Bishops ask Bush to spare 2 killers

The appeal by the Catholic leaders is part of a growing opposition to the death penalty.

By SYDNEY P. FREEDBERG

© St. Petersburg Times, published July 1, 1999

Florida's Catholic bishops Wednesday called on Gov. Jeb Bush to spare the lives of two condemned killers, contending that "killing people to show that killing is wrong is a piercing contradiction."

In an open letter to the governor, the bishops said the murder victims and their families were "terribly wronged." But they declared that life without a chance for parole is sufficient punishment even for heinous killers such as Thomas H. P

Davis

rovenzano and Allen Lee Davis, who are scheduled to die next week.

"Executions coarsen us," the 10 bishops said in their 600-word letter. "What example is set when our state legitimizes killing?"

Although Florida's bishops have spoken out against the death penalty for decades, this is the first time they have addressed a Florida governor in an open letter and the first time they have specifically called on one to commute a killer's sentence, according to the Florida Catholic Conference.

The bishops' toughly worded statement is another sign that opposition to the death penalty is rising toward the top of the church's agenda. According to the bishops, the statement also reflects growing public concerns about capital punishment.

Polls show most Americans support the death penalty, but appeals by prominent religious figures, mounting international pressure and publicity about death row inmates freed because of new DNA evidence have triggered widespread debate about capital punishment over the past two years.

Cory Tilley, a spokesman for the governor, said he didn'

Provenzano

t think Bush had seen the bishops' letter. Tilley said Bush, who converted to Catholicism in 1995, will take "anything that the bishops were to convey to him very seriously," but he doesn't expect the governor will commute the sentences of Provenzano or Davis.

"He's fully prepared to carry out his duty as governor, which includes from time to time signing a death warrant," Tilley said. "This is not something he looks forward to as governor, but it's something he has to do so justice can be carried out."

In their statement, the bishops mentioned "the recurring question of innocence, the exorbitant cost, the inconsistency in sentencing and the capriciousness of who is executed" in asking Bush to review "the entire question of the death penalty."

Although they did not mention the governor's faith, the Most Rev. Robert N. Lynch, bishop of the Roman Catholic diocese of St. Petersburg, said, "There's a certain higher hope that a pro-life governor would see these executions as an extension of the culture of death."

This year, four governors elsewhere have commuted death sentences for convicted killers -- the most in a single year since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

The most dramatic plea came from Pope John Paul II, who in January successfully appealed to Missouri Gov. Mel Carnahan to commute the death sentence of a condemned murderer.

Some capital punishment supporters say the bishops are wrong in contending that the death penalty is applied in an arbitrary manner. They also contend that such attacks are designed to get rid of it entirely.

The Catholic Church has "Amnesty International and foreign governments on their side, but they have not been able to move the American public," said Robert Pambianco, chief policy counselor at the Washington Legal Foundation, a public interest law group that supports the death penalty. "The anti-death penalty movement has been successful to a limited extent in shifting focus away from the death penalty to side issues that they feel are more friendly to their position."

The revived capital punishment debate comes as the pace of executions in America -- 553 since 1976 -- quickens. Fifty-three of those executions have come this year and the number could top 100 for the first time by year's end.

Texas has two executions scheduled for today. Florida's first two executions in 16 months are scheduled for next Wednesday and Thursday.

Death penalty opponents trace the renewed debate to 1997, when the American Bar Association, which is neutral on the death penalty, called for a moratorium on executions over concerns that indigent prisoners were not receiving adequate legal representation.

Also, Florida ordered a yearlong suspension of executions after an inmate's head caught fire while he was being executed.

Last year, the conservative broadcaster Pat Robertson joined the national debate on capital punishment when he called on Bush's brother, Texas Gov. George W. Bush, to show mercy for Karla Faye Tucker, a pick-ax murderer who was born again while on death row. Bush refused to grant clemency and Tucker was executed, but Robertson's plea spurred rethinking on the issue among some evangelical Christians.

The debate also has been fueled by highly publicized reports of wrongly condemned persons in Illinois who were freed because of DNA evidence. Illinois lawmakers urged the governor to impose a six-month moratorium on executions while a panel investigates possible causes of mistaken convictions.

In Nebraska, lawmakers voted for a two-year suspension to allow time for a study of the role of race and socioeconomic factors in capital punishment sentencing. The Republican governor vetoed the bill, but state Sen. Kermit Brashear, a Republican and staunch death penalty supporter, said he pushed for it because he had grown increasingly concerned about what, if anything, distinguished the state's 10 inmates under death sentence from its 165 other murderers.

"The death penalty is legal, moral and ethical," Brashear said. "But if you don't apply it justly and fairly, then you oughtn't apply it at all."

Elsewhere, bills to halt or restrict the death penalty or make it fairer are attracting serious attention.

In Kentucky, lawmakers passed a racial-justice-in-sentencing law last year after a study showed that African-Americans are more likely to receive the death penalty for killing whites than whites for killing blacks.

In Massachusetts, a highly organized anti-death-penalty lobby, including members of the Catholic Church hierarchy, were credited in March with helping to defeat a bill to reinstate capital punishment.

Even in Texas, home of the nation's busiest execution chamber, a few pro-death penalty legislators lined up with opponents this year to vote for reform bills. One measure would have improved legal representation for poor inmates. Another would have barred executions of the mentally retarded.

Both measures, which were opposed by Gov. George Bush, ultimately failed.

The Florida Legislature is a notable exception to the reform trend, said Stephen Hanlon, head of the pro bono division of the Holland & Knight law firm, which has called for a moratorium on the death penalty.

Outside the Legislature, however, a growing number of Floridians are reassessing the death penalty, Hanlon said. "From the judiciary to the executive branch, there's a serious question about whether this thing is worth it."

Death penalty re-examinations in the United States have dovetailed with growing international pressure on the United States to end capital punishment.

Germany and Canada mounted recent legal challenges against executions of their foreign nationals, and Amnesty International, the human rights group, has issued three reports in the past year. The group has compared false imprisonment and racial prejudice in states with capital punishment to records of countries such as Iraq and China.

Last month, Russian President Boris Yeltsin, vowing to outlaw the death penalty, commuted the sentences of more than 700 death row inmates.

-- Times researcher Kitty Bennett and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

© Copyright 1999 St. Petersburg Times. All rights reserved.