Monsignor Owen Campion notes that Virginia is moving toward becoming the first Southern state to abolish the death penalty — a move strongly supported by the state’s bishops. Monsignor Campion writes: “What prompted the Virginia bishops, and the bishops who appealed for
After a flurry of court decisions, the Supreme Court reversed a pair of rulings from federal appeals courts that had put death-row inmate Lisa Montgomery's execution on hold, and it denied two other last-minute requests to postpone the execution.
Montgomery was put to
A joint statement from two U.S. bishops who head different committees of the U.S. bishops called for an end to the federal use of the death penalty as "long past time."
"We renew our constant call to President (Donald) Trump and Acting Attorney
Monsignor Owen Campion writes that when Judge Amy Coney Barrett, a practicing Catholic, was nominated to the Supreme Court late last summer, little attention was paid to her views, precisely as a Catholic, concerning capital punishment. This oversight was interesting since several
In his latest article for Our Sunday Visitor, Russell Shaw examines the recent history of the use of the death penalty in the United States and the evolution of the Catholic Church’s perspective. As the Supreme Court begins a new term and
Just hours before the sixth federal execution took place this year, and two days before the next one was scheduled, two U.S. bishops' committee chairmen called on the government to end this practice.
"We say to President Trump and Attorney General Barr: Enough.
In a 2 a.m. decision July 14 after numerous last-minute filings, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 to overturn a trial court order blocking the execution of federal death-row inmate Daniel Lewis Lee.
The court's unsigned order enabled federal executions to go forward.
Lee, 47,
When the Supreme Court announced June 29 that it would not hear an appeal by federal death-row inmates challenging the method to be used in their upcoming executions, a longtime advocate against capital punishment said the court "abdicated its legal and moral
The U.S. Supreme Court granted a last-minute stay of execution for Texas death-row inmate Ruben Gutierrez June 16, saying the state prison officials need to reexamine their rule that bans clergy from being with prisoners to the execution chamber. In the court's
Catholic advocates against the death penalty spoke out against Missouri's May 19 execution of a death-row inmate, Walter Barton, whose death by lethal injection was the first execution to happen during the pandemic. So far, amid the coronavirus pandemic in the United