[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----NY, VA., FLA., OHIO, NEB., UTAH, USA

[Rick Halperin]

Aug. 3



NEW YORK:

Cuomo to push bill that would end NY's death penalty law


Gov. Andrew Cuomo says he'll introduce legislation that would remove the death 
penalty from New York state law.

The Democrat made the announcement Thursday after the Vatican said Pope Francis 
decreed the death penalty is "inadmissible" under all circumstances.

Cuomo says his proposal is being made in solidarity with the pope and in honor 
of his late father, Mario Cuomo, a staunch death penalty opponent during his 3 
terms as New York governor from 1983 to 1994.

The elder Cuomo vetoed legislation reinstating the death penalty 12 times in 12 
years.

New York's death penalty was reinstated in 1995 while Republican George Pataki 
was governor. The state's highest court ruled it unconstitutional in 2004. The 
state hasn't executed a prisoner since 1963.

(source: Associated Press)






VIRGINIA:

Va. death penalty opponents welcome pope's new teaching against executions


Catholic officials and death penalty opponents in Virginia - which has put to 
death more people in modern times than any other state except Texas - welcomed 
Pope Francis' new teaching against the death penalty on Thursday, though the 
impact of the change remains unclear.

Previously, the Catholic Church has said executions could be carried out in 
rare instances. In a change announced Thursday, the Catholic teaching now 
states that executions are "inadmissible because it is an attack on the 
inviolability and dignity of the person."

Bill Re, associate director of the Virginia Catholic Conference, said it "has 
long advocated for an end to the use of the death penalty in Virginia and will 
continue to do so."

"We take this opportunity to urge our state lawmakers to put an end to the 
death penalty and to make respect for life the priority in the many decisions 
they make," Re said.

According to the Virginia Catholic Conference, there are nearly 700,000 
registered Catholics in the state, or 8.3 % of the state population of 8.4 
million.

With 113 executions since the U.S. Supreme Court allowed capital punishment to 
resume in 1976, Virginia is 2nd in the country only to Texas, which had 553 
executions during the same period.

Last year, Virginia executed Ricky Gray, who murdered a family in Richmond, and 
William Morva, who murdered a deputy sheriff and hospital security guard in 
Blacksburg.

Michael E. Stone, executive director of Virginians for Alternatives to the 
Death Penalty, said, "The abolition movement is very pleased by the updated 
teaching from the Catholic Church that capital punishment is never admissible.

"This change from Pope Francis was the culmination of increasingly critical 
writings of Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI on the death penalty. As a 
lifelong Catholic, I am proud of the leadership of church leaders on this life 
issue," he said.

Andrew Chesnut, the Bishop Sullivan Chair in Catholic Studies at Virginia 
Commonwealth University, said, "Practically speaking, the church's new policy 
of total opposition to capital punishment is aimed at the United States."

Chesnut said a new Pew Research Center poll shows that a significant majority 
of white American Catholics are in favor of the death penalty despite the 
church being one of the major opponents.

"The new policy will give greater ammunition to Catholics fighting to abolish 
it in the U.S. but will probably not sway those parishioners who support it, 
many of whom view the Argentine pontiff as too liberal on issues of social 
policy," Chesnut said.

A spokesman for the Virginia attorney general's office, which defends 
challenges to death sentences, declined to comment Thursday.

Richmond Commonwealth's Attorney Michael Herring, who won the death sentence 
against Gray, said he could not comment on the pope's action because of the 
approaching capital murder trial of Travis Ball, who is charged with the 
slaying of a Virginia State Police special agent.

Chesnut said that of the 52 countries that still execute convicted criminals, 
the U.S. is both the only major Western country and the only one with a 
significant Catholic population - the 4th-largest in the world, he said.

He said that as the 1st Latin American pope, Francis has put mercy and social 
justice at the top of his agenda, so the new position on capital punishment 
comes as no surprise.

"One of the fixtures of his foreign tours, including the U.S., are visits to 
prisons, which in his native Latin America are hellholes often controlled by 
criminal elements," Chesnut said.

Virginia authorities said Thursday that there have been no executions this year 
and none is currently scheduled.

The Virginia Department of Corrections says Virginia has 3 inmates on death 
row. According to figures from the Death Penalty Information Center, of the 34 
states with capital punishment, Virginia has one of the smallest death rows in 
the country.

(source: The Daily Progress)

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

Was the Colonies' First Death Penalty Handed to a Mutineer or Spy?


The 7 original councillors of what would soon become the colony of Jamestown, 
Virginia, had voyaged for 5 long months between Great Britain and the New 
World. After nearly three weeks of looking, they chose the land for their new 
settlement of over 100 people on a swampy island in what is today the James 
River. Among them were two men at odds with one another: their president, 
Captain Edward Maria Wingfield, and young Captain George Kendall.

Less than 2 years after his arrival in the country, Kendall would be executed - 
though for which crime remained somewhat of a mystery.

The island was isolated and cramped, with limited water and swathes of 
mosquitos. Rather than vast fortunes of silver and gold, the settlers instead 
found hostile Native Americans, sickness and discord. Kendall got to work 
building fortifications on the island out of "boughs of tree cast together in a 
half-moon," but tensions were brewing as supplies dwindled. Eventually, writes 
Frank E. Grizzard in his history of the colony, Kendall was "voted off the 
council, arrested and confined" to their ship.

In the meantime, others in the group were plotting to overthrow their elected 
president. Wingfield was eventually ejected and replaced, and Kendall was 
allowed to leave the ship, if he agreed not to carry a weapon. Even a new 
leader couldn't dissipate the rising disharmony among the men, however. When 
James Read, a blacksmith, attempted to strike their new president, he was 
sentenced to death - but managed to escape almost with the noose around his 
neck by revealing that Kendall had hatched a plan with the deposed Wingfield to 
carry out a mutiny. Kendall was thus tried, condemned and killed by a firing 
squad.

But the story was more complicated than that. The death penalty was not a 
common punishment for mutiny: after all, the others embroiled in the plot had 
all been spared. Kendall seems to have been a man of rank and influence, writes 
the historian Philip L. Barbour. He was at once a genuine threat and above 
being hanged like a common criminal. A curious reference to "heinous matters" 
in the men's accounts reveals the truth: Kendall was up to something far more 
serious than simple mutiny - he had double-crossed not just his leader, but his 
entire country, as a spy for the Spanish.

Francisco Maguel, an Irishman, was with the men when Kendall died and travelled 
to America with them, Barbour explains. Speaking to the Irish archbishop on his 
return, Maguel told them how the English had tried a man "because they learned 
that he had tried to get to Spain in order to reveal to His Majesty all about 
this country and many plans of the English." This treason, if accurate, would 
have more than warranted the death penalty, even if Kendall's high rank got him 
out of a common hanging.

Kendall earned himself a place in history as the first known person to be 
sentenced to the Western death penalty in what is today the United States. For 
centuries, he has been little more than a footnote in textbooks - until 1996, 
when archaeologists found the skeleton of a young white man buried in the walls 
of the original fort in Jamestown. The person had been shot multiple times, and 
buried in a coffin, suggesting a person of status. Could this have been 
Kendall?

4 years after Kendall's execution, Virginia's governor codified the death 
penalty by law. All sorts of crimes carried this punishment, from fraternizing 
with Native Americans to stealing fruit or killing chickens without permission. 
For the next 2 centuries, public hangings became commonplace in the state and 
across the country more generally.

But in the 19th century, the tide began to turn. In a small number of states, 
starting with Pennsylvania, the death penalty was abolished either entirely or 
for all crimes except treason. (Kendall, therefore, would not have been safe.) 
The last 2 centuries have seen even more states shifting in their allegiance to 
the death penalty, adjusting over the years to court rulings and changing 
political climates. Today, 410 years after Kendall's execution, capital 
punishment is illegal in 19 states, but remains legal in 31 - including 
Virginia.

(source: history.com)






FLORIDA:

Gillum Vows To Suspend, Review Death Penalty In Florida


Saying "justice delayed is not justice denied," Tallahassee Mayor Andrew 
Gillum, told CBS Miami if he is elected governor he would suspend the use of 
the death penalty in Florida until he could be certain there was no bias in the 
system.

"I don't believe [the death penalty] is applied fairly," said Gillum, 1 of 5 
candidates vying to become the Democratic nominee for governor this year.

He said he would refuse to sign death warrants "until we can come up with some 
answers as to why it is there seems to be in this state a racial bias when it 
comes to the application of the death penalty."

"I believe that we ought to have an in-depth analysis on why it is that in 
cases where the defendant is a person of color," he added, "that it appears ... 
even in cases of similar crimes being committed between a white defendant and a 
black defendant, black defendants are more likely to receive the death 
penalty."

Gillum has previously said he would also seek to suspend the state's Stand Your 
Ground law. This was the 1st time, however, he suggested using the power of the 
governor's office to stymie executions.

"I am not a death penalty opponent," Gillum said, noting he disagreed with 
Orange-Osceola County State Attorney Aramis Ayala who made headlines when she 
said she would not prosecute death penalty cases. In response, Governor Rick 
Scott took all of the possible death penalty cases away from her office and 
re-assigned them to other offices. Gillum said disagreed with how both Scott 
and Ayala handled the situation. (Ayala recently endorsed Gillum.)

"Where we agree is that we both know, as do a lot of researchers in this state 
and those nationally who have observed the application of the death penalty in 
this state, we know there is bias in the system," he said. "We need to figure 
that out."

He said he did not know how long that review would take.

"We've got brilliant minds and we've got brilliant partners in organizations 
all around this state that can aid us in getting to the bottom of this," he 
said. "There was a very good strong report done by the Sarasota Herald Tribune 
about a year and a half ago that talked about the bias on the bench."

Gillum is likely to be criticized by victim advocates and the families of 
murder victims who are waiting to see their loved ones killer executed.

"Well first of all, justice delayed is not justice denied," he said. "Justice 
will be had here. But you've got to ensure that when it comes to taking the 
life of another living breathing human being that we have to be absolutely 
certain that we don't have bias in the system."

(source: CBS News)






OHIO:

Joe Deters reconciled his faith with the death penalty: 'There is evil in this 
world'


Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters a long time ago reconciled his Catholic 
faith with the idea that sometimes he must seek the death penalty in killings 
that are the worst of the worst.

His faith allowed the death penalty in limited circumstances and Deters agreed 
that for the worst of the worst criminals, a death sentence was sometimes 
necessary.

But as Deters pursues a death penalty sentence against convicted serial killer 
Anthony Kirkland, he woke up to a published report that Pope Francis changed 
Catholic Church teaching about the death penalty. In a new policy published 
Thursday, the pope now says, the death penalty is always "inadmissible" because 
it "attacks" the inherent dignity of all humans.

It didn't change the mind of the longtime prosecutor.

"My dear friends who are priests don't understand what we're dealing with," 
Deters said. "There is evil in this world and there comes a point where society 
needs to defend itself."

Kirkland, he said, "would kill again if he got the chance."

Kirkland, 49, killed 3 women and 2 teenage girls before he was caught in 2009. 
He killed Leona Douglas, 28, in 1989, when he was 18 years old and served a 
16-year prison sentence. He was released in 2003 and Kirkland started killing 
again in 2006. Kirkland killed Casonya Crawford, 14; Mary Jo Newton, 45; and 
Kimya Rolison, 25, in 2006. And then he killed Esme Kenney, 13, in 2009.

He strangled or stabbed his victims, then burned their bodies and fled. He told 
police, in a confession, "Fire purifies."

Kirkland was convicted in 2010 and is serving life prison terms for killing the 
adult women. But a death penalty sentence imposed for killing the teenagers was 
overturned by the Ohio Supreme Court, prompting a new sentencing.

Kirkland's defense is pleading for a life prison term, saying Kirkland is 
mentally ill, was abused and neglected as a child and has head injuries that 
account for the violence.

6 women and 6 men are hearing the case. There were 2 days of serious 
questioning of jurors, including how they felt about the death penalty. 12 
members of the pool of 120 said they could not, for personal and religious 
reasons, sign off on the death penalty. And they were excused.

The Vatican said Francis approved a change to the Catechism of the Catholic 
Church - the compilation of official Catholic teaching. Previously, the 
catechism said the church didn't exclude recourse to capital punishment "if 
this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the 
unjust aggressor."

The new teaching, contained in Catechism No. 2267, says the previous policy is 
outdated, that there are other ways to protect the common good and that the 
church should instead commit itself to working to end capital punishment.

The Pope has declared the Death Penalty Inadmissible in all cases.

"The church teaches, in the light of the Gospel, that the death penalty is 
inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the 
person and she works with determination for its abolition worldwide," reads the 
new text, which was approved in May but only published Thursday.

The death penalty has been abolished in most of Europe and South America, but 
it is still in use in the United States and in several countries in Asia, 
Africa and the Mideast.

Francis has long railed against the death penalty, insisting it can never be 
justified, no matter how heinous the crime. He has also long made prison 
ministry a mainstay of his vocation.

The Enquirer reported earlier this year that Hamilton County has sent more 
people to death row and is responsible for more executions than any county in 
Ohio since capital punishment returned to the state in 1981.

The county has a larger death row population per capita than the home counties 
of Los Angeles, Miami or San Diego. And it has more people on death row than 
all but 21 of the more than 3,000 counties in the United States.

In a statewide look at the death penalty, the Associated Press reported this 
week Ohio Gov. John Kasich has finished dealing with executions for the 
remainder of his time in office, following a modern-era record of death penalty 
commutations.

The Republican governor spared 7 men from execution during his 2 terms in 
office, including commutations on March 26 and July 20. Kasich allowed 15 
executions to proceed, including the July 18 execution of Robert Van Hook for a 
strangling, stabbing and dismembering a man he met in a Cincinnati bar more 
than 30 years ago.

Not since Democrat Mike DiSalle spared 6 death row inmates in the early 1960s 
has an Ohio governor spared so many killers during periods when the state had 
an active death chamber. DiSalle allowed 6 executions to proceed.

(source: cincinnati.com)



NEBRASKA----impending execution

Friend of condemned inmate says he's "preparing for any outcome"----"He is worn 
down and worn out"


A close friend of condemned killer Carey Dean Moore said he is "preparing for 
any outcome."

Moore, 61, is scheduled to die 10 a.m. Aug. 14 at the Nebraska State 
Penitentiary.

"He is worn down and worn out," said Lisa Knopp, who has known Moore for 23 
years.

She said she met Moore in 1995 during visit to death row with Nebraskans 
Against the Death Penalty.

She helped find him a new pastor and they became pen pals.

"The letters were just so warm and personal, that 23 year later we're still 
writing," Knopp said.

She and others now stand in front of the governor's mansion almost every noon 
hour protesting Moore's scheduled execution.

"I am opposed to the death penalty because I am a Christian," Knopp said.

She said she knows Nebraska's longest serving death row inmate as a thoughtful, 
generous soul, not the person who robbed and shot 2 Omaha cab drivers, Reuel 
Van Ness and Maynard Helgeland, 39 years ago.

"When I read about or speak to him about the person he used to be, I can't 
reconcile it. He is such a changed person," Knopp said.

She said August is a difficult month for Moore because that is the anniversary 
of the murders.

"The whole time I've known him, he has expressed great regret and concern for 
the families, the children of the victims," Knopp said.

She won't say much about why Moore refuses to fight his execution, other than 
that he is prepared to die.

Knopp said Moore has been scheduled to die 6 times before.

On 2 occasions, he came within a week of being executed.

"He is exhausted by the whole process of having to prepare for death and then 
being called back from that," Knopp said.

Knopp does not know where she will be the morning of the scheduled execution.

She said Moore has asked his supporters not be at the State Penitentiary.

"I don't think I want to be sitting at home. I think I want to be with people 
like this," Knopp said, referring to death penalty opponents.

Those opponents plan to rally at the State Capitol in the evening of Aug. 14 if 
an execution is carried out.

(source: KETV news)

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

Aiming to delay execution, Ernie Chambers intensifies pressure on drugmakers


A leading death penalty opponent has intensified his pressure on pharmaceutical 
manufactures to encourage - or shame - them into taking legal action to block 
an Aug. 14 execution in Nebraska.

State Sen. Ernie Chambers of Omaha continued his personal campaign Thursday to 
convince 3 companies to ask a judge to force the return of their drugs.

Because the inmate slated for Nebraska's 1st execution in 21 years is no longer 
fighting the state's efforts, a lawsuit by a drugmaker is one of the last 
remaining avenues that could delay the execution.

All 3 drugmakers contacted by Chambers have sent letters to Nebraska officials 
saying they vehemently oppose the use of their products in lethal injections. 
But because the letters have not resulted in the drugs being returned, Chambers 
argued that the companies must back their words with action.

Chambers directed his sharpest criticism at Pfizer, a maker of 3 of the 4 drugs 
Nebraska intends to use in the execution of Carey Dean Moore. In a letter the 
senator sent via overnight mail to the company Wednesday, Chambers said Pfizer 
wants to create the "misperception that it opposes capital punishment" while it 
actually participates in the market for lethal injection drugs.

"Pfizer aims to corner that market," he said in a follow-up to a letter he sent 
to the company last week.

A Pfizer spokesman has said company officials have ruled out taking legal 
action in Nebraska.

Chambers also said he has reached out to Sandoz Inc. and Hikma Pharmaceuticals, 
both of which have questioned whether Nebraska prison officials are planning to 
use their medications.

A letter sent this week to Nebraska officials by Sandoz said the company is 
considering legal action. Meanwhile, Hikma this week joined a lawsuit initiated 
by a different drugmaker that forced the delay of an execution in Nevada.

Hours after the Catholic Church changed its official teaching Thursday to fully 
reject the death penalty, a trio of bishops urged action to halt an upcoming 
execution in Nebraska. Meanwhile, Gov. Pete Ricketts, who is Catholic, said 
Thursday he remains in support of capital punishment.

(source: The World-Herald)

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

As Vatican seeks to abolish death penalty, local bishops urge Nebraska to halt 
Moore's execution


The Vatican announced that going forward, the death penalty is inadmissible in 
all cases and the church should work to abolish it worldwide. The change was 
endorsed by Pope Francis in May but announced Thursday.

Hours after the Catholic Church changed its official teaching Thursday to fully 
reject the death penalty, a trio of bishops urged action to halt an upcoming 
execution in Nebraska.

Meanwhile, Gov. Pete Ricketts, who is Catholic, said Thursday that he remains 
in support of capital punishment.

The Vatican announced that going forward, the death penalty is inadmissible in 
all cases and the church should work to abolish it worldwide. Previously, the 
church held that execution was allowable in rare cases to defend innocent lives 
from an "unjust aggressor."

The change was endorsed by Pope Francis in May but announced Thursday. The 
Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith will include the change in 
new editions of the catechism, the compendium of Catholic teaching.

The shift in church doctrine comes as Nebraska approaches its 1st execution in 
more than 2 decades. The Nebraska Supreme Court has set Aug. 14 for the lethal 
injection of a double-murderer who has spent 38 years on death row.

"In light of this teaching, we call on all people of good will to contact 
Nebraska state officials to stop the scheduled Aug. 14 execution of Carey Dean 
Moore," said the joint statement by Archbishop George Lucas of Omaha, Bishop 
James Conley of Lincoln and Bishop Joseph Hanefeldt of Grand Island.

The bishops, who argued that the death penalty is no longer needed to ensure 
public safety in Nebraska, called the pope's decision "an answer for our 
prayers and welcome news." They also called for prayers for victims of serious 
crime and the 12 men on death row.

Ricketts, meanwhile, has been a leading advocate for restoring the death 
penalty in the state. In 2015, he vetoed legislation that repealed capital 
punishment, then helped fund a petition drive to put the issue on the 2016 
general election ballot. A solid majority of voters reversed the repeal.

"While I respect the pope's perspective, capital punishment remains the will of 
the people and the law of the State of Nebraska," the governor said Thursday in 
an email. "It is an important tool to protect our corrections officers and 
public safety."

The governor has said in the past that he has researched, prayed and meditated 
upon on the topic and concluded that support for capital punishment is 
consistent with his faith. He pointed to the writings of church fathers and 
theologians who have long held that the death penalty is a morally sound form 
of punishment. The church's updated teaching states that capital punishment is 
"inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the 
person."

The pope has for years been a vocal critic of the death penalty, calling it an 
"inhuman measure,' but his latest move places the issue toward the forefront of 
his efforts to reform and modernize the church.

It also could shape discussion about the issue in the United States, which like 
several dozen countries, uses capital punishment.

The Argentine pontiff, who had hinted last year that such a change might come, 
has described the church's death penalty stance as evidence of how the Vatican 
can evolve - in this case, over a generation. A quarter-century ago, the church 
said that the death penalty was justified in cases of "extreme gravity." Then, 
in 1997, Pope John Paul II narrowed the standards for when the punishment was 
permissible. Since then, the number of nations that use capital punishment has 
gradually decreased.

The death penalty is "contrary to the Gospel," the pope said last year, noting 
that the faith emphasized the dignity of life from conception until death.

Dudley Sharp, a pro-death penalty researcher in Houston, said he was 
"astounded" by the news. Sharp, who is not Catholic, said the change appears to 
reject 2,000 years of teaching by the church that the death penalty is a 
morally just punishment.

According to Amnesty International, more than 20,000 people across the world 
are on death row. On Wednesday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his 
country could soon reinstate the death penalty - something it had abolished in 
2004 as part of the reforms necessary to enter the European Union.

In the United States, according to the Pew Research Center, public support for 
the death penalty has ticked up slightly since hitting a 4-decade low in 2016, 
with 54 % now approving of the punishment for those convicted of murder. The 
attitudes of Catholics mirror those of the nation, with 53 % favoring the death 
penalty.

In a letter sent to bishops from the Vatican's doctrine office, Cardinal Luis 
Ladaria noted that the church's stance on the death penalty stemmed from a "new 
understanding" of modern punishment, which should aim to rehabilitate and 
socially reintegrate those who have committed crimes.

"Given that modern society possesses more efficient detention systems," Ladaria 
wrote, "the death penalty becomes unnecessary as protection for the life of 
innocent people."

Ladaria said that the church's new teaching aims to "give energy" to a movement 
that would "allow for the elimination of the death penalty where it is still in 
effect."

(source: omaha.com)

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

Nebraska's Catholic Governor Says Pope's Opposition Won't Stop Execution


When Nebraska lawmakers defied Gov. Pete Ricketts in 2015 by repealing the 
death penalty over his strong objections, the governor wouldn't let the matter 
go. Mr. Ricketts, a Republican who is Roman Catholic, tapped his family fortune 
to help bankroll a referendum to reinstate capital punishment, a measure the 
state's Catholic leadership vehemently opposed.

After a contentious and emotional battle across this deep-red state, voters 
restored the death penalty the following year. Later this month, Nebraska is 
scheduled to execute Carey Dean Moore, who was convicted of murder, in what 
would be the state's 1st execution in 21 years.

The prospect has renewed a tense debate in a state with strong Christian 
traditions that has wrestled with the moral and financial implications of the 
death penalty for years, even before the 2015 attempt to abolish it. Protesters 
have been holding daily vigils outside the governor's mansion to oppose Mr. 
Moore's execution.

Complicating matters, Pope Francis this week declared that executions are 
unacceptable in all cases, a shift from earlier church doctrine that had 
accepted the death penalty if it was "the only practicable way" to defend 
lives. Coming only days before the scheduled Aug. 14 execution here, the pope's 
stance seemed to create an awkward position for Mr. Ricketts, who is favored to 
win a bid for re-election this fall.

Mr. Ricketts, who in the past has said that he viewed his position on the death 
penalty as compatible with Catholicism, on Thursday issued a statement about 
the pope's declaration.

"While I respect the pope's perspective, capital punishment remains the will of 
the people and the law of the state of Nebraska," Mr. Ricketts's statement 
said. "It is an important tool to protect our corrections officers and public 
safety. The state continues to carry out the sentences ordered by the court."

But opponents seized on the pope's comments. Nebraska's Catholic bishops urged 
people to contact state officials to stop the scheduled execution of Mr. Moore 
and cited the pope???s teaching. "Simply put, the death penalty is no longer 
needed or morally justified in Nebraska," the bishops wrote.

Jane Kleeb, who leads the Nebraska Democratic Party, wrote on Twitter that Mr. 
Ricketts "is going against the teachings of the church" on the matter of 
executions.

"When you have a priest on Sunday talking about how we don't believe in the 
death penalty, I think that will matter to people," she said in an interview. 
"Nebraskans are churchgoers and believe in the church and strong family units, 
and they believe in people paying for their crimes, but not necessarily with 
their lives."

In many respects, Mr. Moore, 60, has become an afterthought in the buildup to 
his own execution. He has been on the state's death row longer than any of the 
other 11 other men and is among the longest-serving prisoners on any death row 
in the nation's history.

The execution planned here has also become part of a national dispute over the 
use of drugs in death chambers. Nebraska, which was still using an electric 
chair the last time it executed someone in 1997, has said Mr. Moore will be the 
state's 1st execution by lethal injection, using a combination of 4 drugs, 
including fentanyl. Nebraska officials have refused to disclose where they 
obtained the drugs. The execution would be the nation's 1st to use fentanyl, 
the powerful synthetic opioid that has been at the center of the nation's 
overdose crisis.

Though the state has had capital punishment on the books for most of the past 
century, it very rarely condemns people to death and even more rarely kills 
them. In the United States, executions have been on the decline for years. In 
1999, there were 98 executions across the nation, compared to 23 in 2017, 
according to the Death Penalty Information Center. So far this year, there have 
been 14.

While 31 states still have death penalty statutes, only 10, including Texas, 
Ohio and Florida, have carried out executions since 2014, according to the 
center. During the past decade, several states have placed moratoriums on 
capital punishment or abolished it altogether. The most recent was Delaware, 
which banned the death penalty in 2016.

The crimes Mr. Moore committed - the murders of 2 Omaha taxi drivers, Reuel Van 
Ness Jr. and Maynard Helgeland, during a 5-day span in 1979 - occurred so long 
ago that many in Nebraska know about them only through newspaper articles.

For years, Mr. Moore, who admitted to the killings, has made it clear that he 
is ready to die. He has dismissed his lawyers and refused to take part in 
efforts to spare his life. He has told friends that, as a born-again Christian, 
he believes he will be in the presence of God upon his death, his sins 
forgiven, said Geoff Gonifas, his longtime pastor.

"No one's happy a man's life is going to be taken," said Michael Fischer, 35, a 
Republican and a financial planner in Omaha who, like many along the streets 
here, said he supported capital punishment. "But if you take the death penalty 
off the books, the fear is there won't be strong discouragement for people to 
commit crimes."

In 2016, in part through the governor's efforts, 61 % of Nebraska voters chose 
to rescind a ban on the death penalty that an unlikely coalition of Democratic 
and Republican lawmakers had passed a year before.

In Lincoln, the state capital, where a unicameral legislature is officially 
nonpartisan but is dominated by Republicans, the battle over the death penalty 
has gone on for decades. State Senator Ernie Chambers, an independent from 
Omaha and one of the Legislature's most outspoken members, tries nearly every 
year to push legislation to abolish capital punishment and has clashed bluntly 
with Mr. Ricketts.

Opposition to the death penalty in this state has often centered around matters 
of religion and morality, but also money. An essential argument that helped an 
array of lawmakers support an end to capital punishment was the extensive costs 
involved before a prisoner is actually executed.

"If any other government program had been as inefficient as this one, we would 
have gotten rid of it," said Colby Coash, a former Republican state senator who 
was instrumental in convincing other conservatives to support the death penalty 
repeal in 2015. "How is killing someone 20 years after the crime justice for 
anyone?"

Mr. Chambers, who once described the death penalty debate as "a personal 
struggle between me and the governor," called Mr. Ricketts "evil" during a 
recent interview. A spokesman for the governor responded by questioning Mr. 
Chambers's religious tolerance.

Mr. Ricketts, scion of the TD Ameritrade family fortune and an owner of the 
Chicago Cubs, has made the death penalty a signature issue as he seeks a 2nd 
term as governor. In the past, he has repeatedly said that capital punishment 
deters violent crime. He contributed $300,000 to help with a petition drive 
that led to the restoration of the death penalty by voters.

Mr. Ricketts declined requests to be interviewed for this story, but in an 
interview in The Omaha World-Herald in 2015, the governor said that his 
position in favor of executions was in keeping with the tenets of his faith.

"The Catholic Church does not preclude the use of the death penalty under 
certain circumstances: That guilt is determined and the crime is heinous. Also, 
protecting society," the newspaper quoted him as saying. "As I've thought about 
this and meditated on it and prayed on it and researched it, I've determined 
it's an important tool."

Some have suggested that Mr. Ricketts's own family's experience with violence 
may have affected his views, though the governor has rarely addressed the issue 
publicly. In a meeting in 2015 with death penalty opponents, first reported by 
The World-Herald, participants said the governor spoke to them about the 
troubling death of a cousin, Ronna Anne Bremer, in Missouri years ago.

Ms. Bremer, 22, was the mother of 2 children and was pregnant when she 
disappeared in the 1980s. 3 years after she disappeared, her skull was mailed 
to the local sheriff's department. The authorities said they believe she was 
murdered, but they never made an arrest in the case.

(source: New York Times)






UTAH:

Utahns react to Pope's death penalty change


The Pope has declared capital punishment "inadmissible" -- and on Thursday 
night, Utahns reacted to the announcement with mixed emotions.

"A lot of people are kind of reeling from that, and trying to figure out what 
exactly to do," said Brandon Peterson, an assistant professor lecturer at the 
University of Utah.

For Catholics, the announcement Thursday about a change to the Catechism is a 
major shift.

"He's said that capital punishment is inadmissible. Primarily, because of the 
dignity of the human person," said Peterson.

And though the church has slowly evolved on the death penalty issue, Peterson 
says today's change to the catechism is a huge deal.

"Capital punishment is something that a lot of people support here in Utah," 
said Peterson.

The death penalty is on the books in Utah.

But the biggest impact could be for Catholic politicians who have been pro 
death penalty in the past.

On Thursday, New York's governor proposed ending capital punishment after the 
Vatican's announcement.

Yet not everybody thinks the pope's announcement is relevant to their lives.

Riddell Mackey was raised Catholic, but has since left the church.

"I don't believe a person should have the right to rape, kill and murder -- 
get 12 trials to go through, waste money, and then still have the opportunity 
to live after taking another person's life or ruining another person's life. 
I'm a very eye-for-an-eye person," said Mackey.

(source: good4utah.com)






USA:

What does Pope's death penalty shift mean for Catholic politicians?


Pope Francis earned a standing ovation when he told Congress in 2015 that he 
supports protecting human life "at every stage of its development." When he 
added that "this conviction" includes working to end the death penalty, the 
response was far more subdued.

"You didn't see people jumping up and clapping," said John Carr, who was in the 
room, and is director of Georgetown University's Initiative on Catholic Social 
Thought and Public Life.

For decades, Catholic politicians who support capital punishment, including the 
senators and representatives in the chamber that day, had an "out" when it 
comes to church teaching: The Catholic Catechism, the church's book of moral 
and religious teachings, had allowed the use of capital punishment in certain 
cases. Any other opinions, even the Pope's, were just that, opinions, and not 
necessarily binding on Catholic consciences.

But that is no longer the case, the Vatican announced on Thursday.

At the Pope's direction, the Catholic Catechism has been revised, and now calls 
the death penalty "inadmissible." While years in coming, the shift raises new 
questions about how politicians, particularly conservative Catholics in red 
states, will navigate the church's revised stance.

"Pope Francis has said several times that he considers the death penalty 
inadmissible," said John Thavis, former Rome bureau chief for Catholic News 
Service. "Now, however, he has enshrined it in official Catholic teaching. 
That's going to make it much more difficult for politicians to dismiss this 
teaching as 'the Pope's opinion.'"

The church's shifting position on capital punishment may even arise later this 
year when the Senate holds confirmation hearings for Brett Kavanaugh, a federal 
judge and faithful Catholic whom President Donald Trump has nominated for a 
seat on the Supreme Court.

"It's hard to side-step this issue now that it's definitive church teaching," 
said John Gehring, a Catholic writer and Catholic Program Director at the 
liberal-leaning group Faith in Public Life.

"I think there is a proper and respectful way to ask Kavanaugh how his 
understanding of faith and morality intersects with his judicial views."

"I suspect that the matter will come up," agreed Richard Garnett, a professor 
at the University of Notre Dame's law school. "I'm not optimistic that any 
senator's question will reflect any serious engagement with, or understanding 
of, what Pope Francis actually did, but ... I expect it will come up."

If confirmed, Kavanaugh would be the 5th Catholic on the Supreme Court, which 
regularly opines on death penalty cases and hears requests for stays of 
execution. (It is unclear whether Neil Gorsuch, who was raised a Catholic but 
has worshiped in Episcopal Churches, identifies with either tradition.)

The death penalty was a controversial subject during the Senate's confirmation 
hearings last year for Amy Coney Barrett, who now serves on the US Court of 
Appeals for the 7th Circuit. Noting an article Barrett wrote examining whether 
Catholic judges should recuse themselves from capital punishment cases, Sen. 
Dianne Feinstein famously said, "The dogma lives loudly within you."

Quiet conservatives

Among Americans, 54% favor the death penalty for people convicted of murder, 
while 39% are opposed, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in 
April and May. Among Catholics, the survey found that 53% of Catholics favor 
capital punishment, while 42% oppose it.

Death penalty opponents celebrated the Vatican's announcement, calling it the 
culmination of years of planning and work, while hoping it could change more 
attitudes among lay Catholics.

"For people in the pews, it is a challenge to actively build a culture of life 
by abolishing the death penalty, especially in the 31 states that still have it 
on the books in this country," said Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy, who leads 
Catholic Mobilizing Network, an anti-death penalty group.

Many conservative Catholics, meanwhile, were mostly quiet on Thursday. Several 
prominent legal and political figures did not respond immediately for comment. 
But in the past, several Catholic governors had said that the Catechism gave 
them leeway to enforce the death penalty.

Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, whose state overwhelmingly supports capital 
punishment according to polls, told journalists in 2014 that there's no 
conflict between his Catholic faith and state law on the issue.

"Catholic doctrine is not against the death penalty, and so there is no 
conflict there," he said.

Likewise, Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts, who is Catholic and lobbied against a 
state ban on the death penalty, has said capital punishment can be justified.

"The Catholic Church does not preclude the use of the death penalty under 
certain circumstances: That guilt is determined and the crime is heinous. Also, 
protecting society," Ricketts said in 2015.

Abbott and Ricketts' offices did not immediately respond to requests for 
comment.

On Thursday, Sister Helen Prejean, a prominent opponent of capital punishment, 
called on Ricketts to fall in line with the Pope and cancel planned executions.

Nebraska's 3 Catholic bishop echoed Prejean's call to cancel the execution and 
urged Catholics and others to lobby state officials.

"Simply put, the death penalty is no longer needed or morally justified in 
Nebraska," the bishops said.

What the Catechism says now

"Recourse to the death penalty on the part of legitimate authority, following a 
fair trial, was long considered an appropriate response to the gravity of 
certain crimes and an acceptable, albeit extreme, means of safeguarding the 
common good," the Catechism will now say.

But an "increasing awareness" that criminals don't lose their human dignity, a 
"new understanding" of prison systems and the development of "effective systems 
of detention" have led the church, under Pope Francis, to revise its official 
views, the Vatican said.

"The death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability 
and dignity of the person," the Catechism will now say.

Does all of this mean that Catholic politicians will immediately switch 
positions on the death penalty?

Don't bet on it, said Helen Alvare, professor of law at the Antonin Scalia Law 
School at George Mason University.

"The death penalty teaching may be observed or ignored, as is the abortion 
teaching, even though both are about killing," Alvare wrote in an email.

"Politicians of any religion seem to variously ignore, observe both as a matter 
of consistency, or take inconsistent positions!"

(source: CNN)

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

Cardinal Cupich wishes Scalia had lived to see pope's new death penalty 
teaching


Cardinal Blase Cupich said Thursday that he wishes Supreme Court Justice 
Antonin Scalia had lived to see Pope Francis say the death penalty is wrong in 
all cases.

The exchange about Scalia, a conservative Supreme Court justice and devout 
Catholic who ruled and spoke in favor of the death penalty, capped an exchange 
on the legal and theological implications of the punishment between Cupich and 
3 legal experts who oppose the death penalty.

The panel discussion, part of the American Bar Association's annual meeting in 
Chicago this week, came just hours after Pope Francis announced that the 
catechism of the Catholic Church would declare the death penalty always 
"inadmissible".

Previously, the church had taught that the death penalty could be used in rare 
instances when no other way of deterring a violent criminal was available.

Cupich was responding to a Scalia quote read by the panel's moderator, Ronald 
J. Tabak, the chair of the ABA's death penalty committee, in which Scalia 
suggested that Christian societies, confident in eternal life, tended to be 
more comfortable with the death penalty than secular societies.

"Would that he had lived to be here today, to see what the pope has done, 
because I think it would cause him to rethink that," Cupich said.

"I think that his understanding of salvation has great limitations. It's an 
atomistic view of salvation, that is, as individuals," Cupich said. "God saves 
a people. God doesn't just save by individuals. How is it that we integrate 
human beings into society, especially those at the margins? That's the question 
we should be posing here."

Cupich's concerns about the implications of the death penalty for social 
justice jibed with the concerns of the legal experts, who described a justice 
system that preyed on those least likely to get a fair trial, including the 
mentally ill and racial minorities.

The waning ranks of death row inmates are filled with "the most vulnerable, not 
the worst of the worst," said Robert Dunham, the executive director of the 
Death Penalty Information Center.

Cupich said he believed that the church's categorical opposition to the death 
penalty could reinforce its teaching on abortion.

"Erasing the innate value of individual lives because of crimes committed, and 
removing such criminals from the human family, is an echo of the violence done 
to human dignity when pro-choice advocates imply that the life developing in 
the womb is not 'real human' life," Cupich said.

Cupich and his fellow panelists discussed death row "volunteers," who decline 
appeals and go willingly to their executions. Cupich encountered such a case as 
the bishop of Rapid City, South Dakota.

"He wanted to die, his life was so terrible. When I spoke about it, I said, 
what we have here isn't the death penalty. We have state-assisted suicide," 
Cupich said.

Cupich said he understood some Catholics would struggle with the church's 
teaching on the death penalty due to "a desire to restore the order of justice 
that has been so viciously violated."

"But there is a flaw in that way of thinking," Cupich said. "When the state 
imposes the death penalty, it proclaims that taking one human life 
counterbalances the taking of another life. This is profoundly mistaken."

(source: Chicago Sun Times)