Illinois Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty

Illinois Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty President’s Commission
Very Rev. Archimandrite Demetri C. Kantzavelos
June 18, 2003

All of us in this room certainly recall former Governor Ryan’s speech announcing the commutation of 167 condemned prisoners. Soon after that announcement was made, Sun-Times religion reporter Cathleen Falsani called and asked for my response. ‘With this step,’ I told her, ‘we are now on the threshold of a new moral awakening in this state, and I am interested to see where it goes.’

All of us who work to dismantle the barbarity of capital punishment stand at the threshold of a new moral awakening. All of us remain personally and passionately interested in seeing where the commutation decision goes. And all of us are challenged to ‘Rise up and cross the threshold of a new moral awakening.’

Of course, there are reasons to abolish the death penalty other than those evoked by a new level of ‘moral awakening.’

Rather than righting the wrong of murder by convicting the guilty, the death penalty repeatedly sends the innocent to death row.
Rather than executing only ‘the worst of the worst,’ the death penalty is imposed on the poorest, the darkest-skinned, and the most shoddily represented among us.
Rather than saving the state the expense of life imprisonment, the death penalty costs at least three times as much to execute a person than to sentence him or her to life without the possibility of parole.
Rather than acting as a deterrent, the death penalty prevails in states with higher homicide and overall crime rates.
Rather than giving victims’ families any kind of closure, the death penalty forces them to obsess on vengeance, to continuously open old wounds.

And finally, rather than addressing the social problems that provoke violent crime in the first place, the death penalty actually contributes to the climate of violence.

These are all compelling reasons – but they are practical, ‘death penalty as consumer fraud’ issues. At a higher level, an awakened moral consciousness moves us beyond retribution to restoration. At a higher level, an awakened moral consciousness would move us to heal rather than injure another, to give life rather than to take it for any reason. ‘Rising up’ to a new moral level means that healing, deliverance, recovery and liberty – not retribution -- begins to govern our choices. Rising up means standing up, not only for the ‘innocent,’ but for those judged or presumed to be ‘guilty’ as well.

When we rise up and cross the threshold of a new moral awakening, we realize that people cannot be divided into dehumanizing categories of any kind. We cannot characterize some lives as "innocent" and valuable, while others are "guilty" and dispensable. We cannot affirm the sophistry underlying a position that pretends to uphold the value of human life by imposing the death penalty on those we think may be guilty of killing. And no amount of ‘reforms’ can fix those flaws.

When distinctions are made between which lives have value and which lives do not, some are relegated to a category which makes them less human than others. Some are deemed deserving of clemency; others are not. Some lives – so-called ‘innocent lives’ – are found to be worth sparing, while so-called ‘guilty’ lives are treated as dispensable. Tragically and shamefully, this reality has come to fruition in the institutionalized bias, bigotry and racism that seems to pervade the application of the death penalty in our State of Illinois. And no amount of ‘reforms’ can fix those flaws either. All of us are today called to rise up anew and to tear down those deadly biases.

The value of one life is not upheld by the destruction of another. A family grieving a violent loss is not healed by the state’s unleashing of the ultimate violence upon an assumed perpetrator. Indeed, no ‘debt to society’ is paid by executing a human being. As Valparaiso University Law Professor Richard Stith has put it so succinctly, capital punishment ‘doesn’t pay a debt, it kills the debtor.’

Ultimately, the death penalty as an institution – beyond clemency and beyond commutations and beyond reforms – fails, tragically, to deliver the justice that it claims for itself. Certainly, the combined moral awakening around the value of human life and the awareness of capital punishment’s complete and utter failure are what have led to its abolition throughout the civilized world.

So with these few words, I would call upon all of us here today to ‘RISE UP!’

RISE UP! members and officers of the Illinois Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, as we have been entrusted with leading this life-saving mission.
RISE UP! legislators and all public servants, for you have been entrusted with protecting ALL the people of the State of Illinois.
RISE UP! exonerated, former death row inmates, for the world needs to see and hear your testimony as the people falsely-accused by a ‘too flawed to fix’ capital punishment system.
RISE UP! fellow religious leaders, for we must kindle the spiritual fire that can fuel abolition.

And finally -- RISE UP! courageous families of homicide victims, for your example of forgiveness and humanity can change the world.

Let us all rise up, then, with the hope that this threshold of a new moral awakening has indeed been crossed in Illinois. Let us join the civilized world, at long last, in asserting the value of all human life by bringing to an end the very institution of capital punishment. Let us all rise up and cross the threshold before us, to the new moral awakening of which I speak. Rise up and demand ABOLITION.