By Anna Nowalk
Pax Christi USA Young Adult Caucus
President Joe Biden recently made headlines for granting clemency to almost 1,500 people, the most ever to be granted in one day. As a Catholic, I sincerely hope that this will lead to another gesture of mercy, one not absolving people of their guilt but of refusing to use violence in response: commuting the sentences of the 40 men who are on death row. Given the stakes, our Catholic president has a responsibility to save their lives before leaving office.
Pope Francis got attention in 2018 when he edited the Catechism of the Catholic Church so that it declared the death penalty “inadmissible” (the teaching can be found in CCC 2267). The God-given dignity of a human being is not lost when they commit a crime, even a heinous one. An act of evil does not give us the power to take away that life, especially when other responses are enough to ensure that they do not serve as a threat to society. A righteous desire for justice should not manifest itself in the death of a person, made in the image and likeness of God.
It is rare, with issues of life, that we can put a name and a face to each person whose life hangs in the balance, such as those who face the death penalty. The threat to the life of these persons can be removed through a simple course of action. The average US citizen doesn’t have this power, but certain public officials are able to intervene by commuting the sentence.
These commutations are especially dire with the second Trump administration on the horizon. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, the death penalty has been used 16 times in the modern era; the majority of those took place while Trump was in office, and six occurred during his “lame-duck” period, in which Biden finds himself now. Dustin Higgs, the last person executed under the federal death penalty, was killed just four days before Biden took office. Moreover, Trump has mentioned the potential use of the death penalty for drug dealers. Whether he follows through on this or not, this proposed vindictiveness is alarming. To borrow some famous phrases from Pope Francis, as Catholics, we are charged with building a culture of life and combating the “throw-away culture.” This responsibility falls especially on those who wield great power.
In light of Biden’s imminent departure from the White House, the Catholic Mobilizing Network (CMN) has been circulating a petition where Catholics are able to voice their support of these commutations. (You can sign the petition here.) CMN has categorized this effort as one of its “Jubilee Actions,” referencing the upcoming 2025 Jubilee of Hope. In Spes Non Confundit, his proclamation of this Jubilee year, Pope Francis writes, “In every part of the world, believers, and their pastors in particular, should be one in demanding dignified conditions for those in prison, respect for their human rights and above all the abolition of the death penalty, a provision at odds with Christian faith and one that eliminates all hope of forgiveness and rehabilitation.”
The fight against the death penalty offers the chance to live out Christian values in a uniquely concrete way. To commute the sentence of someone who has committed a grave crime is to reject the moral logic of “an eye for an eye.” While this action is certainly in the spirit of mercy, we ought to remember that it is also obligatory. Bumping someone’s sentence down from the death penalty to life without parole doesn’t mean that those on death row are exonerated. They will still pay for their crime, just without the inadmissible use of death as the means to collect that payment. President Biden must use his presidential power to prevent this violence, not just to end his time in office with a symbolic gesture of mercy, but because those on death row retain an innate human dignity that we must respect.
Anna Nowalk is a Fulbright scholar researching music written about Catholics killed during and around the time of the armed conflict in El Salvador. She served as a volunteer with the Precious Blood Ministry of Reconciliation, a restorative justice hub in Chicago, and was an intern with the Catholic Mobilizing Network. She graduated from Fordham University and is a participant in Pax Christi’s Young Adult Caucus.
See also:
- Oklahoma governor commutes Julius Jones’ death sentence hours before planned execution, Associated Press, November 2021
- Unprecedented commute of all death sentences to life imprisonment in California’s Santa Clara County, Crux, April 2024