Friday, May 12, 2006
Does Failing to Grant Clemency Constitute Formal Cooperation with Evil?
A regular reader of my personal blog emailed me this question:
Our governor (Michael Easley, North Carolina) is Catholic, although I don't know if he's devout. Either way, he's a conservative Democrat, and he hasn't issued many pardons or commuted many death row sentences. Since there's another execution scheduled this week, he's been petitioned again to commute a death sentence to life imprisonment.
I was very interested in your different posts on Catholic social though regarding judges, and whether following enshrined case law would constitute formal cooperation with evil. Listening to coverage for this execution, I started wondering whether denying clemency would be considered formal cooperation with evil -- seeing as on the one hand Easley would be failing to act, not acting as judge and jury; but on the other hand, Easley has much more lattitude than a judge in these matters.
My initial reaction is that the governor doesn't have a problem here. In the first place, of course, it's not clear that involvement with the death penalty is cooperation with evil, given that the Church has not definitively ruled it out. Second, failing to exercise clemency seems more remote than some other ways in which one might be involved. Comments?
https://mirrorofjustice.blogs.com/mirrorofjustice/2006/05/does_failing_to.html
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But hasn't the Church effectively ruled the death penalty out under these circumstances, assuming that North Carolina has a functioning and reasonably secure prison system available? And unlike a judge whose subversion of the rule of law would threaten important elements of the common good, isn't a governor's grant of clemency perfectly consistent with the rule of law?