Death Penalty

During an online panel about the death penalty Oct. 19, panelists stressed how capital punishment goes against church teaching, and they also urged the nearly 500 participants to promote this discussion at their own parishes by tapping into available resources

Bishops of Missouri call for alternatives to capital punishment, highlighting that the death penalty does not make the state safer or more civil.

While many businesses and organizations were hamstrung by the near-immediate shutdown wrought last year by the coronavirus pandemic, the Catholic Mobilization Network flourished in ways like never before, according to its executive director, Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy.

Following the Oct. 5 execution of Ernest Johnson at a state prison in Bonne Terre, Missouri, Catholic opponents of the death penalty emphasized that this didn't have to happen.

The US state of Missouri executes convicted murderer Ernest Johnson on Tuesday evening despite pleas for clemency by Pope Francis, among others, on the grounds that Johnson was intellectually disabled.

Dale Recinella, a lay Catholic spiritual advisor to inmates on Florida's death row, tells of the reality surrounding the death penalty in the United States and his hope for its abolition, in an interview with Vatican News.

Dale Recinella, lay chaplain and spiritual advisor to Florida’s death row prisoners, visits the Paliano Detention Centre in Italy, a rehabilitative prison for around 70 people who have chosen the path to redemption through collaboration with the state.

The U.S. Supreme Court's new term, starting Oct. 4, returns to its standard routine: hearing arguments in person and taking on hot-button issues. The big cases, among the 34 it has so far agreed to hear, include those on abortion, the Second Amendment, and religious liberty issues related to a death penalty case and religious schools excluded from a state school choice program.

Activists who oppose the death penalty said the Justice Department’s temporary stop of federal executions is a step in the right direction, but not enough.

"The Phantom," a new documentary on a capital murder case gone awry, is being released in theaters amid a Catholic Mobilizing Network campaign asking President Joe Biden to abolish the federal death penalty.

Lisa Brown, the mother of federal death-row inmate Christopher Vialva, speaks during a Sept. 24, 2020, news conference near the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute, Ind. Her son was executed less than eight hours later that day.