Episcopal Press and News

Virginia Bishops Act Against Death Penalty

Episcopal News Service. January 13, 1983 [83019]

RICHMOND, Va. (DPS, Jan. 20) -- After touring the Commonwealth's death row, the three Episcopal diocesan bishops in Virginia have called on the General Assembly meeting here to repeal an eight-year-old capital punishment law.

Bishops Robert B. Hall of Virginia, A. Heath Light of Southwestern Virginia and C. Charles Vache of Southern Virginia toured the death row of the Mecklenburg Correctional Center Jan. 12 and talked with most of the 19 inmates facing death. They then held a press conference at the State Capitol Building in which they declared that no human being has a right to take another's life.

The position is not a popular one in Virginia. No repeal bill is in the General Assembly and Vache conceded that no lawmaker appeared "ready to put his political life on the line" by introducing one.

In their prepared statement, the three declared that they sought to bear witness to "Jesus Christ, himself a victim of capital punishment, who suffered death under the laws of political, judicial and religious systems which, in seeking to protect themselves from violence, used violence to enforce their political or religious dogmas."

They pointed to the consistent and long-standing opposition of Episcopal Church synods to capital punishment and ended with a call to the governor and legislators "to enact legislation which eliminates capital punishment and also seeks to promote redemptive justice through a rehabilitative penal system which enhances the sacredness of all human life and thus embraces the best precepts of our common Judeo-Christian and humanitarian traditions."