For Immediate Release: February 29, 2024
Contact: Moira Greaney at moira@catholicsmobilizing.org
Website: catholicsmobilizing.org Twitter: @CMNEndtheDP
Yesterday was yet another snapshot of the realities of capital punishment in the United States: it’s too flawed and risky, too arbitrary and unfair, too cruel and dehumanizing to justify pursuing executions. At the beginning of the day on Wednesday, February 28, two men were scheduled to be executed. Today, one of those men is dead, and by the grace of God, one of those men is alive.
In the morning, Idaho set out to execute Thomas Creech, a 73-year-old man, one of the longest serving men on death row with five decades in prison. The execution team spent nearly an hour attempting to set an intravenous line before ultimately calling off the execution. This attempt to take Tom’s life was disturbingly reminiscent of the string of failed executions that occurred in Alabama in 2022, which ultimately led the Death Penalty Information Center to deem it “A Year of Botched Executions.”
In the evening, the state of Texas executed Ivan Cantu, despite serious doubts about his guilt and newly discovered evidence, demonstrating how our criminal legal system is more interested in vengeance than fairness.
Is this the justice we seek? Pursuing death when there are substantial doubts about a person’s conviction? A backdrop to Ivan’s particular case is the haunting fact that since capital punishment was reinstated in the United States in 1976, 196 people have been exonerated from death row after being sentenced to death for a crime they didn’t commit.
And we know the waves of harm as a result of executions reaches far outside the execution chamber itself — traumatizing prison staff, relatives, victims’ family members, legal teams, the media, chaplains, and other witnesses to the state sponsored killing — all who become collateral damage to the system of capital punishment.
The events of yesterday demonstrate the immense failures of this system of capital punishment. I mourn the death of Ivan Cantu, who never got the chance to bring newly discovered evidence in front of a jury. I grieve the trauma inflicted upon Thomas Creech, who was led to his death before a team of prison personnel determined they were unable to successfully kill him.
Is this the justice we seek?
