Related articles and links |  1 of 4

As the number of executions surges, Christians remain divided on the death penalty's morality and purpose.

One might think Sue Norton would be among the most ardent supporters of the death penalty in light of the 1990 double murder of her parents. Yet today, as the man convicted of killing her parents sits on Oklahoma's death row, she is among those working hardest to have his death sentence commuted.

"If our world is going to change," she says, "we have to move past hate and learn to love with the unconditional love displayed by Jesus." Norton, a member of an American Baptist church in Arkansas City, Missouri, says the man who killed her parents has converted to Christianity through her witness. She regularly visits and writes to him in prison and talks to him weekly by telephone.

Norton is among the nearly 3,000 members of the Atlantic, Virginia-based Murder Victims Families for Reconciliation (mvfr), which opposes the death penalty and advocates programs and policies aimed at crime prevention. "Our society places an expectation on families to seek vengeance," says mvfr executive director Pat Bane. "One parent told me that people made her feel like she was betraying her son because she did not want to kill the person who murdered him. Our goal is to break the cycle of violence rather than escalate it."

CAPITAL COMEBACK: Though not an mvfr member, Aldona DeVetsco opposed the May 2 lethal injection of Keith Zettlemoyer, the first person to be executed in Pennsylvania since 1962. Zettlemoyer shot and killed Charles DeVetsco, Aldona's son, in 1980. She signed a petition appealing for a stay of execution, calling capital punishment "senseless vengeance."

Pennsylvania is the latest in the growing list of states to administer the death penalty for the first time in decades. Last year, Idaho, Maryland, and Nebraska carried out their first executions in more than 30 years. Earlier this year, Montana did the same. Across the nation, during the first six months of the year, 33 people were executed, surpassing the total for all of last year.

The resurgence of the death penalty has given rise to a more fervent opposition. Challengers of capital punishment point out that most other countries that permit the death penalty-such as Iraq and China-are infamous for human-rights violations.

Nevertheless, those in the United States who oppose the death penalty are waging what appears to be an uphill battle. From the common citizen to the Supreme Court, sentiment runs solidly in favor of capital punishment both in principle and in practice. Among politicians, a tough-on-crime posture crosses party barriers. That posture almost always translates into support for the death penalty, even if it means flip-flopping on the issue, as has happened with many officeholders, including President Clinton.

Standing against this tide, all major Protestant denominations, with the exception of Southern Baptists, officially oppose the death penalty. And the pope, in his March encyclical, stated that conditions that would justify the death penalty "are practically non-existent." Observers note this is the closest the Roman Catholic Church has ever come to supporting an outright ban on capital punishment.

PUBLIC SUPPORT: Most surveys, however, indicate that, on this issue, church leaders are out of step not only with the general public, but also with those in their pews. According to a May Gallup Poll, 77 percent of Americans support the death penalty while only 13 percent oppose it, with the remaining 10 percent undecided or saying it depends on circumstances.

next page... |  1 of 4

August 1 1995, Vol. 39, No. 9