- The Catholic Church is speaking out against a GOP push to expand the death penalty.
- Gov. Ron DeSantis has called for imposing death sentences even when jurors oppose the punishment.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has fashioned himself as a Republican warrior for faith and family as he ponders a run for the White House in 2024, one battling the secular evils of abortion, Disney, and the purported LGBTQ+ agenda. In an ad last year, shared by his wife, the governor's re-election campaign even suggested he was chosen for this mission by the creator of the universe.
"On the eighth day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said: 'I need a protector," the ad stated. "So God made a fighter."
DeSantis's brand of public Christianity has, of late, taken on a distinctly Old Testament vibe, emphasizing the need not just for law and order but for criminals to be put to death.
In January, after the Parkland school shooter was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole, DeSantis lamented that it is not easier for the state to execute convicted criminals, calling for a change in the law so that the death penalty could be imposed even when jurors disagree with the punishment.
Two bills have been introduced in the Florida legislature by Republicans that would do just that, one allowing for a sentence of capital punishment when only 8 out of 12 jurors support the penalty, and another permitting judges to impose it themselves.
DeSantis, a practicing Catholic, said opponents of the death penalty should not even be in the courtroom.
"If you will never administer the punishment, you just can't be on the jury," he said.
He returned to the issue at a February 14 press conference. "We're going to reform the capital sentencing procedure in Florida," DeSantis told reporters. Referring to the Parkland shooter, he argued that when "you kill 17 people, what other penalty can you get other than the ultimate penalty?" He has also called for extending capital punishment to more offenses, including sexual abuse of children.
'Deeply concerning'
Any effort to expand the death penalty in Florida will face obstacles: the state and US constitutions.
In 2016, the Supreme Court ruled that only one's peers could impose "the ultimate penalty," with some of the court's most conservative justices, including Clarence Thomas and the late Antonin Scalia, agreeing that Florida's earlier law allowing judges to unilaterally put someone to death violated the Sixth Amendment right to a trial by jury. A year later, the Florida Supreme Court also ruled that allowing a 10-2 majority of jurors to sentence someone to death would violate the state's own charter, leading then-Republican Gov. Rick Scott to sign into law a bill requiring unanimous decisions.
There is also a higher law. Michael Sheedy, executive director of the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops, told Insider that the church opposes any effort to make it easier to sentence someone to death.
Lowering the number of jurors it takes to impose capital punishment "would move Florida backward and make our state an outlier once again," Sheedy said. "Justice is better served when a unanimous jury is required to make the grave decision to allow the state to take someone's life," he continued. It would be wrong, too, to let a judge make that decision instead.
"Weakening the current standards in law to make it easier to impose death is deeply concerning in light of the fact that 30 individuals on Florida's death row have been exonerated thus far," Sheedy said. "The most severe penalty society can impose should demand the highest standards."
A punishment 'the Catholic Church rejects'
In principle, the Catholic Church is opposed to the death penalty altogether — and practicing Catholics are encouraged to work towards its global abolition, a fact that should preclude adherents to this teaching, per DeSantis, from serving on any Florida jury that might consider whether to impose it.
In 2017, Pope Francis argued that it is wrong to take a life when other punishments are available that can protect society. Citing the Gospel, Francis asserted that "the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person." Instead of advocating its use, he said, the Catholic Church should work to abolish it.
Asked about Catholic public officials advocating for the death penalty, Chieko Noguchi, a spokesperson for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, pointed to numerous condemnations of capital punishment from church leaders. In 2022, for example, Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York and Archbishop Paul Coakley of Oklahoma City issued a joint statement calling the death penalty "a grave violation of human dignity."
"An execution represents a judgment by fallible human beings that a person is beyond redemption – a judgment the Catholic Church rejects," they said.
DeSantis clashes with the church
Representatives for DeSantis did not respond to Insider's requests for comment on the church's criticism. Nor did a spokesperson for CatholicVote, a conservative organization that hosted DeSantis at a pre-election rally last fall at Ave Maria University, where he was introduced by the group's president, Brian Burch, and lauded in a press release as a politician who "has led according to the true principles that Catholic teaching promotes."
In the past, however, those speaking on behalf of the governor have not shied away from attacking Catholic critics in a tone typically reserved for secular liberals.
At a February 2022 press conference, Miami Archbishop Thomas Wenski slammed the governor for comments he made regarding the influx of unaccompanied children at the US-Mexico border. DeSantis had called it "disgusting" to compare that surge with children who arrived from Cuba in the 1960s.
"This was a new low in the zero-sum politics of our divisive times," Wenski said. "Children are children — and no child should be deemed 'disgusting' — especially by a public servant."
A spokesperson for DeSantis, Christina Pushaw, responded at the time by accusing Wenski of "lying," reminding him that is "a sin" to do so and adding: "Catholics do not have to support illegal immigration or human smuggling."
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