Death Row Conversion

Sara Catania in Mother Jones writes on the death penalty and conservative Catholics and, along the way, on Father Mark Reamer, pastor of St. Francis of Assisi Church in Raleigh, North Carolina, home parish of Jeff Meyer.

Meyer was sentenced to death in 1988, before Reamer arrived at St. Francis. But when a violation of courtroom protocol led to a new sentencing trial in 1999, Reamer sat with the Meyer family during the proceeding. He learned that in December of 1986, Jeff Meyer and a fellow soldier stationed at the U.S. Army base in Fayetteville, North Carolina, disguised themselves in ninja suits and broke into the house of an elderly couple, intending to rob them. Startled by the husband, Meyer shot him with a blowgun and then stabbed him to death with a butterfly knife. The pair then stabbed the victim's wife to death and fled with jewelry, credit cards, and a television. "It was very painful to hear about," Reamer says.

But sitting in the courtroom as the case unfolded, Reamer was certain that the community's pain would only be compounded by executing Meyer. When the jury imposed a death sentence, Reamer was despondent. "I remember thinking, how could 12 people do this?" he says.

Hearing about the two murders was "painful," but the murderer's death sentence is incomprehensible? The article notes Catholic opinion swinging against the death penalty, probably not due to insightful homilies.