death penalty

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Missouri bishops condemn execution of Ernest Johnson

October 7, 2021 Catholic News Agency 1
Mitchell Rozanski, then-Bishop of Springfield in Massachusetts and current Archbishop of St. Louis, in St. Peter’s Basilica, Nov. 7, 2019. / Daniel Ibanez/CNA

Washington D.C., Oct 7, 2021 / 11:10 am (CNA).

The four bishops of Missouri released a joint statement on Wednesday evening condemning the state’s execution of Ernest Lee Johnson, on whose behalf the Holy See pleaded for clemency.

Johnson, 61, was executed by lethal injection on Tuesday, after the Supreme Court denied his emergency appeal for a stay of execution. He was convicted of killing three convenience store employees with a claw hammer in 1994 while attempting to rob the store for drug money..

“As the Catholic bishops of Missouri, we express our disappointment with the decision to allow the execution of Ernest Lee Johnson to move forward yesterday,” said the statement, which was signed by Archbishop Mitchell Rozanski of St. Louis, Bishop James Johnson of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Bishop Shawn McKnight of Jefferson City, and Bishop Edward Rice of Springfield-Cape Girardeau. 

The bishops said that while Johnson’s crimes were “heinous and deserve to be punished,” the “pro-life state” of Missouri should cease the use of capital punishment. 

The bishops expressed their “sincerest condolences” to the families of Johnson’s victims. 

“The lives of Mary Bratcher, Mabel Scruggs and Fred Jones deserve honor and remembrance,” they said. “We pray for the comfort of their loved ones as they are forced to relive the trauma and pain of these crimes through this execution.” 

The death penalty, said the bishops, “does not make Missouri a safer or more civil state.” 

“As we communicated in our clemency request last month, the death penalty degrades us as a society and teaches our children that violence is the proper response to violence,” they said. “When someone is executed, the opportunity for them to undergo a conversion and repent prior to their final judgement may be lost. That important time for grace to work in a person’s heart is taken away.” 

Alternative punishments, such as life in prison without the possibility of parole, would serve as a suitable way to “address these crimes without resorting to the death penalty,” they said. 

“We ask Catholics and people of good will to join us in seeking alternatives to the death penalty for Missouri’s most violent criminals,” the bishops said. “Even those who commit the most offensive acts do not lose their human dignity before God.”

Johnson’s execution was controversial due to questions surrounding his intelligence. His lawyer, Jeremy Weis, claimed that Johnson was intellectually disabled and had an IQ below 70. 

The Missouri Supreme Court ruled that Johnson had not proven that he was intellectually disabled, noting that he had extensively planned the crimes and taken steps to destroy incriminating evidence. 

Johnson was initially scheduled to be executed in 2001, but the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional to execute those with intellectual disabilities. He was re-sentenced to death in 2003 before that sentence was tossed out by the state Supreme Court. He was re-sentenced to death again in 2006.

Archbishop Christophe Pierre, Apostolic Nuncio to the United States, on Monday issued a message to Missouri Gov. Michael Parson asking for “some appropriate form of clemency” for Johnson.


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News Briefs

Survey: A majority of US Catholics support the death penalty

July 21, 2021 Catholic News Agency 1
The lethal injection room at California’s San Quentin State Prison. / California Department of Corrections via Wikimedia (CC BY 2.0)

Washington D.C., Jul 21, 2021 / 18:02 pm (CNA).

One recent survey shows a majority of U.S. Catholics supporting use of the death penalty for murder convicts. The poll numbers follow a 2018 update to the Catechism that the death penalty is “inadmissible.”

According to a survey of 5,109 U.S. adults by the Pew Research Center, conducted from April 5 to 11, 2021 and published in June, a majority of U.S. Catholics either “strongly” or “somewhat” support use of the death penalty for murder convicts.

Mirroring the responses of U.S. adults overall, 31% of Catholics “somewhat” favor the death penalty for those convicted of murder, while 27% of Catholics “strongly” favor it.

In comparison, 32% of U.S. adults “somewhat” favor the death penalty in such cases, and 27% “strongly” favor it, according to the Pew report.

Among Hispanic Catholics, there is slightly more support for the death penalty for murder convicts. In this subgroup, 30% “somewhat” support the death penalty in such cases, and 31% “strongly” support it.

Regarding the question of moral justification for the death penalty, a majority of Catholics believe it is justified in cases of murder convictions.

Among Catholics overall, 60% say capital punishment is morally justified “when someone commits a crime like murder”; among Hispanic Catholics, that number is 62%. Only 30% of Catholics believe the death penalty is morally wrong, including 35% of Hispanic Catholics.

Among religious subgroups, white evangelical and non-evangelical Protestants are most likely to believe the death penalty is morally justified in cases such as murder. More than three-quarters, 77%, of white evangelical Protestants believe this, and 76% of white non-evangelical Protestants.

Nearly two-thirds of those professing no religion “in particular,” 66%, also said that capital punishment is justified in such instances.

Language in the Catechism of the Catholic Church on the use of the death penalty was updated in 2018, calling it “inadmissible.”

Pope Francis, in his 2020 encyclical Fratelli Tutti, wrote, “Today we state clearly that ‘the death penalty is inadmissible’ and the Church is firmly committed to calling for its abolition worldwide.”

In October 2020, CNA spoke with Fr. Thomas Petri regarding Pope Francis’ statements on the death penalty. Fr. Petri is currently the president and assistant professor of moral theology and pastoral studies at the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception at the Dominican House of Studies.

He explained that the Church’s ordinary magisterium has always taught that “states have the right to inflict the penalty of death.” He added that “no pope can somehow come out and contradict that.”

Pope Francis, he said, did not say the use of the death penalty was “intrinsically evil,” and thus did not contradict the Church’s ordinary magisterium.

Both popes John Paul II and Francis have made prudential applications of the Church’s teaching in areas of faith and morals, he said. Their statements on the death penalty have noted that the security of modern prisons has rendered the need for the death penalty non-existent, as a means of protecting society from criminals.

Thus, since popes have spoken frequently on the death penalty in recent years – including through encyclicals and the Catechism – Catholics cannot just prudentially disagree with their teachings, he said.

“You can probably disagree with whether or not there should be life prison terms, but not this. I don’t think you can say this about the death penalty issue,” he said.

According to a 2020 RealClear Opinion Research poll, sponsored by EWTN News, U.S. Catholics broadly supported the death penalty by a margin of 57% to 29%.

In the April 2021 Pew survey, atheists, agnostics, and Black Protestants were the most likely religious subgroups to say the death penalty is morally wrong. A slight majority of atheists, 51%, believe the death penalty is morally wrong, compared to 47% of self-identified agnostics and 42% of Black Protestants.


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