Following Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf's decision to impose a moratorium on the death penalty, an Archbishop from Philadelphia has come out in praise of the policy.
"I'm very grateful to Governor Wolf for choosing to take a deeper look into these studies," Archbishop Charles Chaput told the Catholic News Agency. He also expressed optimism that the government will be able to find other forms of punishment outside of the death penalty for criminals who commit grave crimes.
Governor Wolf announced on February 13 that the death penalty will be temporarily halted as he conducts a review of the report from the Pennsylvania Task Force and Advisory Commission on Capital Punishment.
Wolf also criticised the current death penalty system in his statement.
"This decision is based on a flawed system that has been proven to be an endless cycle of court proceedings as well as ineffective, unjust, and expensive," Wolf has said.
The governor went on to say that, since the death penalty was reinstated, 150 people on death row were exonerated. Six of the death row inmates came from Pennsylvania, Wolf revealed.
The moratorium will remain in place while the Advisory Commission studies the effectiveness of the death penalty in deterring crime, and the governor has reviewed and approved the results of the Commission's report.
Archbishop Chaput stated that the Church continues to be in support of the families left behind by murder victims, adding that they deserve justice and that they carry a "terrible burden of grief."
However, he added that the death penalty does nothing but perpetuate the cycle of violence that leads to the murder in the first place.
"When we take a guilty person's life we only add to the violence in an already violent culture and we demean our own dignity in the process," Chaput said.
