Three death-row inmates were executed by lethal injection in the United States on Thursday, August 13, in three different states. According to the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC), an organization that advocates for the abolition of the death penalty, this was the first time in more than sixteen years that three executions had taken place in the country on the same day.
By Olivier Bonnel
On Thursday, August 13, three death-row inmates were executed on the same day in three different states.
Anthony Hines, 66, died at 10:43 a.m. by lethal injection at a penitentiary in Nashville, Tennessee, after spending 40 years on death row. He had been convicted of the 1985 murder of a woman. Half an hour earlier, Carlos Cuesta-Rodriguez, a 70-year-old man who had been sentenced for the 2003 murder of his partner, was executed in the same manner at a prison in Oklahoma. Finally, Jerry Williams, a 42-year-old man convicted of the murder and rape of a young girl in 2021, was put to death shortly after 4 p.m. at a correctional facility in Alabama.
Despite legal appeals and mobilization by abolitionist networks, the executions could not be prevented. Twenty-three of the fifty U.S. states still have the death penalty, and its use has been increasing since Donald Trump returned to the White House. Last year, 47 executions were carried out in the country, according to the Death Penalty Information Center—the highest number since 2009.
The Church continues to speak out against the death penalty
The Archbishop of Oklahoma City, Archbishop Paul S. Coakley, expressed his dismay on his Facebook page over the execution of one of the citizens of his state. “The death penalty does not bring justice,” wrote the archbishop, who is also president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. “Our modern prisons are secure. Life imprisonment allows for the conversion of hearts.”
“Let us all pray and work together for a more humane justice, a justice that preserves hope for redemption and respect for the inherent dignity of every life, even those who have committed a serious crime,” Archbishop Coakley continued. “We must also pray for the perpetrators of these crimes, bearing in mind that human life is a gift from God and that the right to life cannot be violated, even in the case of those who have been guilty of serious crimes.”
In 2018, Pope Francis ordered a revision of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, stating that the death penalty is in all cases “inadmissible” and contrary to human dignity.
Source link
