Where a Roman Catholic deacon ponders the world
This makes for a striking counterpoint to the recent essay by Fr. George Rutler, defending capital punishment. It comes from Sunday’s Washington Post, and tells how a man who spent decades personally administering the death penalty came to oppose it: Jerry Givens executed 62 people. His routine and conviction never wavered. He’d shave the person’s [...]
That, at least, is one of the sentiments expressed here by Fr. George Rutler in Crisis Magazine: The grandson of St. Elizabeth Anne Seton, Archbishop Robert Seton, long-lived but less loved, wrote that during the course of a holiday in France as a boy, the ceremonious spectacle of a man being beheaded inspired him greatly [...]
I have to wonder how many other times this has happened. Details: He was the spitting image of the killer, had the same first name and was near the scene of the crime at the fateful hour: Carlos DeLuna paid the ultimate price and was executed in place of someone else in Texas in 1989, a report [...]
Those who oppose capital punishment got some encouraging news this week. Details, from the Associated Press: The number of executions in the United States dropped 12 percent in 2010, and the number of people sentenced to die is nearing historic lows, a report from an anti-capital punishment group says. The Death Penalty Information Center attributed [...]
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