrams of midazolam - that is, 50 % more of the drug 
than Oklahoma intends to use."

--She also expressed skepticism of the evidentiary findings of the district 
court noting scientific studies of the ceiling effect. "It is true that we give 
deference to the district courts. But at some point we must question their 
findings of fact, unless we are to abdicate our role of ensuring that no clear 
error has been committed. We should review such findings with added care when 
what is at issue is the risk of the needless infliction of severe pain."

These points give us a pretty clear outline of what she and the Justices 
joining her opinion think of the case.

What is likely to happen? To use a quote often ascribed to Yogi Berra, but 
sometimes to Niels Bohr, among others: "It's tough to make predictions, 
especially about the future." But here goes: I think the court will strike down 
as unconstitutional Oklahoma's method of execution in a narrowly written 
opinion, and remand the case for new fact-finding on the drug itself. I think 
the more interesting question is whether they get to the question of pointing 
to a better alternative protocol.

That is, will the state's lethal injection protocol be evaluated on its own 
terms as to whether it will cause an unconstitutional amount of pain or will 
the challenge have to point to an alternative protocol against which it is to 
be judged. This is Justice Sotomayor's point that it would be odd if the 
constitutionality of being burned alive, for example, turned on a challenger's 
ability to point to an available guillotine. My guess is that only some of the 
Justices will reach that question and we won't get a definitive resolution, but 
it is only a guess. We will have to wait until June to find out the answer.

(source: I. Glenn Cohen, healthaffairs.org)

*****************

Bring Back the Firing Squad



The likelihood that a state might execute an innocent person -- something that 
has almost certainly already happened in the U.S. -- is reason enough to 
abolish the death penalty. But while states continue to use it, they could at 
least be honest about what it means and choose a method that doesn't inflict 
additional unnecessary suffering.

It isn't difficult to kill a prisoner swiftly. A bullet to the heart, or 
lopping off the head, does the job. Yet states have chosen to disguise the 
brutality of the death penalty by adopting lethal injection -- a method that 
purports to be more humane but, because it doesn't work reliably, is actually 
more cruel than, say, death by firing squad. The desire to sanitize execution 
has made a terrible policy even worse.

Last July, the authorities in Arizona took almost two hours to kill Joseph 
Wood. Some witnesses said he was writhing and gasping for air throughout that 
time. The state attorney general???s office insisted he was sleeping soundly. 
What sounded like gasping was just snoring, they said. Wood is no longer 
available for comment.

2 months before that, Clayton Lockett, a prisoner in Oklahoma, writhed and 
groaned in a way that officials recognized as problematic: They called off the 
execution, but he died anyway. As a result of that incident, the U.S. Supreme 
Court will hear an appeal next month by 3 other Oklahoma death-row inmates, who 
argue that the state's use of lethal drugs constitutes a "cruel and unusual 
punishment" banned by the Constitution's Eighth Amendment.

This is not the 1st time the court has looked at the question. In 2008, it 
upheld Kentucky's use of lethal drugs. Since then, though, the company that 
manufactured one of the ingredients in that cocktail has ceased producing it, 
and the European Union has banned certain drugs from being exported to the U.S. 
to halt their use in executions. States have been turning to alternatives. So 
the Supreme Court now finds itself in the absurd position of micromanaging the 
drugs used in lethal injections.

States should stop using the death penalty, but if they can't bring themselves 
to do that, they should return to older, swifter and more reliable methods of 
execution. This week, Utah became the 1st state to bring back its firing squad, 
but it plans to use this method only if lethal injection is unavailable. It 
would be better to switch to death by firing squad and be done with it.

Through most of history, the death penalty was designed to inflict maximum pain 
and suffering. People were crucified, buried alive, burned at the stake, and 
hanged, drawn and quartered -- to name just a few of the methods conjured by 
the human imagination. The French introduced the guillotine in 1792 as a more 
modern way to cut off somebody's head than using a sword or ax. In the name of 
progress, cleaner and more clinical-seeming methods followed.

Yet if there can be such a thing as a humane execution, what counts is speed: 
The faster, the better. Executions have only gotten slower. The electric chair, 
gas chamber and lethal injection can all lead to intense and prolonged 
suffering. Each is designed, in truth, to spare the society that inflicts the 
punishment the sight of blood and guts. These methods are kinder to the 
executioners than to the condemned.

States should stop trying to mask the violence of the act. Executions are 
unavoidably brutal. Either scrap the death penalty, and the possibility of 
gross and irreversible injustice that goes with it -- or, for pity's sake, 
accept its brutality and make it quick.

(source: Editorial, Bloomberg View)

*****************

The death penalty in America is sexist



It took only 1 juror to spare Jodi Arias the death penalty for the brutal 
murder of her ex-boyfriend Travis Alexander in 2008.

Considering the United States has executed only 13 women in the last 40 years, 
a death sentence would have been highly unusual.

Women committed less than 10% of all murders in America between 2000 and 2010, 
a Wall Street Journal analysis of crime data found. Women defendants, however, 
only make up 2% of death row, according to a recent report by the NAACP.

Even fewer women actually get executed, Death Penalty Information Center 
executive director Richard Dieter told Business Insider.

"There's just less enforcement of the death penalty at almost every stage for 
females," he said.

2 major factors contribute to the low number of women who get capital 
punishment: the nature of the crime and how juries view women in general. The 
death penalty is often used for killers who also commit other felonies like 
robbery or rape, law professor Victor Streib has previously told the LA Times.

Many of the murders women commit, on the other hand, involve people they're 
related to.

While women commit about 10% of murders, they were responsible for 35% of 
murders of intimate partners between 1980 and 2008. Most juries consider these 
crimes of passion arising from disputes - 1-time offenses, Dieter said. Because 
of the high rate of domestic violence against women, though, juries don't give 
men the same benefit of the doubt.

On the other hand, most states consider killing a child an aggravating factor, 
or a reason for prosecutors to seek the death penalty. Hiring someone to do the 
work could also land a woman on death row. "If a woman hires someone, there's a 
coldness, a calculation. It's different than something that arises out of an 
argument," Dieter said.

Teresa Lewis, for example, plotted to kill her husband and stepson for the 
insurance money. "Instead of pulling a trigger on a gun, she pulled a couple of 
young men in to pull the trigger for her," prosecutor David Grimes told a judge 
at the time, The Washington Post reported. She was the 1st woman Virginia 
sentenced to die in more than 100 years.

But the 2nd factor - the jury's perception of the "fragile" female psyche - can 
overpower aggravating factors. "It's just easier to convince a jury that women 
suffer emotional distress or other emotional problems more than men," Streib 
told the LA Times.

Take Susan Smith. She killed her 2 sons by backing her car into a lake while 
they sat in the backseat. But when the jury heard about her abusive childhood, 
they took pity on her, Dieter said. She only got a life sentence - with parole. 
In TruTV's coverage of her story, the headline reads: Child Murderer Or Victim?

"These 12 people [the jury] are asked to see if this person has any redeeming 
qualities. And they often see their own mother or wife or grandmother, not 
someone who will continue to be a threat to society," Dieter said. "Jurors just 
see women differently than men."

Of course, most women aren't going to argue for gender parity in the death 
penalty, Dahlia Lithwick has written in Slate. Only 59% of women favour the 
death penalty compared to 67% of men, according to a 2013 Gallup poll.

"For equality's sake, you think that women would want the death penalty pursued 
more often," Dieter said. "But of course, they don't."

(source: Business Insider)

**********************

Bullets or Needles? Death Penalty Faces New Scrutiny as States Mull Changes 
(215)----On Monday, Utah Gov. Gary Herbert signed a bill to legalize a 5-person 
firing squad as the official back-up method of execution for the state.



Firing squads, gas chambers and the electric chair may seem like methods of 
state-mandated execution of the past, but some states in the U.S. are bringing 
them back, prompting a debate about the most humane form of the death penalty, 
or whether the very idea is a contradiction in terms.

"I think we're at a critical point right now where the myth that lethal 
injection was swift, effective and painless has been destroyed," said Robert 
Dunham, director of the Death Penalty Information Center.

"And there's kind of an irony here, because lethal injection was the choice 
when states were moving away from other more extreme, more overtly violent 
forms of execution."

On Monday, Utah Gov. Gary Herbert signed a bill to legalize a 5-person firing 
squad as the official back-up method of execution for the state, should it be 
unable to obtain the 3 drugs necessary for lethal injection.

Utah is not alone in rethinking its death penalty. Recent problem-marred 
executions in states including Ohio, Oklahoma and Arizona, coupled with a 
shortage of the necessary drugs have several other states reconsidering the 
lethal injection method as well.

Alabama is looking to revive the electric chair, which became the back-up 
method of execution in Tennessee last year. In 4 states - Wyoming, Arizona, 
California, and Missouri - gas chambers are the legal back-up method of 
execution after lethal injection. And in New Hampshire and Washington, hanging 
is a legal option.

The shift to alternative means of execution in some states is forcing society 
to confront the uncomfortable reality of the death penalty, Dunham told CNA.

"Here's the bottom line: Executions are by their very nature a violent act," he 
said. "When you are terminating the life of a person against their will, that's 
a violent act, and people are uncomfortable with sanctioning violence."

"They were less uncomfortable with lethal injection when it had the appearance 
of being peaceful. That is no longer tenable."

State Rep. Paul Ray, R-Clearfield, who sponsored the firing squad legislation 
in Utah, told the Los Angeles Times that he was aware of complaints about the 
firing squad being less humane.

"We could argue all day about what is more humane," he said. "I think any time 
you have to take a human life, there may be a way to dress it up and make it 
look nice, but my concern is make sure that there is justice for the victim."

But while some states are arguing over which methods of execution are most 
humane, others are looking at moving away from the death penalty altogether.

The death penalty has been trending down in the country for some time. There 
are 26 U.S. states and jurisdictions with no executions carried out in at least 
10 years. Just last year, the country executed 35 inmates, a 2-decade low. 
Fewer states carried out executions and there were fewer people sentenced to 
death in the 1st place, according to the Death Penalty Information Center's 
2014 end of the year report.

Some of the shift away from capital punishment has been the result of botched 
executions. Last year, inmates in at least 3 different states were observed 
gasping for breath, choking, convulsing and clenching their fists. In 1 case, 
an inmate took nearly 2 hours to die. In another, an inmate died of a massive 
heart attack half an hour being administered the lethal drugs.

Lethal injection is generally performed using a 3-drug mixture. The 1at drug is 
an anesthetic, the second is a paralytic, and the third is the killing agent. 
The paralytic, Dunham said, is not present for any medical purpose, but rather 
to give the appearance of a peaceful passing, regardless of what may be going 
on interiorly in the person. But when some of all of the drugs fail in some 
way, it shatters the illusion of a non-violent death.

"These latest botched executions have destroyed the myth that lethal injection 
is peaceful; and lethal injection was preferred because it was less disturbing 
to the public," he said.

Further driving states away from lethal injection is the inaccessibility of the 
lethal drugs. Dunham said many pharmaceutical companies do not want to be 
associated with the taking of life, and have therefore stopped providing the 
lethal drugs. This causes states to look for companies abroad, but since the 
European Union holds the death penalty as a violation of human rights, it is 
illegal for European pharmaceutical companies to sell the drugs to the United 
States.

Some states obtain the drugs through what are known as compounding pharmacies, 
which are less regulated. Dunham voiced concern over the lack of quality 
assurance with these pharmacies, adding that they have been known to distribute 
contaminated drugs in the past.

Furthermore, many doctors refuse to participate in executions, as they say they 
violate the Hippocratic Oath. This means whoever is administering the lethal 
injections may have sub-par medical training. Combine this with the 
questionable drugs, and the margin for error and botched executions is pretty 
significant, Dunham said.

Given all of these problems, many states are struggling with what to do next. 3 
states - Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania - have already put a temporary halt to 
the death penalty. And while state returning to firing squads and electric 
chairs make good headlines, there are at least 13 states where bills have been 
introduced to abolish the punishment altogether.

Bishop John Wester of Salt Lake City expressed his dismay at his state's return 
to the firing squad in a statement released Tuesday, March 24. The real issue, 
he said, is not the method of killing but the death penalty itself.

"Only God can give and take life," he said. "By taking a life, in whatever form 
the death penalty is carried out, the state is usurping the role of God. 
Execution does violence to God's time, eliminating the opportunity for God's 
redemptive and forgiving grace to work in the life of a prisoner."

Bishop Wester encouraged Utah's governor and legislature to pass a moratorium 
on the death penalty, and to look at moving away from the "state-sanctioned 
destruction of human life" altogether before the next execution occurs.

Pope Francis has also addressed the issue of the death penalty on several 
occasions, most recently in a letter last week to Federico Mayor, president of 
the International Commission against the Death Penalty.

"There is discussion in some quarters about the method of killing, as if it 
were possible to find ways of 'getting it right.' ... But there is no humane 
way of killing another person," the Pope said, emphasizing, "Nowadays the death 
penalty is inadmissible, no matter how serious the crime committed."

Under Catholic teaching, the death penalty is a matter of prudential judgment, 
but the Catechism of the Catholic Church offers guidance in how to think about 
its application. The Catechism teaches that the death penalty is acceptable "if 
this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the 
unjust aggressor." However, it adds, such cases today "are very rare, if not 
practically nonexistent," wording that was added from Pope John Paul II's 1995 
encyclical, Evangelium Vitae (The Value and Inviolability of Human Life).

Anthony Granado, who serves as a policy adviser for the U.S. Conference of 
Catholic Bishops' domestic social development office, told CNA he believes that 
United States definitely falls under the category of countries in which the 
death penalty should be "practically nonexistent."

"The issue about violent criminals killing prison guards or other prisoners is 
not an argument for further use of the death penalty, but for reforming 
prisons," he said, "and the bishops here in the United States are very much in 
favor of criminal justice reform."

The Church does not teach against life in prison without parole, Granado noted, 
but these cases should be decided very carefully and on an individual basis.

Dunham agreed that the death penalty is generally speaking not necessary in to 
protect the public in the U.S. He pointed to studies indicating that a country 
is no safer when the death penalty is in place.

"We're not dealing with the Wild West and whether a dangerous criminal can be 
safely held in a small-town sheriff's lock-up," he said, "we're dealing with 
super maxes."

Part of the problem, Dunham argued, is that most people in the United States 
have not thought seriously about the death penalty. Europeans, who experienced 
more immediately the horrors of World War II, were quicker to abolish the death 
penalty because taking life had become "unpalatable," he said.

Once people become more informed, they tend to favor abolition of the death 
penalty, Dunham said.

"I think as each of these different issues comes to light, the public becomes 
more informed. And as the public becomes more informed, its views change. And 
its views have been changing consistently in the same direction."

The issue may soon take the national stage, as U.S. Supreme Court hears 
arguments next months in Glossip vs. Gross, a botched execution case out of 
Oklahoma. The court is expected to rule later this year whether lethal 
injection amounts to cruel and unusual punishment.

(source: ncregister.com)