Tallahassee, Fla., Aug 22, 2017 / 15:27 pm
An imminent execution scheduled for this week is the wrong path, said Florida's Catholic bishops, urging the governor of the state to intervene.
"We hold that if non-lethal means are available to keep society safe from an aggressor, then authority must limit itself to such," said Michael B. Sheedy, executive director of the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops. He called life without parole "an alternative and severe sentence."
Sheedy's comments came in an Aug. 21 letter to Florida Gov. Rick Scott asking him to commute the sentence of Mark James Asay.
Asay is scheduled to be executed Thursday, Aug. 24. He was convicted in 1988 and sentenced to death for the 1987 murders of Robert Lee Booker and Robert McDowell in Jacksonville, Florida.