Indonesia: Catholic Priest to Face Firing Squad for Death of Lover and Children

Jakarta. A two-decade-long tragedy born of shame in East Nusa Tenggara took another step toward finality on Tuesday after the Supreme Court imposed the death penalty on a former Catholic priest for the deaths of his lover, a former nun, and their two newborn children.

“I’m not pro capital punishment, but for things like this we need deterrence so that people will not carry out these murders, which are rampant everywhere now,” Supreme Court justice Gayus Lumbuun said on Tuesday. “This verdict is necessary and must be carried out.”

Herman Jumat Masan, 45, was first found guilty of the murder of his first child with lover Yosephine Kerodok Payong — also known as Mery Grace — at Maumere District Court in August, 2013. The prosecutor appealed the case to the provincial Kupang High Court, which confirmed the life sentence.

The Supreme Court, however, sided with the prosecutor’s second appeal, and said that Herman should face the firing squad for the death of his first child — adding that the man’s callous decision to prevent his hemorrhaging girlfriend from seeking medical care was an aggravating factor in their decision.

The prosecution told the court that Herman and Yosephine first met in 1995 in the remote town of Hokeng in eastern Flores. Herman plied his trade as a local priest there while Yosephine studied theology at the nearby Ledalero Catholics Philosophy Institute. Two years later, Herman was sent to Lela, a community on Flores 100 kilometers to the west of Hokeng. Yosephine followed him there and began working at the local hospital. The Indonesian news magazine Tempo reported that the refectory where Herman worked was just 100 meters from Yosephine’s hospital.

It was not clear at what point the two became intimate, although their simultaneous transfer to Lela might indicate that some sort of relationship had developed while they both lived in Hokeng.

Neither of the two earlier courts nor the Supreme Court was, however, in any doubt of Herman’s responsibility for what followed.

Yosephine became pregnant in 1998 and gave birth in Herman’s room in 1999. The prosecutor proved beyond reasonable doubt that the couple had smothered the newborn and buried the body in front of Herman’s refectory out of shame that their illicit relationship could be discovered.

They grew flowers over the grave, the court heard.

Yosephine fell pregnant again in 2002 and this baby also died. Witnesses told the court Yosephine suffered a miscarriage, but Gayus, in an interview with the Jakarta Globe, said the Supreme Court judges couldn’t rule out that Herman somehow caused the death of his second child.

Yosephine suffered a hemorrhage during childbirth and she died nine days later. Prosecutors said Herman had denied her the medical care that would have saved her life. The priest then buried the former nun alongside her two dead children, the court heard. The man’s complete disregard for his lover’s health — and the improper disposal of all three bodies — swayed the judges that the death penalty was necessary in this case, Gayus said.

The bodies lay hidden there for 10 years until Herman confided in his new lover, a woman named Sofi. She informed a family member of Yosephine’s who immediately reported the information to the local police. Officers exhumed the remains of Yosephine and her two infant sons and the prosecution began.

Herman will be able to file for a judicial review of the Supreme Court decision in an attempt to have his death sentence commuted. Should any appeal for clemency be unsuccessful, Herman will be informed of his execution 72 hours before he is marched out to a remote location, tied to a post and shot.

Source: The Jakarta Globe, Feb. 12, 2014

Support for death penalty climbs in Mexico amid murders

The Texas execution of Edgar Tamayo for the murder of a U.S. police officer was heavily criticized by Mexican officials, who say their country rightly banned capital punishment years ago.

But if the Mexican people had their way, the death penalty would be an option for justice for murderers such as Tamayo, say surveys and criminal experts here.

Surveys by polling firms and media outlets in Mexico over the past seven years show that support for the death penalty has been increasing to a point where a majority would like to see it reinstated. Recent polls found between 70% and 80% would like to see the death penalty imposed for crimes such as murder and kidnapping, a rate that is above the majority support for the death penalty in the United States.

The rising support for the death penalty in Mexico comes amid the gruesome kidnappings and mass murders committed by criminals and drug cartels in recent years.

Tamayo's execution made front-page news in Mexico and protests were held in his hometown in Morelos state, just south of Mexico City. The Foreign Ministry said Tamayo was not informed properly of his consular rights and academics and human rights groups questioned why the United States uses a punishment other countries abandoned years ago.

"It's an embarrassment that the United States, which considers itself a modern country, continues applying the death penalty," said Juan Federico Arriola, law professor at the Iberoamerican University in Mexico City.

Tamayo, 46, was executed by lethal injection Wednesday in the 1994 shooting death of Houston police officer Gary Gaddis.

Gaddis, 24, had been on the Houston police force for 2 years and was driving Tamayo, who was in the country illegally, and another man from a robbery scene when Tamayo shot him 3 times in the head and neck with a pistol he had hidden in his pants. The car crashed and Tamayo fled but was captured a few blocks away, still in handcuffs.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry said the punishment was proper for such a "despicable" crime, adding that the law is the law.

Some Mexicans say their government seems to have a double standard when it comes to heinous crime: Mexican officials defend citizens convicted of murders abroad, but don't do enough to provide justice or attend to victims of crime back home.

"People are complaining because he's Mexican. There's no other reason," waiter Marco Antonio Rodriguez said of Tamayo.

"People might support (the death penalty) in the case of horrible crimes like rape and kidnap," he said of Mexicans.

Mexico did away the death penalty in 2005 and hasn't executed anyone in more than 50 years. Polls taken a decade ago showed the country split on the issue, with 38% of respondents in a 2004 survey by polling firm Parametria supporting capital punishment, while 42% were opposed.

Support shifted after the country began cracking down on crime and drug cartels in late 2006 and the incidence of murder and kidnapping increased. The National Survey on the Perceptions of Citizen Security released in November 2012 showed 74% of Mexicans backing the death penalty.

Despite the polls, political analysts express some skepticism that the issue would move the masses.

"If it were (popular) someone would be trying to take advantage of it politically," says Aldo Munoz Armenta, political science professor at the Autonomous University of Mexico State.

One party has done so, however, and successfully.

The Green Party campaigned in 2009 on a platform of bringing back the death penalty for kidnappers. It even hired soap opera stars to spread the message in radio and TV commercials. In that year's midterm elections, the party won more than 7% of the vote - a record showing for the party, which is an ally of the governing Institutional Revolutionary Party.

Munoz says the campaign worked due to widespread fear over kidnapping, especially after the 2008 abduction and murder of Fernando Marti, 14, son of the founder of a sporting goods retail empire. His kidnap and the response from authorities prompted a rare protest march from Mexico's middle and upper classes over insecurity.

Opponents of the death penalty, such as Munoz, point to practical problems in bringing it back, including the country's criminal justice system. The system is being overhauled to introduce more transparency, but has a reputation for routinely putting the wrong people in prison - often on flimsy evidence.

Mexico is also a heavily Catholic state, and the church has expressed its opposition to capital punishment.

"Do people actually think the justice system works? ... The police will pick up anybody," says Father Robert Coogan, an American Catholic priest working as chaplain in the city of Saltillo -- 190 miles south of the U.S. border at Laredo, Texas. At Coogan's morning Mass at a Saltillo prison on Thursday, prayers were offered for Tamayo from prisoners who were concerned about the execution.

Coogan also questioned if Mexicans would want to bring back the death penalty given the shortcomings of the system.

"I don't really think Mexicans would accept the death penalty, because they would be putting themselves at risk."

Source: USA Today, January 24, 2014

Faiths plan united effort to repeal death penalty in Ohio

Ohio Death Chamber

The head of a statewide anti-death-penalty group says a “major initiative” is in the works to unite religious organizations in a campaign to abolish executions in Ohio.

Kevin Werner, executive director of Ohioans to Stop Executions, said yesterday that details are being worked out, but he expects events to begin in 2014. “What you’re going to see is a lively and invigorated campaign from the faith communities in Ohio to repeal the death penalty,” he said.

Werner and other members of his group discussed plans with a small number of faith leaders yesterday at the Summit on 16th United Methodist Church in the University District.

The private meeting followed a discussion during which Werner said Ohio’s capital-punishment system is “broken beyond repair” and “broken beyond compare.”

“When we’re looking across the region, Ohio behaves like a Deep South state when it comes to the death penalty. It sticks out like a sore thumb,” Werner said. “We are very outside the norm for traditional Midwest values.”

He said the time is right to gather support from faith communities as more and more issues are being raised about the death penalty in Ohio.

A death-penalty task force formed by the Ohio Supreme Court and the Ohio State Bar Association in 2011 is set to wrap up its review of the state’s system this fall. And Ohio officials are expected to reveal today a new death-penalty protocol, the latest in a string of changes to the procedure since 2006.

Ohio has executed 52 inmates since 1976, ranking it eighth among the states, according to data updated on Wednesday by the Death Penalty Information Center. Texas has had the most executions, with 505, followed by Virginia (110), Oklahoma (106), Florida (79), Missouri (68), Alabama (56) and Georgia (53).

Click here to read the full article

Source: The Colombus Dispatch, October 4, 2013

"Maryland repeal law supported by entire Catholic Church": Sant'Egidio

Maryland becomes the 6th U.S. state since 2007 to exclude the death penalty from its laws, following similar measures in New Jersey, New Mexico, New York state, Illinois, and Connecticut.

This movement brings to 18 the number of U.S. states that have opted for a system of justice that respects life in every circumstance.

For years, the Community of Sant'Egidio has worked alongside American abolitionists and, with the City of Rome, will celebrate this great victory by lighting up the Colosseum (pictured) in a special way.

This is a great victory that has progressively won the support of a significant majority of Maryland citizens. Several attempts to pass a law abolishing capital punishment failed by just a few votes. Following the approval by the Senate and the House last March -- with a final vote in the House of 82 to 56 -- the official signing of the law is part of an important season for efforts to abolish the death penalty throughout the United States. Gov. O'Malley has long been a supporter of the proposal and has said the resources saved thanks to the abolition of capital punishment will be used to help the families of murder victims. This is unlike what was contemplated in the proposal for a referendum in California to ban capital punishment; the measure would have devoted the justice system's savings to police and other public safety measures.

The Maryland law was supported by several associations of victims' families and by the entire Catholic Church. Baltimore Archbishop William Lori and Auxiliary Bishop Denis J.Madden testified in hearings against capital punishment and were part of the special commission set up before the legislature began working to dialogue with the public and lawmakers. Many political and religious leaders joined them in the work.

Kirk Bloodsworth and Shuja Graham, who were freed from death row after their innocence was recognized, and Vicki Schieber, a Maryland citizen whose daughter was brutally murdered in Philadelphia in 1988, all gave moving testimonies about their opposition to capital punishment so as not to increase the number of innocent victims and to move away from an erroneous sense of justice as vengeance and compensation for the victims' families. "Do not kill again in our name," "The death penalty is a failure; it only adds death to death and should be abolished," they said.

On the occasion of the governor's signing the new law, the Archdiocese of Baltimore has announced it will illuminate in a special way the outside and the inside of the Baltimore cathedral, the Basilica of the Shrine of Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which has served as the cathedral since 1821 and is the oldest cathedral in the United States. The signing of the law is a victory for life, strongly supported by the U.S. Catholic Church and the Archdiocese of Baltimore, which will symbolically become a member of the Cities for Life movement. 

Source: Sant'Egidio, May 3, 2013

Death penalty for rape in Papua New Guinea considered

Horrific crimes against women have drawn international condemnation.

Sydney: Papua New Guinea (PNG) is considering introducing the death penalty for sorcery killings and rape after a spate of horrific crimes against women drew international condemnation, reports said on Monday.

Attorney-General Kerenga Kua said public opinion had swung in favour of capital punishment after a series of brutal sorcery-related murders, including beheadings and torchings, and the gang rape of a US academic.

The crimes have prompted an international outcry and Kua said he had received more than 100 petitions from human rights and other groups across the globe calling for urgent action on the violence against women.

“Those horrific, brutal, gruesome killings of the type that a woman was burnt alive to her death should attract death penalty,” The National newspaper reported Kua as saying.

“Most of the people are ready for it and they want it now as they are fed up of the law and order problems in this country and they want to see a more liberal use of the death penalty.”

Woman beheaded

In February, a 20-year-old mother accused of witchcraft was stripped and burned alive in front of a crowd at a village market. Earlier this month, an elderly woman was beheaded after being accused of black magic.

Also this month, an Australian was murdered and his friend sexually assaulted by a group of men, followed barely a week later by the ambush of the US researcher, her husband and their guide on a wilderness track.

She was stripped, had her hair cut to the scalp and was gang-raped by a group of nine men armed with rifles and knives before a sound in the forest frightened them away.

Kua said he had been monitoring the public mood on the issue and it was time the government “did something radical” to halt the crimes, which have undermined PNG’s standing as a tourism and investment destination.

“My job is simply to do what the people want me to do. I cannot shut my eyes to the people’s request. I’m not deaf, I’m listening; if they want it we will give it to them,” he said.

No executions since 1954

The offences of treason, piracy and wilful murder are already punishable by death in the impoverished Pacific nation, but the country has not carried out an execution since 1954.

The Catholic Church condemned Kua’s remarks as “giving in to the same vengeful streak in PNG culture that is part of our current problem”, and said the death penalty would not be a deterrent to violent crime.

“Those who commit these offences do not believe that they will be caught and even less be actually sentenced,” said Archbishop Douglas Young in a statement.

“The major deterrent to crime is not the severity of punishment but its certainty.”

Young said the government needed to strengthen police capacity to “find, arrest and prosecute offenders”.

“Give the clear message, if you do this you will be caught and you will be punished. Change cultural norms that encourage the protection of offenders,” he said.

“Let’s turn our attention to policies that will genuinely address the plague of violence in PNG, not those that serve only to further brutalise the nation.”

Source: AFP, April 29, 2013

USA: Maryland will become the 18th state to abolish the death penalty

(Reuters) - The Maryland House of Delegates voted on Friday to overturn the state's death penalty, putting it a step closer to becoming the 18th U.S. state to abolish executions.

By a vote of 82 to 56, the House agreed to replace capital punishment with a sentence of life without parole. It approved the measure a week after the Senate passed the bill.

Governor Martin O'Malley, who has pledged to sign the bill into law, will decide the fate of the five men currently on Maryland's death row.

The bill was O'Malley's second attempt to overturn capital punishment since 2009. When he introduced the legislation in January, he said the death penalty was expensive and did not work.

"Year after year, states which have a death penalty have actually had a higher murder rate than states which do not have a death penalty," he said.

The governor also pointed to a 2008 study conducted by the Maryland Commission on Capital Punishment that found the state's death penalty sentencing to be racially biased. Of the five men currently serving time on Maryland's death row, four are African-Americans whose victims were white.

But some Maryland legislators insist the death penalty is necessary to bring justice to victims and their families.

Republican Delegate Gail Bates said she planned to vote against the repeal because she believed a maximum term of life in prison simply was not enough.

"Lawyers will bargain down from that, instead of bargaining down from the death penalty," she said.

Bates said she also feared for the safety of correctional officers, who are at risk of being attacked by lifelong criminals with little to lose.

Another opponent, Republican Delegate Kathy Afzali, said: "I am someone who believes that there are some crimes that are so heinous and so horrible that they do deserve the death penalty."

Her attempt to amend the bill to allow the death penalty in extreme cases, such as mass killings and school shootings, was voted down on Wednesday.

Since Maryland reinstated the death penalty in 1978, some 58 people have been sentenced to death, while only five sentences have been carried out, according to Jane Henderson, executive director of the nonprofit Maryland Citizens Against State Executions. Henderson said the vast majority of sentences were changed to life without parole.

Maryland's last execution took place in 2005.

Five states - Connecticut, Illinois, New Mexico, New York, and New Jersey - have repealed the death penalty since 2007, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. A total of 17 U.S. states have put an end to state-sanctioned executions.

Source: Reuters, March 15, 2013

Maryland General Assembly repeals death penalty

The House of Delegates voted 82-56 to repeal Maryland’s death penalty on Friday, making the state the sixth in as many years to abolish executions and delivering a major legislative victory to Gov. Martin O’Malley.

The bill, which passed the Senate last week, now heads to the governor for his signature. O’Malley (D) has lobbied lawmakers for years to end capital punishment, and he put the full weight of his office behind it this session.

The House vote followed more than two hours of impassioned debate, in which repeal supporters argued that any risk of executing an innocent person is unacceptable and that the death penalty has been applied unfairly in the past.

“Human beings cannot devise a system of justice that is perfect,” said Del. Anne Healey (D-Prince George’s). “We are all flawed. ... What I can’t live with is, if we make a mistake, it costs somebody else his life.”

Opponents of the bill countered that capital punishment can be an important law-enforcement tool and should be kept on the books for heinous cases, several of which were recounted in graphic detail during the debate.

“I wish that we did not need the death penalty ... but I’ve seen the worst of the worst, and I know it’s necessary,” Del. C.T. Wilson (D-Charles), a former prosecutor, told his colleagues.

O’Malley’s bill will replace death sentences with life terms in prison without the possibility of parole. It does not affect the five inmates now on death row, leaving it to the governor to determine whether to commute their sentences.

“I’ve felt compelled to do everything I could to change our law, repeal the death penalty, so that we could focus on doing the things that actually work to reduce violent crime,” O’Malley said in an interview.

Friday’s vote was hailed by the NAACP and Catholic Church, two organizations whose vocal support helped build momentum in recent weeks.

Maryland voters could still get the final say on the measure, however. A provision in the state constitution allows citizens to petition recently passed laws to the ballot, as happened with same-sex marriage legislation last year.

Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. (D-Calvert) has said the death penalty is likely to be placed on the 2014 ballot, though no group has announced plans to spearhead an organized effort to collect signatures.

The outcome of a ballot measure would be far from certain. A Washington Post poll released last month showed that a majority of Marylanders want to keep the death penalty despite widespread skepticism as to whether capital punishment is a deterrent to murder or is applied fairly.

During debate in the House this week — and in the Senate last week — both sides have used horrific crimes to try to gain leverage.

Lawmakers arguing to keep the death penalty have recounted the killing of Sarah Foxwell, an 11-year-old who was kidnapped, sexually assaulted and slain on the Eastern Shore in 2009.

Supporters of repeal have countered with repeated references to Kirk Bloodsworth, a former death-row inmate who was exonerated by DNA evidence and released from prison in 1993. Bloodsworth, a former Marine convicted of raping and murdering a 9-year-old girl in Baltimore County in 1984, was back in the House gallery on Friday, watching the proceedings unfold.

While the death penalty remains on the books in 33 states, many are using it more sparingly than in the past. Last year, 77 people were sentenced to death nationally, the second-lowest number since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Maryland has not executed a prisoner since 2005, during the tenure of O’Malley’s Republican predecessor, Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R).

Critics have accused O’Malley of repeatedly using delay tactics to avoid executions.

The state has had an effective moratorium on capital punishment since December 2006, the month before O’Malley took office, when Maryland’s highest court ruled that regulations on lethal injection had not been properly adopted.

The O’Malley administration has yet to implement new regulations, and the shortage of a drug prescribed in Maryland for executions could now complicate efforts of any future governor to resume executions.

O’Malley — who rose to political prominence as a tough-on-crime mayor in Baltimore — has advocated for repeal of capital punishment since taking office in 2007. Prior to this year, he last sponsored a bill for that purpose in 2009. That measure was rejected by the Senate, with members choosing instead to tighten evidentiary standards in capital cases.

Since then, several new senators have been elected, and a couple of members changed their positions, creating a majority of Senate supporters for the first time. Several lawmakers have suggested their attempt to “fix” the death penalty in 2009 was insufficient.

The Senate vote last week was 27 to 20.

Source: Washington Post, March 15, 2013

Maryland death row prisoners in limbo as state votes to repeal death penalty

Five death row prisoners in the state of Maryland are now in a state of legal limbo after the state's House of Delegates voted on Friday to repeal the death penalty, making its abolition now certain.

[T]he reform will lead the state's existing five capital inmates stuck where, in the case of three of them, they have been since 1983 – on death row. The repeal will not be retroactive, and any move to commute their sentences to life without parole can only be made by O'Malley himself or by the courts.

The five men – John Booth-El, Vernon Lee Evans, Anthony Grandison (all put on death row in 1983), Heath Burch (1995) and Jody Miles (1997) – will not be able to draw much succor from the example of governors in other abolition states, as their approaches have differed. In the case Illinois, which repealed the practice in 2011, every prisoner on death row had their death sentences commuted to life by the governor.

On the other hand, Connecticut and New Mexico decided to leave their death row inmates where they were.

With repeal now inevitable, all eyes will turn to O'Malley for any clues as to his thinking about what to do with the five.

Richard Dieter of the Death Penalty Information Center, one of the country's foremost experts on capital punishment, said he expected O'Malley to close death row entirely. "I would be surprised if he left the five men there – to leave people on death row while no future sentences are given would be quite extreme."

Maryland has been one of the least active death-penalty states in the US, with its last execution taking place in 2005 and no new death sentences meted out since O'Malley entered the governor's mansion in 2007.

Click here to read the full article

Source: The Guardian, March 15, 2013

Sister Helen Prejean: "the Bible belt and the death belt are the same"

Sr. Prejean, Paris, 2007

Prejean sees the problem is a US “culture of violence” that needs to change. There is a “seesaw” view of the world, “justice means, he’s dead- he dies.” Prejean has seen the pressure this puts on the families of victims to ask for the death penalty. Society says, “you have to be for the death penalty or it looks like you didn’t love your boy”she explains.

Prejean’s formidable drive is rooted in her religious principles. “The heart of a vocation to follow Jesus is clearly to see the transcendence of goodness and dignity of a person - a person is more than one act,” she says. It is this loss of dignity on death row that Prejean describes more than once, as “unspeakable.” “The demeaning way you live... strip searched every time you leave your cell...denied your medication.” You get “1,000 signals a day that you are disposable human waste.”

In a country where religion is so influential in politics, Prejean has come up against many of her peers, who denounce her teachings. “When a nation believes it is blessed in the eyes of god, there is an arrogance that we are special people and are doing right” Prejean says. There is a right-wing Christian view that “the more Christian you are the more you believe in the death penalty, because you know you should be punished for your sins..that God wants pain for pain.”

The answer to this is “relentless dialogue.” Educating people, working through their “biblical illiteracy.”

Click here to read the full article

Source: NewStatesman, Feb. 6, 2013

Louisiana: Bishops seek to prevent execution set for Ash Wednesday

Louisiana Death Row

The Louisiana Conference of Catholic Bishops asked the Jindal administration late Monday to halt the scheduled execution Feb. 13 of a convicted child killer because that lethal injection would occur on Ash Wednesday.

“To execute a faithful Catholic on Ash Wednesday would be inconsistent with the Lenten call for reconciliation and redemption and an unnecessary tragic irony,” the bishops said in a news release.

Christopher Sepulvado, 68, of DeSoto Parish, was convicted for the 1992 murder of his 6-year-old stepson, Wesley Allen Mercer. The horrific death occurred a day after Sepulvado married the child’s mother.

A trial jury decided that Sepulvado beat the boy unconscious with the handle of a screwdriver, then immersed him in scalding bath water.

The Louisiana Supreme Court rejected Sepulvado’s appeal of his conviction, noting that Wesley Mercer had third-degree burns over 58 percent of his body and his “scalp had separated from his skull due to hemorrhaging and bruising.”

On Monday, the bishops described Sepulvado’s actions as “evil and tragic.” They added: “We acknowledge the Christian power of reconciliation and redemption, which Christopher has embraced. He has expressed remorse for his actions while at the same time embracing his faith and ministering to his fellow inmates.”

The bishops noted that state officials can punish convicted murderers through nonlethal means such as life imprisonment.

“Executing Christopher will not bring Wesley back to life, nor will it provide healing, reconciliation or peace to those involved,” the bishops wrote in their release. “We offer prayer for and solidarity with those family members impacted by this crime as we do for all family members of victims of violent crime and murder.”

On Friday, the Louisiana Supreme Court announced its rejection of Sepulvado’s appeal of his death penalty.

Sepulvado’s New Orleans attorney, Gary P. Clements, is asking U.S. District Judge James J. Brady to merge Sepulvado’s appeal with that of fellow death row inmate Jessie Hoffman.

Hoffman contends that the state’s lethal injection formula may subject convicted murderers to excruciating pain while they are mute and paralyzed.

Clements said Friday that is because sodium thiopental, which renders two other lethal-injection chemicals painless, is no longer available.

Source: The Advocate, Feb. 5, 2013

Catholic activism on the death penalty; a brief dispatch from Denmark

Public execution in Iran

Rumors of the death of the church's passion for social justice have been greatly exaggerated, at least to judge by a high-profile international conference in Rome on Tuesday promoting global abolition of the death penalty, which was organized by the Community of Sant'Egidio.

The conference was titled, "A World without the Death Penalty: No Justice without Life."

[T]he conference confirmed that the death penalty is hardly on the brink of becoming obsolete. Among the salient data:

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

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

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

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

Click here to read the full article

Source: National Catholic Reporter, November 30, 2012

Think the Death Penalty Can't Be Abolished in the USA? Here's How It Happened Before

With polls showing that roughly six in ten Americans still support capital punishment in the United States (even with that number declining somewhat) it’s hard to make the case that the practice will be abolished any time soon. But I’ve argued otherwise, pointing to support dropping to under 50 percent when life without parole is listed as an option, and the continuing fall in the number of executions in America.

Still, most in the media find the end of executions in the United States a farfetched dream. I’d guess that most probably are not even aware that the death penalty was once banned in America—and not so long ago. And it happened rather suddenly and unexpectedly. I write about it in my current e-book, Dead Reckoning, on the history of capital punsihment in America up to the present day, but here is a summary.

There was no one event or factor that caused it. Yes, there were several notable cases in the 1950s that sparked protest, including the Rosenbergs and Caryl Chessman. In 1959, Susan Hayward won an Academy Award for her portrayal of a condemned murderess in I Want to Live, based on the true story of Barbara Graham. The film concluded with a graphic and troubling depiction of the woman’s execution in the San Quentin gas chamber.

Pope Pius XII offered only a timid plea for “charity” in the Chessman case, but even that was breakthrough for Catholics, a “tentative step on the road to recovering the pastoral practice of St. Augustine, disapproving all executions, and especially those based on political motives,” James Mcgivern wrote in his book on this subject. Chessman’s pleas for a new trial inspired the first mainstream churches, such as the Methodists, to join the so-called “peace” churches in taking a stand against capital punishment.

By the end of the 1960s, the Methodists were joined in the abolitionist camp by the American Baptists, the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, the Lutheran Church, the National Council of Churches (but not the Catholic Church). Hawaii and Alaska entered the union abolitionist. Oregon and Iowa, which had gone abolitionist once before—only to reinstate the death penalty—now banned executions once again. Delaware outlawed executions in 1958, but then, following outrage over a brutal murder in the state, reinstituted it in 1961.

Click here to read the full article

Source: Greg Mitchell, The Nation, April 7, 2012

Christmas Remembrance: Asia Bibi and Yousef Nadarkhani still facing the death penalty for apostasy and blasphemy

(...) We may also want to remember particularly at this time two additional people, Asia Bibi and Yousef Nadarkhani, whose imprisonment and death sentences crystallize the situation of many in the church.

Though the Iranian government denies it, Pastor Nadarkhani continues to face the death penalty for apostasy, that is, for having become a Christian. In a very unusual move, probably triggered by international attention to the case, the courts — after pronouncing a sentence of death — have twice referred the case to Ayatollah Khamenei, the country’s “Supreme Leader.” As yet, Khamenei has issued no decision. Christian Solidarity Worldwide states that it has received unconfirmed reports that any execution may be delayed for up to a year to allow time to convince Pastor Nadarkhani to renounce his faith.

In Pakistan, Asia Bibi, a Christian mother of five, still faces the death penalty for allegedly blaspheming Mohammed. Punjab governor Salman Taseer and Federal Minorities Minister Shahbaz Bhatti were both killed this past year for defending her and opposing Pakistan’s blasphemy laws. The Fides news agency reports that she needs medical care to ward off mental illness. An international delegation from the Masihi Foundation, overseeing Bibby’s legal and material assistance, visited her on December 19 in the prison in Sheikpura, where she has been held for more than a year, and is currently in isolation. They report that she had not been allowed to bathe for more than two months, could not stand on her own, appeared confused, and was afraid to accept the water they offered her to drink.

Click here to read the full article

Source: National Review, Paul Marshal, December 24, 2011

Related articles:

Death Penalty News: Asia Bibi's case still on hold, but family ...

Jul 09, 2011

Asia Bibi is still under the threat of the death penalty. She has waited for months for an appeal trial but Pakistani judges do not appear in a hurry to add her case to their agenda. The Christian woman's attorney, S.K. Chaudhy,...

http://deathpenaltynews.blogspot.com/

Death Penalty News: Pakistani Christian woman appeals over death ...

Nov 13, 2010

Asia Bibi is believed to be the 1st woman sentenced to death under Pakistan's blasphemy law. Her husband told the BBC her ... Asia Bibi was arrested and charged with insulting the Prophet Muhammad. Reports say the trial ...

http://deathpenaltynews.blogspot.com/

Death Penalty News: Blasphemy case splits Pakistanis

Nov 27, 2010

In a report delivered to President Asif Ali Zardari, Minorities Minister Shahbaz Bhatti recommended that the woman, Asia Bibi, 45, be pardoned or released from prison if her pending appeal is not quickly addressed. ...

http://deathpenaltynews.blogspot.com/

Death Penalty News: Execution Looms for Iran Pastor Who Refuses ...

Sep 27, 2011

Pastor Yousef Nadarkhani, who is married with 2 children, was detained in his home city of Rasht in October 2009 while attempting to register his church. His arrest is believed to also have been due to his questioning of the ...

http://deathpenaltynews.blogspot.com/

Death Penalty News: More appeals for Christian pastor facing ...

Oct 03, 2011

Iran's Supreme Court, in a earlier ruling on Yousef Nadarkhani case, said religious edicts (fatwas) by senior clerics could be used as the basis for a conviction, despite the fact that Iranian law is silent on “apostasy”. ...

http://deathpenaltynews.blogspot.com/

Death Penalty News: Worsening human rights situation in Iran ...

Nov 18, 2011

... the human rights lawyers Nasrin Stouten and Abdolfattah Soltani, the student activists Bahareh Hedayat, Abdollah Momeni, Mahdieh Golroo and Majid Tavakoli, the journalist Abdolreza Tajik, Pastor Yousef Nadarkhani, the ...

http://deathpenaltynews.blogspot.com/

Death Penalty News: World Day against the Death Penalty: the ...

Oct 10, 2011

I remain extremely worried about the case of Yousef Nadarkhani in Iran who may still face the death penalty. Any punishment in his case would be unjustified. I was greatly saddened by the case of Troy Davis in the US, which...

http://deathpenaltynews.blogspot.com/

The execution of a nameless Pinoy, the execution of all!

Execution in China

Leo Echegaray was executed on February 5, 1999. His daughter Baby is now a young lady. His wife, whom he married in prison died some years after his execution. With the abolition of the Death Penalty in our country, we should be focusing on the deeper causes of crime rather than on the punishment of convicted prisoners. Our jails are still exploding from the ever growing population of offenders, which includes those suspected and accused of heinous crimes like the Maguindanao Massacre. If we still had the death penalty in our country, what could have happen to those who committed plunder like Erap? Or CGMA today? What could happen to those responsible for the Maguindanao Massacre?

Punishment is easy but finding the roots of crime and stamping these out is hard. With this recent news of another Filipino facing execution in China, more than just making appeals for a stay of execution or commutation of sentence, the government should now vigorously investigate the very reason (causes) why Filipinos become drug mules. In this regard, I find the comment of presidential spokesperson Edwin Lacierda rather facetious: “We recognize the decision of the judicial authorities in China. It was made based on the evidence that the Filipino was carrying 1.5 kg of heroin, and therefore, based on their law, it was subject to death penalty,” Lacierda said. Lacierda said he did not believe ties between the two countries would be affected as “this is not the first time an execution happened, we experienced it before.”

The statement from Lacierda leans more on preserving good relations between the country and China. Concern for the unnamed Filipino awaiting execution does not really come across. While we have to exhaust all means to save one Filipino life on December 8, 2011, shouldn’t the government and the people also get together and address the bigger and deeper issue that cannot be solved by either executions or diplomatic appeals?

Drug mules are only a tiny piece in the wider tapestry of the OFW phenomenon. The OFW phenomenon is only also a tiny piece in a yet bigger tapestry of poverty experienced by the majority of our people. I am afraid that if this more fundamental and bigger issue is not addressed, more will become drug mules, who will be caught, charged, convicted, sentenced and executed. Between now and December 8, I will pray hard not only for our countryman awaiting execution but for our government leaders and people, that we will begin to see how we in one way or another have contributed to a situation of despair that stems from a disturbing lack of love, respect and active concern for life, particularly of the poor, ordinary and seemingly ‘nameless’ Filipinos.

Source: Fr. Roberto P. Reyes, Philippine Online Chronicle, December 2, 2011. Fr. Roberto P. Reyes, Former President, Coalition Against Death Penalty in the Philippines

Bishops to appeal Filipino drug mule’s death sentence

An official of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) said that the bishops’ collegial body will make an appeal to the Chinese government for Beijing to commute the penalty of capital punishment it had handed down against a 35-year-old Filipino drug mule.

“We will send a letter to China to appeal for humanitarian reasons to commute the penalty to life sentence instead of death penalty,” Fr. Edwin Corros, the executive secretary of the CBCP Episcopal Commission on Migrant and Itinerant People, said on Friday.

“We are all aware that capital punishment in China is really death, but we will try to appeal the case of our Filipino compatriot,” Corros added.

The priest reminded overseas Filipinos not to accept offers of drug syndicates to become drug mules in exchange for money.

Corros, meanwhile, called on the government to assist more than 200 other Filipinos who are also facing the death penalty abroad.

The Philippine government earlier asked China to show mercy to the unnamed Filipino drug mule, who was caught on September 13, 2008 at the Guilin International Airport in Guangxi smuggling about 1.5 kilograms of heroin into China from Malaysia.

His death sentence was confirmed by the Supreme People’s Court in late November.

Source: The Manila Times, December 2, 2011

December 3, 2011 Update
'Mercy mission' rejected; China says Filipino's execution to push through Dec. 8

China has refused a visit from Vice President Jejomar C. Binay to ask for mercy for a Filipino on death row, and said the man's execution will not be delayed, the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) said Saturday.

On Sunday, all Masses in Catholic Churches will be offered for the intention of saving the convicted Filipino drug trafficker in response to Binay’s request to the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP). CBCP president Cebu Archbishop Jose Palma instructed all dioceses to offer Masses to ask for divine intervention for the commutation of the execution.

The 35-year-old is scheduled to be executed on December 8 after he was caught on Sept. 13, 2008 at the Guilin International Airport in Guangxi, China, trying to smuggle about 1.495 kilos (about 3 pounds, 5 ounces) of heroin into China from Malaysia.

“The Chinese government has informed the Philippine government that the verdict of the Supreme People’s Court of China is final and executory,” DFA spokesman Raul Hernandez said.

China added that it will do everything to assist the family of the convicted Filipino, whose identity and origin have been kept from media by both the DFA and Office of the Vice President.

Hernandez said the DFA is making arrangements to fly relatives of the condemned Filipino to China so they would be able to see their loved one.

“We have also been informed that the Chinese side is unable to arrange the visit of Vice President Binay to China at this time,” Hernandez said.

Binay, Presidential Adviser on Overseas Filipino Workers’ (OFW) Concerns, had been awaiting a go-signal from Beijing to push through with the visit, which is tantamount to a last-ditch effort to at least delay the scheduled execution.

Despite this becoming a major blow to the Filipino convict’s family, the DFA expressed hope that the Vice President would still be allowed by Chinese authorities to go to Beijing.

Once there, the Binay will personally hand to Chinese President Hu Jintao a letter of appeal from President Benigno S. Aquino III requesting a commutation of the death sentence “based on humanitarian and compassionate grounds”.

Binay was in a similar situation last February when he reportedly met with three high-ranking officials in Beijing to ask for a stay of the executions of convicted Filipino drug traffickers Ramon Credo, Sally Ordinario-Villanueva, and Elizabeth Batain. They were eventually executed after a brief stay.

The executions triggered widespread condemnation in the Philippines, where capital punishment was abolished in 2006.

Meanwhile, the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) is now hunting down the Filipino who recruited the doomed Filipino.

PDEA Director General Jose Gutierrez Jr. said that they have already identified the recruiter.

Source: Manila Bulletin, December 3, 2011

Related article:

China to Execute Filipino Drug Trafficker Dec. 8, ABC News, November 30, 2011

Idaho governor petitioned to halt inmate's execution

Idaho Gov. Butch Otter, a Catholic who once studied for the priesthood, is the only one who can spare the life of condemned inmate Paul Ezra Rhoades, a multiple murderer scheduled for execution Friday [Nov. 18]. Otter, a supporter of the death penalty, has stuck by his position even in the face of pleas for mercy from the pope, the Swiss ambassador and the bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Idaho.

"It's tough, it's tough," said Otter, a conservative Republican, when asked about balancing his faith and the death penalty. He's been reluctant to discuss the matter as Idaho approaches its 1st execution since 1994, when murderer Keith Eugene Wells dropped his appeals and requested to be put to death.

Unlike Wells, Rhoades has tried every appeal, exhausted every remedy, and is still fighting in federal court to challenge Idaho's lethal-injection execution method as unconstitutionally cruel; a federal judge will decide Monday if that challenge should delay the execution.

An Idaho governor has commuted a death sentence once before. In 1996, Gov. Phil Batt agreed with Idaho's pardons and parole commission and commuted the sentence of Donald Paradis from death to life without parole, amid questions about his original conviction; Paradis was released in 2001, after pleading guilty to being an accessory to murder.

There are no such questions in Rhoades' case, however. His supporters simply plead for mercy.

"Paul is not the same man he was in 1987," Rhoades' mother, Pauline Rhoades, said in a statement. "Over the past 24 years, he has returned to being the same caring and unselfish person he was before we lost him to drugs. ... He has taken responsibility for his actions, and he is doing everything in his power to make up for what he did."

Otter told The Spokesman-Review this past week, "I support the death penalty," adding that it's an issue he's given a lot of thought to "all my life."

"I think that as our criminal justice system ... suggests, people have to be held responsible, and sometimes it's to the max, and this is one of those cases," Otter said. "They have to be held accountable for their actions."

Rhoades' crimes terrorized eastern Idaho in 1987, when 2 women and 1 man were killed in the space of 3 weeks. The string of kidnappings, rapes and slayings shocked the community. Rhoades received the death penalty for the murders of Stacy Baldwin and Susan Michelbacher, plus 2 life sentences for the murder of Nolan Haddon.

Mia Crosthwaite, a Catholic activist in Boise and spokeswoman for Idahoans Against the Death Penalty, said, "It's just morally wrong. It's unnecessary. My children will be no safer next Saturday after the execution is done than they are today, because the state of Idaho is perfectly capable of holding Paul Ezra Rhoades in prison for the rest of his life and protecting society."

But some Idahoans who have flooded Otter's office with letters and emails in recent weeks disagree.

"Did he show mercy to his victims?" asked Sharann Nafus, of Blackfoot. "You are in our prayers," wrote a couple from Idaho Falls, urging the governor to uphold the sentence.

Most of his messages in recent weeks, however, oppose the execution, including one from Monsignor Jean-Francois Lantheaume, the personal representative in the United States of Pope Benedict XVI, who issued "a call for mercy beyond the strict confines of justice."

The Rev. Michael Driscoll, bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Boise, wrote to Otter, saying, "Other ways are available to punish criminals and to protect society that are more respectful of human life."

Rhoades' appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court was rejected Oct. 11, and Idaho's state board of pardons and parole has rejected his bid for a clemency hearing. Preparations for the execution are under way at the Idaho Maximum Security Institution south of Boise.

Crosthwaite said she and other Idaho death-penalty opponents met with Idaho Department of Correction officials Thursday and were briefed on where they can protest, in a prescribed area at the state prison compound's main gate south of Boise; a separate area will be set aside for people supporting the execution.

"They said dress very warmly, which we already knew, but that was very kind of them to point that out," Crosthwaite said. "They said it's going to be cold. We intend to be prayerful and peaceful and just be present."

Source: Seattle Times, November 13, 2011

Related articles:

Death Penalty News: URGENT APPEAL for Paul Rhoades due to be ...

Nov 05, 2011

Paul Rhoades, then 30, was arrested on 25 March 1987 and charged with three separate murders committed over the previous month. The victims were school teacher Susan Michelbacher and convenience store clerks Stacy ...

http://deathpenaltynews.blogspot.com/

Death Penalty News: Commission: No clemency for condemned ...

Nov 11, 2011

The Idaho Commission of Pardons and Parole says it won't consider a clemency request from condemned inmate Paul Ezra Rhoades., who is scheduled to die by lethal injection Nov. 18. Rhoades was sentenced to death for ...

http://deathpenaltynews.blogspot.com/

Commission: No clemency for condemned Idaho inmate

The Idaho Commission of Pardons and Parole says it won't consider a clemency request from condemned inmate Paul Ezra Rhoades., who is scheduled to die by lethal injection Nov. 18.

Rhoades was sentenced to death for the murders of Susan Michelbacher and Stacy Baldwin in 1987, and he was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of Nolan Haddon the same year.

Commission director Olivia Craven said the panel decided Friday to deny Rhoades' request for a clemency hearing. Under Idaho law, only the governor has the authority to grant clemency on death penalty cases, but in order for the governor to do so, the parole commission must first consider the request and make a recommendation to the governor.

Craven said she met personally with Rhoades and his attorneys Oct. 14 to answer any questions they had about the clemency process. Inmates are only allowed to petition for clemency once every 12 months, and so she wanted to make sure Rhoades had all the information he needed, Craven said. The commissioners spent the last couple of weeks reviewing Rhoades' case before making the decision, she said.

"They take this very seriously. They put in a lot of their personal time, and I know they spent a lot of time reviewing everything over and over," Craven said. "So, their decision was not made lightly."

Defense attorneys called the decision disappointing and criticized the board for acting without taking the opportunity to get a fuller picture of Rhoades' story from witnesses. Rhoades' lawyers planned to have witnesses recount his addiction to methamphetamine and what the drug did to his behavior — details not shared with judges who sentenced him to death.

"We maintain the Commission is making a grave and irreversible mistake by relying primarily on a paper record," according to a statement issued Monday by the federal defender's office in Boise. "It is shameful that Mr. Rhoades will not have an opportunity to present his entire case and show that the man he is today is not someone whom society would want to put to death."

There is still a possibility that a federal judge could issue a stay of execution. Rhoades sued Idaho in federal court last month over the state's method of execution, but as of Monday afternoon, no stay had been ordered.

If the execution goes forward, Rhoades will be only the second Idaho inmate to be put to death since 1957, and the first one during that time to exhaust all his appeals. The last inmate to be executed, Keith Wells in 1994, gave up all of his remaining appeals and asked the state to carry out his lethal injection.

Idaho Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter said in a prepared statement that he appreciated the commissioners for carrying out their statutory duty "respectfully and professionally."

"Paul Ezra Rhoades has taken full and unfettered advantage of his right of due process of law for more than two decades," Otter said. "That process is running its course. The law requires and justice demands that Mr. Rhoades be held accountable for his actions as a judge and jury have directed."

So far, Otter has received about 17 letters about Rhoades' case since his death warrant was signed, Otter's spokesman Jon Hanian said. Most of them — including letters from the Pope's U.S. representative, Monsignor Jean-Francois Lantheaume; the head of the European Union's delegation to the U.S.; and the ambassador of Switzerland to the U.S. — urged Otter to stop Rhoades' execution. A few were in favor of Rhoades being put to death, saying the heinousness of his crimes merited the ultimate punishment.

Idaho Catholic Bishop Michael Driscoll also wrote Otter a letter asking him to commute Rhoades' sentence to life in prison without parole. Driscoll told the governor, who is Catholic, that while he didn't condone Rhoades' crimes, Catholic teachings on the death penalty make it clear that executions shouldn't take place when other means can protect society from criminals.

A Facebook group called Idahoans against the Death Penalty is also arranging protests, vigils and letter-writing campaigns on Rhoades' behalf. The organizer of that group did not immediately return an email from The Associated Press.

Source: Associated Press, November 10, 2011

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Boise: "Ending the use of the death penalty would be one important step away from a culture of death, towards building a culture of life."

On Tuesday, The Roman Catholic Diocese of Boise expressed its sadness that the Idaho Commission of Pardons and Parole decided to deny Paul Ezra Rhoades his request for clemency.

The Catholic Church is an opponent of the death penalty.

Bishop Michael Driscoll with the Diocese of Boise wrote a letter to Gov. Butch Otter detailing the Church's position on this controversial issue.

"For the Catholic community, this issue - like all life issues - is more than public policy," Bishop Driscoll said. "It involves our faith and the central issue that all human life is sacred. Catholic teaching on this issue is more than just how to respond to violent crime. It's about justice and what kind of society we want to be."

Bishop Driscoll is urging members of the Catholic community all throughout Idaho to write the Pardons and Parole commission and ask the commissioners to reconsider their decision.

Paul Ezra Rhoades is scheduled to be executed November 18. This will be Idaho's 1st execution since 1994.

Source: KIVI TV News, November 10, 2011

Related article:

Death Penalty News: URGENT APPEAL for Paul Rhoades due to be ...

Nov 05, 2011

Paul Rhoades, then 30, was arrested on 25 March 1987 and charged with three separate murders committed over the previous month. The victims were school teacher Susan Michelbacher and convenience store clerks Stacy ...

http://deathpenaltynews.blogspot.com/