Diocese of Gary

The botched execution in Tennessee and the announced-then-cancelled livestream of the military execution in Texas have people talking about the death penalty. In Indiana, we just executed four death row inmates since late 2024.

Catholics are involved because the Church has, for decades, urged the abolition of the death penalty. The teaching is nuanced yet clear: respecting human dignity is paramount. Yet even with this teaching, it’s difficult for us to talk about. Unlike other life issues, the death penalty usually concerns people who have committed terrible crimes. Mercy for the worst of offenders is not usually our gut reaction.

While the conversation in Catholic circles tends to focus on Church teaching and changes to the Catechism (and rightly so), there are a host of other questions that are often neglected within the pages of our Catholic periodicals. These questions help us shape our ideas about the death penalty as we examine the contours of the practice today. Let's examine a few of those questions.

Is the death penalty a deterrent?

Of the studies on this topic, there is no clear evidence that either proves or disproves a deterrent effect of the death penalty. Assessing the deterrent effect is as difficult as asking a murderer whether he calculated the punishments before committing the crime. It’s nearly impossible, especially when so many factors influence criminal behavior.

On the international level, members of the European Union all abolished the death penalty. Even so, every country has lower murder rates than the United States .

Is it fiscally responsible to put people to death?

Since the resumption of state executions in late 2024, the state has spent at least $1.55 million on the lethal injection drug (pentobarbital) alone. However, the execution method is only a fraction of the total cost of capital punishment. Legal representation and confinement for death sentences are significantly higher than life without parole sentences. The average cost of representation in a death penalty case is $471k versus $294k for life without parole. Similarly, the average cost for confinement on death row is $267k versus $45k for life without parole.

Not only does the state suffer costs from the death penalty, but individual counties as well. In Parke County, officials had to raise the county income tax by 0.25% to fund the capital prosecution of one defendant. In Grant County, officials transferred $500,000 directly out of the county’s road and street fund to pay for the capital trial of an 18-year-old defendant. In both instances, the case ended in plea agreements for life without parole, sacrificing taxpayer dollars and local infrastructure for death penalties that never occurred.

If the death penalty is going to be used as a bargaining chip for prosecutors, it is an insanely expensive bargaining chip for taxpayers.

Is the death penalty a requirement of justice?

Pope Leo XIV recently addressed this question in his statement on World Day Against the Death Penalty:

“The common good can be safeguarded and the requirements of justice can be met without recourse to capital punishment: effective systems of detention have been developed that protect citizens while at the same time do not completely deprive those who are guilty of the possibility of redemption.”

In the case of the most recent execution on November 5, death row inmate Jeffrey Weisheit received the Sacraments of Initiation into the Catholic Church prior to his execution. His faith life, at the time of his execution, was only just beginning. What if his execution had been carried out in 2025 instead of 2026? Would he have had the same opportunity to commit his life to Christ and be received into the Church? We can only speculate about what could have happened, but how many death row inmates can God redeem if given more time than the date of their final breath set by the state?

In Texas, six women on death row converted to Catholicism after forming friendships with the Sisters of Mary Morning Star. Those women on death row, all convicted of heinous crimes, have become oblates of the order and regularly pray together. Through the example of this story, we can ask ourselves whether it is better for these women to be executed or live out their days in prison through prayer and penance.

Bishop Robert McClory, whose diocese encompasses the Indiana State Prison, recently said that "the more that we look to death as an answer to problems, the more we feed into a culture of death." (special statement on November 2, 2026) Far from being a requirement of justice, the death penalty is not a solution. It's not a deterrent, and it costs far more than it's worth.