"Virginia Bishops call for radical shift in Commonwealth's death penalty debate"

Bishop Francis X. DiLorenzo (Richmond) and Bishop Paul S. Loverde (Alexandria) have issued a statement seeking to shift away from discussing methods of execution in Virginia to discussing the end of executions in Virginia. 

" [I]n Virginia and elsewhere," they write, "we are having the wrong debate. We should no longer debate which inmates we execute or how we execute them. Instead, we should debate this: If all human lives are sacred and if a civilized society such as ours can seek redress and protect itself by means other than taking a human life, why are we continuing to execute people?"

I agree that there is something missing from a debate that focuses on means to the exclusion of ends. But rather than abandon the debate on means, I incline more towards a both/and approach that debates both ends and means. Because lethal injection cannot be carried out properly, we should not be using lethal injection on anyone ... which leads to the question why we should be trying so hard to execute anyone at all.

Because the best way to enter the debate the bishops seek to have on capital punishment itself may be first to _win_ the debate on lethal injection as a means, the method-of-execution debate remains one worth having.