Lanzalaco: Death penalty is wrong
By NELLIE WILLIAMS
News Writer
Capital punishment fails to understand the humanity of people it affects, said Father Joe Lanzalaco, a death row chaplain for the state prison in Michigan City in his lecture Thursday.
"The death penalty brings out the worst in human beings," said Lanzalaco, a Vietnam veteran has been a priest for 12 years.
"[I'm] not someone who read a book once and said the death penalty was wrong," Lanzalaco said, stressing that he has experienced violence and knows what it can do to people.
"We sometimes have a need to lash out or get some kind of revenge, and maybe sometimes we don't have the nerve to do it, so we pay someone else to do it [the death penalty]."
The section designated as death row is chiling, Lanzalaco said.
"[The men are] just waiting for their sentence; to be acquitted or put to death," he said.
"I see a human face on men I know that got executed … until you know what you're doing, that these men have lives and souls, you can't make a decision on the death penalty."
Lanzalaco also discussed the growth of church services at his ward.
When he first went to the Michigan City prison as a chaplain, only eight or 10 men from the group of 1,700 inmates celebrated Mass. Over time, though, the group grew to 70.
Lanzalaco said that society shouldn't identify a person by the worst thing he or she has done. Inmates are human beings, he said, and though they may have done a terrible thing, "not one of their deaths have brought their victims back to life."
Instead, their executions have only helped the state to create the same kind of criminal behavior.
"I think killing anybody is wrong," he said. "[I] take my message from Christ — Love your neighbor as yourself."
He also noted racial implications behind the death penalty. Since 1966, six men have been executed in Indiana, three white and three African American.
The difference, however, is that all the white men pulled their appeals and wanted to be executed. The black men were fighting their appeals when they were executed.
All News Stories for Friday, September 24, 1999
