Rush to execute harms culture of life

Oklahoma state officials plan to carry out seven executions over the next five months. They will be the first executions in Oklahoma in nearly seven years.

This comes at a time when a federal court has agreed to look at the state’s problematic lethal injection protocol as part of a pending lawsuit that questions the constitutionality of a lethal injection drug meant for anesthesia. This provides an opportunity for Oklahoma to stop the use of capital punishment and to use other means to protect society and seek justice for victims of crime and their families. 

The Catholic Church teaches that each person is born with inherent dignity that we do not forfeit by misdeeds or even by committing crimes that cause grave harm. Rooted in this belief, the church regards capital punishment as a fundamental life issue and deems it inadmissible in all cases, especially when other means are available to hold criminals accountable. 

Executions anywhere are cause for lament, but in Oklahoma especially, they raise serious concerns. Our state bears the unfortunate reputation of executing the most people per capita in the modern death penalty era. What’s more, in recent years, Oklahoma has been home to several gruesomely botched executions.

Beyond moral considerations, there are compelling practical arguments against the death penalty. It costs more to keep an inmate on death row than imprisoned for life. The system of capital punishment is riddled with flaws, including alarming wrongful conviction rates, widespread racial bias, arbitrariness and a proclivity for targeting vulnerable populations such as people with intellectual disability and severe mental illness.  

For these reasons and others, capital punishment has faded more and more into obscurity over the decades, both in the United States and the world at large. A majority of states have distanced themselves from the death penalty, with 23 having fully outlawed the practice to date and 13 others having gone 10 or more years without an execution. 

There is little doubt that society has moved past the need for the death penalty. Catholic teaching states that there now exist ways of holding individuals accountable for grave harm that effectively “ensure the due protection of citizens but, at the same time, do not definitively deprive the guilty of the possibility of redemption.” 

The death penalty is an immoral and antiquated method of addressing serious crimes and its usage in Oklahoma is irreparably broken. The church recognizes the grave harm done to victims and the need for healing and justice. It also understands that executions only perpetuate cycles of violence and often provide no measure of healing for families. After nearly seven years without an execution, I believe our state is ready to embrace alternatives to capital punishment that honor human dignity and promote restoration.

To oppose the death penalty is not to be soft on crime. Rather, it is to be strong on the dignity of life. The burdens of trauma and violence weigh heavy in our country and world these days; this is our opportunity to reject a culture of death and build up a culture of life.