The Catholic Mobilizing Network (CMN), an organization that promotes Church teaching to oppose the practice of capital punishment in the US, is calling on President Joe Biden to take action in his final months in charge. During his term, Biden – the second Catholic US president – has placed a moratorium on federal executions, but now CMN is urging him to consider commuting sentences of those on Death Row.
In a report from OSV News, CMN Executive Director Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy noted that there are 40 people who remain on the federal Death Row list, whose lives hang in the balance. She expressed her hope that President Biden take definitive action on the situation:
“As faithful anti-death penalty advocates, we know lives hang in the balance; we are ready to act,” Vaillancourt Murphy said. “Our work will not be over until capital punishment has been completely abandoned in the United States. CMN will redouble its efforts to urge President Biden to commute the sentences of all 40 men currently on federal Death Row before he leaves office in January.”
Vaillancourt Murphy went on to suggest that such merciful action would be an excellent way for the second Catholic President to end his term and begin the 2025 Year of Jubilee.
It is within the constitutional power of the President of the United States to commute all federal sentences with pardons. It is possible to pardon a convict from execution, while they still must serve their time in prison.
Preventing the executions of some 40 individuals would not only deliver on campaign promises, but it would be in line with the president’s professed Catholic faith. The Catholic Church is firmly opposed to capital punishment worldwide, as it is contrary to Church teaching on the sanctity of human life. This stance was extrapolated on by Pope Francis in his encyclical Fratelli Tutti, in which he called the death penalty "inadmissible" and that, for the Church, “there can be no stepping back from this position.”
Vaillancourt Murphy went on to explain that CMN must work quickly to try and save those on Death Row, due to the recent victory of President-elect Donald Trump. She pointed to his previous term, in which he oversaw the execution of 13 federal prisoners, the first federal executions in nearly two decades. She also noted that, during his 2024 campaign, Trump suggested expansions to the death penalty.
CMN reiterated its commitment to working to end capital punishment in the US, regardless of who sits in the White House. Vaillancourt Murphy commented:
“We know the death penalty does not deter crime or make communities safer,” she said. “Like the state systems, the federal death penalty system is broken. So we will keep praying and advocating and educating and sharing restorative practices until this system of death is dismantled and our communities flourish amid a culture of life.”
