Tennessee’s Catholic bishops asked the state of Tennessee this week to replace the death penalty with life imprisonment.
In a statement issued Oct. 2, the Tennessee Catholic Conference argued that life imprisonment without parole “serves justice, protects society, and respects the dignity of every human life.”
“Accountability for grave wrongdoing is necessary, but it does not require the taking of another life,” they wrote. “An execution cannot restore the life taken, and the uncertainty, prolonged proceedings, and suffering surrounding the death penalty can deepen the anguish of everyone involved, including victims’ families, prisoners’ families, and those charged with carrying out executions.”
The bishops’ letter comes after the state’s recent failed attempt to execute the first woman in over 200 years, 50-year-old Christa Pike.
After two doses of pentobarbital failed to kill Pike on Sept. 30, the execution was halted. She remains on a ventilator in critical condition.
The botched execution was the second for Tennessee this year and led to the resignation of Frank Strada, the commissioner of the Department of Corrections. Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee placed a moratorium on executions for the rest of 2026.
In 1995, Pike and her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, tortured and then murdered Colleen Slemmer, Pike crushing her skull with a piece of asphalt. Sentenced to death in 1996 at the age of 20, Pike later attempted to strangle a fellow prisoner, Patricia Jones, in 2001. Pike, convicted of attempted murder, also tried to escape in 2012, according to ABC News.
“The fundamental moral question,” the bishops wrote, “is whether the State should continue to take lives when it has another means of protecting the public and imposing a serious, lasting punishment. Life without parole provides that alternative. It holds those convicted of the gravest crimes accountable and protects society while preserving the possibility of repentance.”
They wrote that “even those who commit terrible crimes retain their human dignity,” reflecting the Church’s revised stance on capital punishment.
Church teaching has changed on the death penalty
Paragraph 2267 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, revised in 2018, states that the death penalty is no longer admissible because “the dignity of the person is not lost even after the commission of very serious crimes” and states should administer punishments that “do not definitively deprive the guilty of the possibility of redemption.”
According to the catechism, “recourse to the death penalty on the part of legitimate authority, following a fair trial, was long considered an appropriate response to the gravity of certain crimes and an acceptable, albeit extreme, means of safeguarding the common good.”
However, Pope Francis argued in his “Address to Participants in the Meeting organized by the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelization” in 2017 that the “death penalty is an inhumane measure that, regardless of how it is carried out, abases human dignity.”
The catechism now states that “more effective systems of detention have been developed, which ensure the due protection of citizens,” and urges the Church to work for the abolition of the death penalty.
Trump approves military execution by firing squad
President Donald Trump meanwhile approved an execution by a military firing squad.
On Oct. 5, Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell reported on X that Trump approved the execution by military firing squad of “convicted terrorist” and “jihadist” Nidal Malik Hasan, the former U.S. Army major who shouted “Allahu Akbar” while murdering 13 people and wounding 32 others at Fort Hood, an army base in Texas, on Nov. 5, 2009.
Following a court martial, Hasan was sentenced to death in 2013. Parnell said the secretary of the Army will determine the date and location of the execution.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.