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FACT
SHEET
SB
182
Prohibit
Capital Punishment of Juvenile Offenders
and
SB
207
Repeal
the Death Penalty
THE
CATHOLIC DIOCESE OF SIOUX FALLS SUPPORTS SB 182 AND SB 207
While
criminals who threaten the lives and rights of our families, friends, and
fellow South Dakotans must be held accountable for their actions, violent
responses by the State only beget more violence.
The State must lead by example.
Instead of encouraging the culture of death by killing criminals,
we must seek punishments for crimes that respect the dignity of human life
while preserving justice. Nothing
a person does can change his or her inherent dignity and worth as a child
of God. And there is
nothing the State could do to a person that violates that person’s human
dignity more then to take his or her life.
GENERAL
FACTS ON THE DEATH PENALTY
-
The
death penalty is not an effective deterrent.
-
There
are strong indications that the death penalty actually increases
people’s tolerance of and tendency toward violent behavior.
-
There
are four inmates currently sentenced to death in South Dakota:
Donald
Moeller, Lincoln County, for murder;
Charles Rhines, Pennington County, for murder;
Briley Piper, Lawrence County, for murder; and
Elijah Page, Lawrence County, for murder.
CATHOLIC
CHURCH TEACHINGS
-
While
the Church continues to maintain that state authorities have an
obligation to protect society from aggressors, including the use of
capital punishment, “if this is the only possible way of effectively
defending human lives against the unjust aggressor,” other options
(life in prison without parole) and the development and technology of
our penal system, make the carrying out of such a punishment
"rare if not practically nonexistent." (John Paul II, Evangelium
Vitae 56.)
-
This
teaching flows from the Church’s consistent ethic of life that all
human life, from the unborn, to the disabled, to the elderly, and the
prisoner, even the most hardened criminal, demand dignity and respect.
-
Pope
John Paul II, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and the U.S.
Catholic Bishops have made it clear that our society has other ways to
protect itself from those who commit terrible crimes and ought to
forgo the use of the death penalty, especially in the case of
juveniles.
QUOTES
FROM THE CATECHISM
2265
Legitimate defense can be not only a right but a grave duty for one who is
responsible for the lives of others. The defense of the common good
requires that an unjust aggressor be rendered unable to cause harm. For
this reason, those who legitimately hold authority also have the right to
use arms to repel aggressors against the civil community entrusted to
their responsibility.
2266
The efforts of the state to curb the spread of behavior harmful to
people's rights and to the basic rules of civil society correspond to the
requirement of safeguarding the common good. Legitimate public authority
has the right and the duty to inflict punishment proportionate to the
gravity of the offense. Punishment has the primary aim of redressing the
disorder introduced by the offense. When it is willingly accepted by the
guilty party, it assumes the value of expiation. Punishment then, in
addition to defending public order and protecting people's safety, has a
medicinal purpose: as far as possible, it must contribute to the
correction of the guilty party. (Cf.
Lk 23:4-43.)
2267
Assuming that the guilty party's identity and responsibility have been
fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude
recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of
effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.
If, however, non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect
people's safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such
means, as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the
common good and more in conformity with the dignity of the human person.
Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has
for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an
offense incapable of doing harm—without definitively taking away from
him the possibility of redeeming himself—the cases in which the
execution of the offender is an absolute necessity "are very rare, if
not practically non-existent.” (John
Paul II, Evangelium vitae 56.)
QUOTE BY POPE
JOHN PAUL II
PAPAL
MASS, ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI, JANUARY 27, 1999
“The
new evangelization calls for followers of Christ who are unconditionally
pro-life: who will proclaim, celebrate and serve the Gospel of life in
every situation. A sign of hope is the increasing recognition that the
dignity of human life must never be taken away, even in the case of
someone who has done great evil. Modern society has the means of
protecting itself, without definitively denying criminals the chance to
reform (cf. Evangelium Vitae, 27). I renew the appeal I made most recently
at Christmas for a consensus to end the death penalty, which is both cruel
and unnecessary.”
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