Good morning Mr. Chairman and members, my name is Andrew Rivas and I am the executive director of the Texas Catholic Conference. The TCC is the statewide association of the 15 Roman Catholic dioceses in our state and it is our responsibility to advocate for the public policy positions of the active Bishops of Texas.

First, let me begin by thanking you Mr. Chairman, and the committee, for allowing me to testify today on House Bill 371. The TCC supports 371 because it fits within our teaching on subsidiarity, the belief that if a civic function can be carried out at a local level as effectively as on a national level, then local civic authority should have responsibility for the function.  We also believe that HB 371 is a gradualistic effort to eventually ending the use of the death penalty in our state. HB 371 allows for deferred adjudication in a murder case where the judge has determined that the defendant is not the killer, did not cause the death, and did not intend for anyone to die. The bill is a step forward in overturning the current law of parties provision that allows for the execution of defendants who assisted, knowingly or unknowingly, in criminal activities but did not commit murder.

The Church’s stance on capital punishment has always been based on the responsibility to protect society. St. Thomas Aquinas taught that legitimate civil authority is obliged to defend people from a dangerous criminal. At the same time, however, Aquinas cautioned that in order to use the death penalty, civil authority had to, one, have no doubts whatsoever that it had convicted the guilty party, two, that the punishment had to be commensurate to the crime (in other words we cannot execute those who have not killed), and three, civil authority has no other means to protect society.  In fact the Catholic Catechism explicitly says that if non-lethal means are sufficient to defend human lives against an aggressor and to protect public order and the safety of persons, authority will limit itself to such means, as they are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and more in conformity with the dignity of the human person. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2267)

HB 371 is a step forward in using non-lethal means to protect society. I ask that the members of this committee support HB 371.