The Death Penalty

Michael links below to an article, which appears in a recent issue of America, about the death penalty.  The author concludes -- after setting out the relevant passages from the Catechism -- that "all American Catholics who accept Church teaching must be opposed to the death penalty as it is used in the United States today" and that "it is simply not possible to be a faithful Catholic and support the use of the death penalty in the United States."  However -- and this is, I think, interesting -- the author grounds this conclusion not on arguments about whether or not (in the Catechism's terms) "non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people's safety from the aggressor" but on the author's characterization of the process through which capital sentences are collaterally reviewed (or not) in federal courts.  In the author's view, the current system of review -- including the courts' procedural-bar doctrines, and the limitations imposed by law on successive petitions -- does not (in the Catechism's words) "guarantee a full determination of the accused party's identity and responsibility."

In response to Michael's question (below):  I oppose the death penalty (though I remain troubled, or perhaps just confused, by the way the Catechism handles the issue -- treating it, it seems to me, more as a self-defense issue than a punishment issue).  And, I share many of the concerns expressed by the author of the piece to which Michael links about our death-penalty-review process.  That said, I believe that the author overstates his case in contending that every faithful Catholic must accept his characterization of the capital-sentence-review process and his conclusion that the process does not "guarantee a full determination of the accused party's identification and responsibility." 

I do not understand the Catechism to be stating that no Catholic can support a criminal-sentencing system that is imperfect.  Nor would I think it within the competence of the Church and its teachers to determine definitively whether a particular collateral-review regime "guarantee[d] [such a] determination."  This is -- to respond to Michael's invitation -- a "prudential" judgment, it seems to me.  (I am, again, open to the possibility that the death penalty is unjustifiable and unsupportable in the United States for other reasons.)

Rick