News

Conference opposes vote on death penalty

By Kathleen Bushman
Madison Catholic Herald

How to respond The Wisconsin Catholic Conference has asked Catholics to phone or e-mail their state senator and urge them to oppose SJR 5. (To find the name of your senator go to www.legis.state.wi.us/waml and click on Who is My Legislator?) They may be reached by phone at the legislative hotline, 1-800-362-9472. More background information on the death penalty is on the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' website, www.usccb.org/sdwp/national/deathpenalty and on the WCC website, www.wisconsincatholic.org.

MADISON -- The Wisconsin Catholic Conference has issued an Action Alert asking Catholics to urge their state senator to reject an amended SJR 5, which would send to voters an advisory referendum on restoring the death penalty.

The Assembly on May 4 voted 47-45 to approve the amended resolution which calls for the statewide vote in November 2006. The Senate is expected to vote on the amended SJR 5 next week during an extraordinary session.

"We are disappointed by the Assembly's decision to proceed with the death penalty referendum," John Huebscher, executive director of the Wisconsin Catholic Conference, said in a statement released May 5.

"While a vote to ask the public what it thinks is different from a vote on the merits of the death penalty itself, the heart of the matter is that Wisconsin did the right thing 150 years ago," Huebscher said. "We should not return to the death penalty when so many others are moving away from it. We are hopeful the State Senate will yet decide that a referendum is not a good idea given the other pressing questions facing our state at this time."

The amended SJR 5 asks: "Should the death penalty be enacted in the State of Wisconsin for cases involving a person who is convicted of first-degree intentional homicide, if the conviction is supported by DNA evidence?" The Senate had approved SJR 5, but the Assembly Committee on Criminal Justice and Homeland Security then amended it by removing a requirement that the homicide be "vicious," hence the need for the second vote by the Senate.

Public hearing

At a public hearing before the Assembly committee dozens of concerned citizens spoke out against the death penalty and the referendum. Only an author of the resolution supported it.

Wisconsin has the longest-standing ban against all forms of capital punishment. A law in 1853 abolished the death penalty after the hanging of John McCaffrey of Kenosha, the only person to be executed in Wisconsin after statehood.

Eleven other states and the District of Columbia have abolished the death penalty. New Jersey and Illinois have a moratorium on executions and several states have court cases challenging the death penalty. Kansas and Florida have cases in the U.S. Supreme Court; a decision on the Kansas case is expected soon.

Senator testifies

Over the past 153 years, many bills to re-instate the death penalty have been introduced in the legislature - several by Sen. Alan Lasee, R-De Pere, author of the current resolution - but none have succeeded.

At the hearing, Lasee spoke strongly for the referendum. He described the anguish of families of murder victims and spoke of their need for closure through capital punishment. He also described several cases of vicious homicides in Wisconsin, including serial killers Jeffrey Dahmer and David Spanbauer.

A referendum is necessary, he said, to find out how Wisconsin voters feel.

Several who oppose the resolution said a referendum would not give legislators an accurate depiction of the opinions of citizens. Some argued that the referendum did not offer an option between the death penalty and life without parole.

Other said that the issue would not be discussed rationally.

Vote unnecessary

The WCC's Huebscher told the hearing that the referendum was unnecessary because we know the death penalty is popular.

Even the early state legislators knew the death penalty was popular when they abolished it, Huebscher said, but they knew there had to be a better way to punish criminals.

"History has vindicated them by the kind of state Wisconsin has become," he said. "At a time when the human community is moving away from the death penalty, it would be tragic for Wisconsin to reverse its course."

Arthur Thexton, a state prosecutor and member of the Wisconsin Coalition Against the Death Penalty, warned that if the death penalty for first-degree intentional homicide cases is instated, "It is only a matter of time before it is expanded to other cases."

Unfair to the poor

Many speakers said the death penalty unfairly treated minorities and the poor. One speaker read a testimony from her sister whose mentally ill son is on death row in Texas.

The reliability of DNA evidence was questioned. "It can answer the question 'who done it,'" said Marla Stephens, an attorney and member of Wisconsin Public Defenders (WPD), "but it can't answer 'what happened.'"

She and two others from WPD also discussed the high cost of capital punishment because of the long, but necessary, appeals process. Milwaukee District Attorney E. Michael McCann agreed.

One of the strongest messages was that the death penalty did not respect human rights.

"Catholics call each other and all people to embrace a consistent ethic of life, which measures all private choices and public choices in light of their impact on human life and dignity, regardless of how repugnant some lives may seem to us," Huebscher said.

"For us being 'pro-life' means protecting life at all stages of life from conception to natural death. We reject a selective approach that values human life only in certain circumstances," he said.

(Tony Staley in Green Bay contributed to this report.)