Catholics and pro-life conservatives joined a broad coalition of more than 50 organisations seeking to end the death penalty in the United States amid the 2025 surge in executions. Source: CNA.
Leaders of the coalition, the US Campaign to End the Death Penalty (USCEPD), said they hope the coordinated team can abolish the death penalty in states where it is still practised.
Capital punishment is still on the books in 27 states, but just 16 have executed prisoners over the past decade.
The group’s goals include working with Democrats and Republicans to pass state-level laws that end the use of capital punishment, reducing the imposition of the death penalty in jurisdictions where it remains legal, and increasing awareness about the risk of executing innocent people, the lack of fairness in the system and the harms inflicted on everyone affected by the death penalty.
In 2024, there were 25 people executed in the United States. In 2025, there have already been 44 executions, and three more are scheduled this month. Florida executed one person in 2024 and has already executed 17 people in 2025. Another two people are scheduled for execution this month.
At the same time, public support for the death penalty hit a 50-year low in 2025, with about 52 per cent of Americans supporting its use and 44 per cent opposing it, according to Gallup, which is a sharp decline from the 1980s and 1990s, when support was above 70 oer cent most years. Juries are also less likely to give out death sentences.
Sr Helen Prejean, who serves on the advisory council of the coalition, said in a news conference on Wednesday that the death penalty functions as a “semi-secret ritual behind prison walls” and that “when people are separated from this experience, they just go along [with it]”.
Sr Prejean said people who are poor and people who are ethnic minorities tend to face harsher penalties in the criminal justice system, and there is an inaccurate belief that “only the worst of the worst” will be handed the death penalty.
“To give the state the right to take life means you’re going to trust the state,” she said.
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Catholics form coalition opposed to the death penalty amid execution surge (By Tyler Arnold, CNA)
