Leo Sandon on lethal injection debate

March 6, 2006 on 4:35 pm | In Commentary | No Comments |

The debate lives

By Leo Sandon
The Tallahassee Democrat
Sunday, March 5, 2006

Challenges to the use of lethal injection have brought the issue of capital punishment back into national focus, at least indirectly. And among the most persistent participants in the conversation are members of faith communities.

On Feb. 21 California postponed the execution of Michael A. Mores to examine the state’s lethal-injection procedures. Similar execution procedures are followed in 35 of the 36 states that allow the death penalty. California acted after determining that it could not comply with a federal judge’s order to alter its methods.

Most of the states use three chemicals administered intravenously and in sequence by machines. Typically penitentiary personnel insert the three lines into the prisoner.

The broad question that has emerged is whether the procedure might cause enough pain to violate the Eighth ! Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. The federal judge, Jeremy Fogel, was concerned with specific evidence that California’s procedure was frequently poorly administered and extremely painful.

Lawyers in several states are bringing legal challenges to the procedure. Look for many more in the wake of the California action. One from Florida, Hill v. Crosby, apparently is scheduled to be argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in April, but it isn’t really a challenge to the merits of lethal injection.

Don’t look for a ruling that lethal injection is unconstitutional. And don’t look for this particular discussion to change minds about the use of the death penalty itself.

Still, American public opinion apparently is shifting. Support for the death penalty is declining. A majority, 64 percent, still favor it if the question is simply whether they support the death penalty. Fewer than a majority favor it, however, if the question is a! choice between the death penalty and life imprisonment without parole .

Last year U.S. Catholic bishops, active opponents of capital punishment for more than 25 years, launched a new campaign to end the practice. Evangelicals such as Jimmy Carter and Jim Wallis, a leader whose positions on social ethics tend to be progressive, agree with the bishops. Most mainline denominations have adopted statements opposing the death penalty.

To be sure, faith communities are not of one mind, and many of those who are in the pews do not follow their denominational leaders. The Southern Baptist Convention, the largest U.S. Protestant denomination, supports capital punishment. And there is a gap between Catholic and mainline Protestant leaders and many in their membership.

Most all of Florida’s modern governors, for instance, have been religiously affiliated, but only the late LeRoy Collins opposed capital punishment. Most members of the Florida Legislature are members of faith communities, but you couldn’t muster a dozen legislators’ votes against the death penalty (unless, perhaps, it was a secret ballot).

Yet the majority participating in the candle-lighting vigil in front of the Governor’s Mansion at precisely the time Death Row inmates are executed are active members of faith communities and are religiously motivated. And most (but not all) of those who meet to witness in the Capitol rotunda at high noon on the first workday after each execution are there out of religious commitment, be they Quakers, Catholics, Jews or others.

They show up because they agree with St. Augustine that the state should be in the justice business, not the vengeance business.

Leo Sandon is professor emeritus of religion and American studies at Florida State.