Florida bishops: Serial killer’s execution is ‘unnecessary’

Tallahassee, Fla., Aug 21, 2019 / 09:30 am (CNA).- The Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops is pleading for Gov. Ron DeSantis to stop the execution of Gary Ray Bowles, who confessed to murdering six men during a six month period in 1994.

“As we approach the date of Gary Ray Bowles’ scheduled execution, we urge you to grant a stay,” said an Aug. 14 letter, signed by Michael B. Sheedy, the executive director of the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops, and the state’s bishops.

Bowles’ execution is scheduled for 6 p.m. on Aug. 22. He was first sentenced to death in May 1996, after pleading guilty to the murder of Walter “Jay” Hinton, and then re-sentenced to death in 1999 after his initial death sentence was overturned. While in prison for Hinton’s murder, he was convicted of three other murders, and sentenced to two life sentences.

When Bowles was arrested for Hinton’s death, he admitted that he had killed a total of six people. As Bowles’ crime spree spread from Jacksonville, Florida to Montgomery County, Maryland, he was dubbed the “I-95 Killer.”

He killed men in three states, two of which presently use the death penalty. At the time of the crimes, the death penalty was legal in all three states.

Bowles met most of his victims in gay bars, and offered to have sex with them in exchange for money. He would then beat and strangle the men to death, and rob them. At the time he was arrested, he was on the FBI’s Most Wanted List.

The letter said that while Bowles’ “violent actions” ended the lives of six people, and caused “great grief” to their loved ones, “each of us is more than the worst thing we have done.”

“Mr. Bowles is more than a man who committed multiple murders,” said the bishops’ conference.

“He is a human being who survived many years of childhood abuse and, after escaping his stepfather’s violence as a young teenager, endured years of homelessness and child prostitution.”

“Neuroscientific research has found that such traumatic experiences severely affect a child’s developing brain, and thus affect subsequent behavior,” the letter added.

The bishops’ conference wrote that Bowles does not pose a danger to society as long as he remains in prison without parole, and that the death penalty is not necessary. Instead, “premeditated, state-sanctioned homicide of Mr. Bowles would only perpetuate the cycle of violence that victimized him, and which he later perpetuated.”

“Killing him will only further erode the sense of the sacredness of human life and implicate us all – the citizens of the State of Florida – in his death.”

On Wednesday and Thursday, Florida Catholics, as well as others opposed to the death penalty, will be gathering at locations around the state, including the governor’s mansion and across the highway from the Florida State Prison’s Execution Building. They say they will be praying for  Bowles, his victims, the families of the victims, and for an end to the death penalty.

If Bowles is executed, he will be the 99th person sentenced to death in Florida since the state reinstituted its death penalty in 1976. His will be the second execution presided over by DeSantis, a practicing Roman Catholic.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that the death penalty is today “inadmissable,” because “there is an increasing awareness that the dignity of the person is not lost even after the commission of very serious crimes,” and “more effective systems of detention have been developed, which ensure the due protection of citizens but, at the same time, do not definitively deprive the guilty of the possibility of redemption.”


If you value the news and views Catholic World Report provides, please consider donating to support our efforts. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. Thank you for your generosity!

Click here for more information on donating to CWR. Click here to sign up for our newsletter.


5 Comments

  1. “If Bowles is executed, he will be the 99th person sentenced to death in Florida since the state reinstituted its death penalty in 1976. His will be the second execution presided over by DeSantis, a practicing Roman Catholic.”

    So, should DeSantis no longer receive Holy Communion? Does the “eloquent ambiguity” (Barron) of the “inadmissible” death penalty over which the governor presides necessitate his not receiving Holy Communion?

    How about governors Cuomo and Murphy?

    “The letter said that while Bowles’ ‘violent actions’ ended the lives of six people, and caused ‘great grief’ to their loved ones, ‘each of us is more than the worst thing we have done.'”

    Consoling words for the victims’ families. Yes, even a serial killer isn’t killing 24/7.

    And true, this could also be said about Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao Tse Tung and the beloved Castro…true also for sexual predators in the Catholic Church…who have caused that standard of “great grief.”

    This is what you end up with when you graft “person” (and the “dignity” of “person” onto the body/soul unity (which is already the “person”): a bogus Thomism… a Platonic realm really…where you can NEVER lose that “dignity” or choose against that “dignity”…where everyone is saved…even before they repent…with no need to consider “justice” or a sense of “penalty.”

    Yes, don’t “perpetuate that cycle of violence.” And while we’re at it…don’t perpetuate the cycle of consumerism and lavish materialism by seeking restitution of monies embezzled from parishes and chanceries by the clergy and hierarchy. Why perpetuate the cycle of “great grief” by putting sexual predators (and thieves) in jail vs retiring them quietly which is much less minus “great grief? ” BTW…isn’t life imprisonment also “inadmissible” or soon to be?

    “Premeditated, state-sanctioned homicide?” Far worse than a killing spree or simply not much difference?

    “Killing him will only further erode the sense of the sacredness of human life and implicate us all – the citizens of the State of Florida – in his death.” Not in my book.

    Someone goes on a killing spree and what best promotes the “sacredness of human life”…why does this article omit any mention of Bowles’ sense of remorse, repentance…and guess what else is omitted? A lot of facts!!!

    Bowles and his defense team did NOT raise an issue of mental impairment until 2017. In a calculated way he used false documents to evade capture. Research Bowles! (Aside from the history of the Church’s Teaching on Capital Punishment).

    For a start (scroll down to Bowles in second link):

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/victim-of-1994-serial-killings-remembered-as-execution-nears/ar-AAG4TkK

    https://p2.smu.edu/rhalperi/updates.html

    May he repent! May God have mercy on his soul!

  2. The right of the state to use the death penalty is unequivocally affirmed by the natural law, sacred scripture, tradition and the ordinary universal magisterium of the Church, which, according to The First Vatican Council, is infallible. In other words, it is an irreformable teaching of the Church. Any Catholic who denies this reality (including Bishops and the Pope). Is a heretic.

  3. So what happens if the next Pope reverses this change to the Catechism and decides the death penalty is “admissible” again?

  4. One of the victims was a member of a local business family, a vulnerable, 72 yr. old, brain injured, WWII veteran. The police officer who viewed the crime scene said it was an example of “over kill.” Horribly brutal.
    The Catholic bishops are within their rights to claim this execution was unnecessary. From a vantage point of Catholic teaching, that may well be. But the psychological excuses claimed by the bishops for the perpetrator were unnecessary also.

1 Trackback / Pingback

  1. Florida bishops: Serial killer’s execution is ‘unnecessary’ -

Leave a Reply to Johann du Toit Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published.

All comments posted at Catholic World Report are moderated. While vigorous debate is welcome and encouraged, please note that in the interest of maintaining a civilized and helpful level of discussion, comments containing obscene language or personal attacks—or those that are deemed by the editors to be needlessly combative or inflammatory—will not be published. Thank you.


*