On February 2, 2007, Msgr. William O’Connell traveled to Pierre to testify on behalf of Bishop Cupich before the House State Affairs Committee. The committee was considering HB1195, a bill which would have repealed the death penalty and commuted the sentences of South Dakota’s four death row inmates to life in prison without parole. Before hearing testimony on whether executions should occur in the state, the committee heard testimony on two bills that dealt with how executions would be conducted. Msgr. O’Connell did not have an opportunity to read the prepared testimony, as the committee limited discussion about HB1295. The text of his remarks follows. The committee voted 11-1 to defeat HB1195.

   I am Msgr. William O’Connell, a priest of the diocese of Rapid City. Bishop Blase Cupich wanted to be here today, but needed to be in Rapid City for Catholic Schools Week celebrations. He has asked me to share with you the following in regard to your consideration of banning the use of the death penalty in our state.

    Every age presents the world with specific challenges to the dignity of the human person and invites societies to come to understand the rights of men and women in new and deeper ways. In the 18th century, advocates of the democratic impulse brought to the world a richer understanding of the political rights of every human person and a recognition that political legitimacy lies not in the rights of kings, but in the consent of those who are governed. In the 19th century, human societies grappled with the achievements and dislocation of industrialization and came to understand that economic progress should be measured not by the sheer production and accumulation of wealth, but rather by how societies use that wealth for the betterment of their people. In the 20th century, the world had to confront the face of totalitarianism, and to recognize that individual rights could not be surrendered in the name of ideological purity, whether that purity be Nazism, Communism or Fascism.

    As we stand at the threshold of the 21st century, the preeminent moral challenge facing our own age is the defense of the sacredness and value of every human life. Everywhere we turn, we encounter mounting efforts to instrumentalize human life, to assert that it is morally legitimate to treat the lives of men and women as mere means to larger and more important goals. We see global markets developing for the sale of vital human organs by those driven in the desperation of poverty to risk death in order to provide food and shelter for their families. We see the exploitation of people in the new slavery of human trafficking, where an estimated 27 million men, women and children live in a situation of forced labor. We see in our own land a dominant cultural ethic which asserts the lives of unborn children have no sanctity when weighed against the wishes and needs of their pregnant mothers. Increasingly, we see nations across the globe embracing policies regarding the end of life which are based upon the proposition that those in declining health are less worthy of continuing on this earth. We are told that life in its earliest stages of human development is to be subordinated to the needs of scientific experimentation. And in terrorism, we see the chilling assertion that it is legitimate to kill innocent men and women in furtherance of politics, power, religion and revenge. All of these things instrumentalize and trivialize human life.

    In the face of such manifold threats to the sacredness of human life, I encourage you, our elected representatives, to recognize the opportunity that Divine Providence is giving you to speak clearly and defend unswervingly the inherent and inalienable value of every human life as you consider legislation banning the death penalty in South Dakota. For a state that opts for the use of the death penalty, even if it does not intend to do so, inevitably weakens the ability of its citizens to defend the sacredness of human life against all of the threats which imperil life in the present day. It has implicitly and logically accepted the proposition that the right to life is after all contingent, rooted not in the free and absolute gift of a sovereign God, but in the discernments of relative worth by human society.

    As leaders in our great state, you are in a position to help our citizens appreciate that the value of every human life rests not upon an individual’s quality of life, or age, or moral worth. Rather, it is based upon the transcendent identity which is God’s greatest gift. You are in a position to echo the words of Thomas Jefferson carved in the memorial dedicated to him in Washington: “The God who gave us life, gave us liberty.” He recognized that when life is not sacred, liberty is imperiled. This is the kind of leadership we need in our time.

    Last year, you, the elected leaders of this pro-life state of South Dakota, spoke clearly and boldly to our nation in the defense of human life. While HB1215, a statute banning abortion except in cases to save a mother’s life, failed the test of a referendum, there was agreement in both houses and parties that the sacred right to life is universal, God-given and does not admit of degrees or gradations. This foundation will be greatly strengthened if our state also comes to the conclusion that the most powerful way to witness to life on the issue of capital punishment is to reject execution and opt instead for vigorous and effective incarceration of persons whose crimes are unspeakable. For if we protect the sanctity of life for the least worthy among us, we surely witness to the need to protect the lives of those who are most innocent and most vulnerable.

    Bishop Cupich has developed these and other points more amply in an article that appeared in the weekly publication America and he used portions of that article to prepare this statement. I appreciate your attention and I thank you for the important work you do on behalf of our citizens and the common good.