When the call from the White House came on Dec. 19, I was so excited I couldn’t sit down. I kept walking around, saying: “Thank you, God. Thank you.”
Along with scores of other faith leaders and justice advocates, I had pleaded with President Joseph R. Biden to use the power of his office to show mercy to the condemned on federal death row. Now, here was the heads-up telephone call, assuring me that President Biden would soon announce the greatest tidings of mercy that people condemned to die ever hope to hear.
On Dec. 23, 2024, the president announced that he was commuting the sentences of 37 of the 40 prisoners on federal death row, converting their punishment from the death penalty to life in prison. While stating his solidarity for the victims and their families who suffered at the hands of those whose sentences were commuted, Mr. Biden said that “guided by my conscience and my experience as a public defender, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, vice president, and now president, I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level.”
My letter to the president was urgent and anxious. I have accompanied eight human beings to death at the hands of the state, witnessing up close their agonizing wait for death and their trembling last walk to the killing chamber. I also personally knew a few of the 13 persons former president Donald J. Trump summarily sent to their deaths in his last few weeks of office in 2020. And, given his harsh rhetoric during and after his presidential campaign, I have no doubt Mr. Trump will line up people in his federal jurisdiction to die during his second term if he has half a chance.
“With every fiber of my Catholic soul,” I pleaded with President Biden:
Use your presidential power (some call it “the last vestige of the ‘divine right’ of kings”) to commute the sentence of every federal death row prisoner. Even the few so-called “worst-of-the-worst” terrorists deserve mercy. If you decide not to spare everyone, you will be committing the same error of judgment that prosecutors make; that it is moral to support the death penalty for the “worst of the worst” and that we have the wisdom to distinguish that group from the rest.
As a fellow Catholic, I reminded the president of our church’s moral evolution on the death penalty, which Pope Francis crystallized in the Catechism of the Catholic Church in August 2018: No matter how grievous the crime, we may never entrust to frail, human authorities the God-like power to take life. I recounted to the pope my dialogue with Pope John Paul II in 1997 when I asked him if the church respected the “inviolable dignity” only of the innocent. What about the inherent dignity of all humans, even of those guilty of crimes?
I am heartened to hear that President Biden will visit with Pope Francis in January before he leaves office. What a team! During the noontime prayer of the Angelus in Rome recently, the pope prayed that all death sentences would be commuted to life.
“Even the most heinous of our sins does not mar our identity in God’s eyes,” the pope wrote earlier this year in a preface to a book on prison chaplaincy. “We remain His children, loved by Him, protected by Him and considered precious.” My parting words to the president were these: “Now, in your final legacy, I urge you to enact what may be the most Christlike act you will ever render: reaching out to save the lives of those condemned to die. I am praying mightily for you.”
May every U.S. governor who continues to exact a “life for a life” in their killing chambers follow the president’s historic example.
