A clarification ran on this article in print. It suggested that Denver Roman Catholic Archbishop Charles Chaput has not taken a position on Colorado legislation that would eliminate the death penalty. The Colorado Catholic Conference – which takes stances on behalf of the state’s Catholic bishops – supports the bill.
Colorado should eliminate the death penalty immediately, but cost savings shouldn’t be the rationale, Denver Roman Catholic Archbishop Charles Chaput argues this week in his Denver Catholic Register column.
Chaput credits Rep. Paul Weissmann, a Louisville Democrat, for opening a “very valuable debate” with a bill that would abolish the state’s death penalty and use the savings to investigate unsolved murders.
The legislation passed a House committee last week.
Chaput doesn’t take a position on the bill.
He called Weissmann’s argument “ingenious” but cited other reasons to oppose capital punishment, which Catholic tradition allows only in extraordinary circumstances.
“The death penalty is a bad idea because it diminishes the society that employs it,” Chaput wrote. “It doesn’t deter capital crime. It doesn’t bring back the dead. It doesn’t give anyone ‘peace.’ It sometimes kills the innocent. It coarsens our own humanity and sense of justice.”
A clarification ran on this article in print. It suggested that Denver Roman Catholic Archbishop Charles Chaput has not taken a position on Colorado legislation that would eliminate the death penalty. The Colorado Catholic Conference – which takes stances on behalf of the state’s Catholic bishops – supports the bill.
