[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

April 3



VATICAN CITY:

Sanctuary of truth or brothel of error? More papal controversy on the death 
penalty



Pope Francis aroused more controversy this week, making even more explicit his 
apparent belief that the death penalty is always and everywhere wrong, while 
frankly acknowledging that the Church has not taught this in the past.

He sought to justify this change by invoking the ancient theologian, St. 
Vincent of Lérins, and his doctrine of development in the Church.

During the inflight press conference on his return from Morocco on Sunday, 
March 31, a journalist asked the Pope if he were concerned that Muslims who 
convert to Christianity thereby “risk” imprisonment or even death in some 
Muslim countries.

In Morocco, as in many Muslim countries (such as the United Arab Emirates which 
the Pope also recently visited), conversion to Christianity is banned.

“I can say that in Morocco there is freedom of worship, there is freedom of 
religion, there is freedom to belong to a religious creed. Then freedom always 
develops, it grows,” the Pope responded. “Think about us Christians, 300 years 
ago, if there was the freedom that we have today. Faith grows in awareness, in 
the ability to understand itself.”

The Pope expounded on the point, invoking the ancient saint whose thought 
played a pivotal role in Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman’s classic work, On 
the Development of Christian Doctrine. He told journalists aboard the papal 
plane:

A 5th-century French monk, Vincent of Lérins, coined a beautiful expression to 
explain how one can grow in faith, explain things better, and also grow in 
moral [understanding] but always being faithful to the roots. He said 3 words 
but they indicate the road: he said that growth in the explaining 
[esplicitazione] and awareness of faith and morals must be ut annis 
consolidetur, dilatetur tempore, sublimetur aetate, that is, growth must be 
strengthened through the years, expanded over time, but it is the same faith 
that is exalted over the years.

“This is how we understand, for example, that today we have removed the death 
penalty from the Catechism of the Catholic Church,” he said.

“300 years ago, heretics were burned alive. Because the Church has grown in 
moral understanding, and in respect for the person,” he added.

This is not the first time Pope Francis has invoked St. Vincent of Lérins.

In an interview with the Jesuit-run La Civiltà Cattolica 6 months into his 
pontificate (September 2013), the Pope argued on the basis of the 
aforementioned statement from the 5th-century monk that “the thinking of the 
Church must … understand how human beings understand themselves today, in order 
to develop and deepen the Church’s teaching.”

In November 2016, he cited the same passage as he questioned why young 
Catholics would be drawn to the traditional liturgy.

And in his ‘God of surprises’ homily, on May 8, 2017, he again had recourse to 
St. Vincent’s words, inviting Catholics to pray for the “grace of discernment” 
so as not to “fall into immobility, rigidity and a closed heart.”

Inflight press conferences have no magisterial weight. Nonetheless, LifeSite 
asked one of leading experts on the Catholic Church’s teaching on the death 
penalty to weigh in on the Pope’s latest remarks and invocation of St. Vincent 
of Lérins.

An expert weighs in

Renowned Catholic philosopher Edward Feser, Associate Professor of Philosophy 
at Pasadena City College in Pasadena, California, is one of the foremost 
contemporary writers in the Thomistic tradition, and a leading expert on the 
Church’s teaching on the death penalty.

He is the author of numerous works, including By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed 
(with Joseph Bessette) and the forthcoming Aristotle’s Revenge.

By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed is a study and defense of the perennial Catholic 
teaching on the death penalty as legitimate in principle and often advisable in 
practice even in contemporary social conditions.

In comments to LifeSite, Feser said:

It is odd for the pope to cite St. Vincent of Lérins in defense of the recent 
change to the Catechism, because St. Vincent was the opposite of sympathetic to 
innovative and ambiguous theological formulations of the kind represented by 
the new language. Indeed, his major theme was precisely to condemn, in harsh 
and unmistakable terms, all ‘novelties’ in doctrine, by which he meant 
teachings that were not true developments but reversals of what the Church has 
taught in the past.

Feser then explained that development is only legitimate if it logically 
follows what has already been taught in the deposit of faith. It is therefore 
is a legitimate development if it’s a logical conclusion of what the Church has 
taught in the past. If a given teaching is not a logical conclusion, it cannot 
be legitimate.

He said: “Suppose, to take an artificial example, that the Church had taught 
that ‘All men are mortal’ and ‘Socrates is a man.’ If she later explicitly 
taught that ‘Socrates is mortal,’ then this would not be a novelty in the sense 
condemned by St. Vincent, because this follows logically from what she had 
earlier taught.”

“Even if she had not taught it explicitly, she did teach it implicitly. Simply 
making this explicit would be a true development of doctrine,” he added.

The noted philosopher continued: “Suppose instead, however, that the Church 
later taught that ‘Socrates is not mortal,’ This would be a novelty, a 
corruption of doctrine and not a true development at all, because it would 
contradict what was implicitly taught earlier.”

Feser insisted that not only does St. Vincent of Lérins not support logical 
rupture but he is preoccupied with preventing such novelties. He said:

Now, St. Vincent absolutely hammers on the theme that Catholics must avoid 
novelties or even reinterpretations of past doctrine, and that when some new 
teaching or reinterpretation seems to conflict with antiquity, we must cling to 
antiquity. Quite rigidly, you might say. He is very, very insistent on this and 
very harsh even on people who would try to use ambiguous formulations to 
smuggle in novelties, let alone those who brazenly propose them.

The author of By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed told LifeSite:

Now, in the case of capital punishment, things are far less ambiguous even than 
my artificial example, because scripture, the Fathers and Doctors of the 
Church, and previous popes have all already explicitly taught, over and over 
and over again, that capital punishment can be legitimate at least in principle 
and in some circumstances. They already explicitly considered the suggestion 
that capital punishment is per se contrary to justice or to the Gospel, and 
explicitly rejected that claim as heterodox.

“So, for the Church now to teach that capital punishment is always and 
intrinsically immoral would be a crystal-clear example of a novelty in St. 
Vincent’s sense,” Feser argued.

“This is why it is the Pope’s duty clearly and explicitly to reaffirm the 
traditional teaching that capital punishment is not always and intrinsically 
wrong, even if he also wants to recommend against its actual use in modern 
circumstances,” he explained. “This is exactly what his predecessor St. John 
Paul II was careful to do, and there can be no doubt that it would be exactly 
what St. Vincent would urge.”

Sanctuary of truth vs. brothel of error

A Dominican theologian who spoke with LifeSite on condition of anonymity said 
regarding Pope Francis’s recent comments on the death penalty: “On capital 
punishment Pope Francis unfortunately continues to talk as if he can justify 
putting himself in contradiction with the teaching of the Church by speaking of 
development.”

“As Bishop Athanasius Schneider has recently said, Pope Francis is 
contradicting a bi-millennial doctrine,” he added, referring to Schneider’s 
essay on what the Church should do about a heretical pope.

“With regard to religious freedom,” the theologian continued, “the Church has a 
God-given power of using sanctions against her delinquent members, including 
punishing crimes such as heresy. As modern canon law still teaches, these 
sanctions can be either spiritual, like excommunication, or bodily, like 
confinement to a monastery.”

“In a Catholic country which officially recognizes the Church’s authority, the 
Church can call on the civil power to help enforce these sanctions,” he said. 
“No pope or council can strip this right from the Church, though they may 
decide not to use it,” he said.

“Unfortunately,” the Dominican sighed, “as often with this pope, his words 
savor strongly of the heresy of modernism, which denies that the dogmas of the 
Church keep the same meaning from one generation to the next.”

He noted that St Vincent’s great concern is “that we should believe only what 
has always been believed — as he puts it, that we must ‘in no way depart from 
those interpretations which it is manifest were notoriously held by our holy 
ancestors and fathers’ (Commonitorium Primum, chapter 2).”

“He insists that development must be ‘in the same doctrine, in the same sense, 
and in the same meaning,’” he explained. “Otherwise, he says it is like a 
change from a man to a monster.”

The Dominican offered the following example: “St. John said, ‘the Word became 
flesh,’ and 600 years later a council of the Church defined that Christ had 2 
wills. That is an example of what he means. If 600 years later, another council 
said that Christ had 3 wills, that would be corruption.”

Citing the same work from the ancient saint of Lérins, the theologian 
concluded:

St. Vincent warns against false development, writing: ‘If what is new begins to 
be mingled with what is old, foreign with domestic, profane with sacred, the 
custom will of necessity creep on universally, till at last the Church will 
have nothing left untampered with, nothing unadulterated, nothing sound, 
nothing pure; but where formerly there was a sanctuary of chaste and undefiled 
truth, thenceforward there will be a brothel of impious and base errors.’ This 
is the danger today” (ch. 58).

Summing up St. Vincent of Lérins

The authentic doctrine of St. Vincent of Lérins might best be summed up in the 
words taken from him with which the First Vatican Council concludes its 
dogmatic constitution on the Catholic Faith, Dei Filius. The passage reads:

That meaning of the sacred dogmas is ever to be maintained which has once been 
declared by Holy Mother Church, and there must never be any abandonment of this 
sense under the pretext or in the name of a more profound understanding. May 
understanding, knowledge and wisdom increase as ages and centuries roll along, 
and greatly and vigorously flourish, in each and all, in the individual and the 
whole Church: but this only in its own proper kind, that is to say, in the same 
doctrine, the same sense, and the same understanding [Vincent of Lérins, 
Commonitorium primum 23].

(source: lifesitenews.com)








SRI LANKA:

Executions will not end drug-related crime



Executions will not end drug-related crime in Sri Lanka, Amnesty International 
said today in a new briefing, calling on the Sri Lankan government to halt 
plans to resume executions after more than 4 decades.

The briefing, Sri Lanka: Halt Preparations to Resume Executions, highlights how 
the death penalty is being used in circumstances that violate international law 
and standards, has failed to act as a unique deterrent to crime in other 
countries, could claim the lives of people who may have been convicted through 
unfair trials, and could disproportionately affect people from minority and 
less advantaged socio-economic backgrounds.

“There is no evidence that implementing the death penalty will end drug-related 
crime. Executions are never a solution. Indeed, they may result in people being 
put to death following unfair trials. The death penalty is also a punishment 
that disproportionately affects people from less advantaged socio-economic 
backgrounds,” said Biraj Patnaik, South Asia Director at Amnesty International.

Amnesty International’s briefing highlights the lack of evidence that the death 
penalty has unique deterrent effect on crime. Statistics from countries that 
have abolished the death penalty show that the absence of executions has not 
resulted in an increase in crimes, previously subjected to capital punishment.

There is no coming back from an execution. There is no criminal justice system 
that is perfect. The risk of executing an innocent person can never be 
eliminated, and the injustice that ensues can never be redeemed----Biraj 
Patnaik, South Asia Director

(source: Amnesty International)

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

Executions will not end drug-related crime in Sri Lanka - AI



Executions will not end drug-related crime in Sri Lanka, Amnesty International 
said today in a new briefing, calling on the Sri Lankan government to halt 
plans to resume executions after more than 4 decades.

The briefing, Sri Lanka: Halt Preparations to Resume Executions, highlights how 
the death penalty is being used in circumstances that violate international law 
and standards, has failed to act as a unique deterrent to crime in other 
countries, could claim the lives of people who may have been convicted through 
unfair trials, and could disproportionately affect people from minority and 
less advantaged socio-economic backgrounds, a release said.

“There is no evidence that implementing the death penalty will end drug-related 
crime. Executions are never a solution. Indeed, they may result in people being 
put to death following unfair trials. The death penalty is also a punishment 
that disproportionately affects people from less advantaged socio-economic 
backgrounds,” said Biraj Patnaik, South Asia Director at Amnesty International.

Amnesty International’s briefing highlights the lack of evidence that the death 
penalty has unique deterrent effect on crime, it said. Statistics from 
countries that have abolished the death penalty show that the absence of 
executions has not resulted in an increase in crimes, previously subjected to 
capital punishment.

The briefing highlights countries that have abolished the death penalty, or 
amended drug laws, including Iran where recent legislative amendments have 
resulted in a significant decrease in executions of people convicted of 
drug-related offences. Similarly, in Malaysia, the government announced a 
moratorium on executions and a review of the country’s death penalty laws, 
after having introduced some sentencing discretion for the offence of drug 
trafficking in 2017.

Amnesty International also highlights how the trials of those facing execution 
could have failed to meet international fair trial standards, due to torture 
and forced “confessions” being routinely practiced in Sri Lanka’s criminal 
justice system, as noted by the National Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka 
and UN experts.

“There is no coming back from an execution. There is no criminal justice system 
that is perfect. The risk of executing an innocent person can never be 
eliminated, and the injustice that ensues can never be redeemed,” said Biraj 
Patnaik.

Furthermore, the briefing also highlights that evidence from other countries 
shows that defendants from less advantaged socio-economic backgrounds, 
belonging to racial, ethnic or religious minorities are disproportionately 
vulnerable to being sentenced to death.

Amnesty International called on the Sri Lankan government to halt its current 
execution plans and establish an official moratorium on the implementation of 
death sentences, with a view to abolishing the death penalty altogether.

“No criminal justice system is capable of deciding fairly who should live or 
who should die. Sri Lanka has not implemented this ultimate cruel, degrading 
and inhumane punishment for more than four decades. It should continue to 
honour a tradition that chooses life instead of vengeance,” said Biraj Patnaik.

(source: adaderana.lk)








INDONESIA:

Death penalty demanded for accused killers of former Indonesian journalist



Prosecutors demanded on Tuesday the death penalty for 2 of the 3 defendants who 
are standing trial at the Cibinong District Court for the murder of Abdullah 
"Dufi" Fithri Setiawan, a former journalist whose body was found in a drum in 
Bogor, West Java, on Nov. 18, 2018.

Prosecutor Anita Dian Wardhani said 2 of the defendants, M. Nurhadi and Sari 
Murniasi, deserved capital punishment, while the third, Yudi, deserved 15 years 
in prison. They were all charged with violating Article 340 of the Criminal 
Code on premeditated murder and Article 365 on violent robbery.

“The death penalty for Nurhadi and Sri Murniasih is for premeditated murder, 
while the imprisonment sentence for Yudi is for him helping the other 
defendants dispose of the dead body,” the head of the general crime division of 
the Bogor Attorney General's Office, Kristanto, said on Tuesday as quoted by 
kompas.com.

Dufi’s brother, Muhammad Ali Ramdhani, said he felt grateful when he heard the 
demand read out during the session on Tuesday afternoon.

(source: elevenmyanmar.com)








SINGAPORE:

Brothel operator appeals to escape death penalty for killing pimp: Judgment 
reserved



Nearly 2 years after being handed the death sentence for killing a pimp 5 years 
ago, 55-year-old brothel operator Chan Lie Sian is now back in the Court of 
Appeal on Wednesday (3 April), fighting for his life to be spared.

Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon, together with Judges of Appeal Andrew Phang and 
Judith Prakash, reserved judgment on the appropriate sentence after hearing 2 
1/2 hours of arguments from Chan’s lawyer Mr Wendell Wong and Deputy Public 
Prosecutor (DPP) Ms April Phang.

Chan was charged for the murder of 35-year-old William Tiah Hung Wai, whom he 
accused of having stolen money from him.

At about 11am on 14 January 2014, Chan summoned Tiah to the lodging house at 
Lorong 18 Geylang, where the former repeatedly struck the latter on the head 
with a metal dumbbell rod till unconscious, during a period of not more than 15 
minutes.

Chua Thiam Hock, a cleaner employed by Chan, was then similarly summoned to the 
lodging house and beaten up by him. He also witnessed Chan beating Tiah further 
on his hands, arms and legs. Both Chua and Tiah were then confined for around 3 
hours.

After another few hours, Chan splashed a pail of water over Tiah, purportedly 
trying to wake him up. Tiah was then sent to the hospital, following another 
round of disagreements between Chan and a few others as to whether medical aid 
should be given to Tiah.

Tiah eventually passed away 1 week later without regaining consciousness, a day 
short of his 36th birthday.

In May 2017, having rejected the defences of non-causation, intoxication and 
sudden fight, Judicial Commissioner Hoo Sheau Peng found Chan guilty of murder 
under section 300(a) of the Penal Code, i.e. under the limb with the intention 
to cause death, and accordingly passed the mandatory death sentence on him.

In July last year, both the Prosecution and Defence were allowed to introduce 
new evidence for the appeal, namely, autopsy reports from their respective 
experts. The result of this is that both experts agreed that, of the multiple 
blows Chan inflicted on Tiah’s head with the metal dumbbell rod, only one blow 
was sufficient to cause death.

As the arguments go on, the focus of the appeal is no longer on whether Chan 
had the intention to kill Tiah, but more on whether the death sentence or life 
imprisonment is appropriate as Chan’s punishment for murder.

This was because the judges, following a short break in between arguments, 
formed the provisional view that Chan could not be said to have the specific 
intention to kill Tiah, especially given that he had beaten Chua up after Tiah; 
and that the appropriate murder charge might have been section 300(c) instead, 
where the death sentence was not mandatory.

Mr Wong, in pleading for life imprisonment to be imposed, submitted that Chan 
did not prevent medical aid to be rendered to Tiah eventually despite his 
initial objections, and this showed that he did not completely disregard Tiah’s 
life.

Justice Phang found it difficult with the fact that Chan did not call for the 
ambulance at the earliest opportunity. He was prepared to treat this not as an 
aggravating factor but at most, a neutral factor in Chan’s case, given his 
stage of rage and anger at the material time.

“Even if someone fell ill or fainted during my lecture many years ago, the 
first thing I would do is to call an ambulance,” he remarked.

CJ Menon, on the other hand, was troubled by DPP Phang’s suggestion that by 
leaving Tiah unattended without medical attention and preventing others from 
rendering medical assistance to him, Chan had acted in blatant disregard for 
Tiah’s life.

In this regard, there was no evidence than Chan knew Tiah was dying or would 
die throughout the period he was left unattended. The fact that he splashed 
water on Tiah further reinforced his belief as to Tiah’s condition, even though 
DPP Phang disagreed with Mr Wong’s contention that the water was meant for 
Tiah’s revival.

CJ Menon also noted that in enquiring whether a murderer had acted in blatant 
disregard of human life, the focus should be on the manner in which he acted 
while committing the offence of murder.

(source: theonlinecitizen.com)