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Austin, Texas, Nov 5, 2019 / 06:00 pm (CNA).- The Texas Conference of Catholic Bishops have called on Gov. Greg Abbott to delay or cancel the execution of Rodney Reed, a convicted murderer who maintains his innocence. 

“The Texas Catholic Conference of Bishops engages in advocacy efforts for every single Texas execution by urging the Board of Pardons and Paroles to grant reprieve as a matter of mercy based on our position that the death penalty is inadmissible in modern society,” said Jennifer Allmon, executive director of the Texas Conference for Catholic Bishops in a statement provided to CNA. 

But, Allmon said, Reed’s case is different.

“In the case of Mr. Reed, we are engaging as a matter of justice rather than mercy because there is substantial evidence that he may not be guilty of this crime,” Allmon said. 

“It would be a tremendous miscarriage of justice to allow the actual killer to go free while taking Mr. Reed’s life when there is untested DNA and an allegation of a confession by an alternate suspect that has not yet been investigated,” she said. 

The Texas bishops will continue to pray for justice and for the family of Stacey Stites, who Reed was convicted of murdering.

Reed was sentenced to death in 1998 for the murder of 20-year-old Stites in Bastrop County, Texas. After not showing up to work on the morning of April 23, 1996, Stites’ body was discovered in a wooded area that afternoon. She had been strangled by her own belt, and had unknown male DNA in and around her body. Officers believe that she had been sexually assaulted.

At the time of her murder, Stites was engaged to be married to a police officer named Jimmy Fennell. Fennell was considered to be the main suspect in her murder, but the DNA on her body did not match his and he was never charged. Years after Stites’ murder, Fennell was sentenced to 10 years in prison for charges related to sexual assault. 

Reed’s supporters allege that it was Fennell, not Reed, who killed Stites. DNA from the belt has not been tested and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals will not approve of new DNA testing. 

A year after Stites’ murder, the DNA on her body was matched to that of Reed, who had a criminal history. Reed initially denied knowing Stites, but later changed his story and claimed they had a consensual sexual relationship and a secret affair. 

Reed is due to be executed on Nov. 20. 

Among those also calling for Gov. Abbott (R) to stop the execution are celebrities such as Kim Kardashian West, Rihanna, Meek Mill, and Gigi Hadid. A petition organized by The Action PAC on “FreeRodneyReed.com” requesting that Abbott stop the execution has been signed by over 1.1 million people. 

Those who think Reed is innocent cite many concerns regarding his trial and the potential of a cover-up by the town’s police department. Reed, who is black, was convicted by an all-white jury. A man imprisoned with Fennell wrote in a sworn affidavit that Fennell had confessed to murdering Stites due to being angry that she had been in a relationship with a black man. 

The Catholic Church is opposed to the use of capital punishment. 

In a livestream conversation held on Oct. 10, the World Day Against the death penalty, Archbishops Paul Coakley of Oklahoma City and Wilton Gregory of Washington were joined by Bishop Frank DeWane of Venice (FL) discussed Church teaching on capital punishment and said that they believed the death penalty was outdated. 

“What the Church wants us to understand is that taking a life, even the life of one who may have been guilty of a horrendous crime, is itself a continuation of violence,” said Gregory.  

“It makes us violent to do violence against another human being” regardless of the circumstances, Gregory said. 

Catholics, said DeWane, have a moral obligation to “say something” when life is not being respected, especially in instances that involve people who cannot speak for themselves.

[…]

Portland, Ore., Nov 5, 2019 / 05:21 pm (CNA).- Terry Bean, a leading investor, LGBT advocate and political fundraiser, has been arrested in Oregon following allegations that he and his lawyer unlawfully paid $200,000 to prevent court testimony from a man who accused Bean and his ex-boyfriend of sexually abusing him at the age of 15.

Terrence Patrick Bean, now age 71, posted bail Oct. 30 after Portland police arrested him on a charge of a felony computer crime, The Oregonian reports. Authorities allege he tried to pay off the alleged victim of sex abuse to prevent his testimony.

The charge relates to the revived criminal case against him alleging that in September 2013 he committed two felony counts of third-degree sodomy and a misdemeanor sexual abuse charge.

The previous trial had been postponed when the alleged victim disappeared, and later refused to testify when he reappeared. The charges had been dismissed without prejudice in 2015. Prosecutors revived the case earlier this year.

Bean is a co-founder of the Human Rights Campaign and of the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund. He has been a major fundraiser for Democratic Party candidates, including President Barack Obama’s campaign, the Oregonian reported.

Kiah Lawson, now 30, was Bean’s boyfriend at the time of the alleged crime, when both men were in Eugene, Ore. for an Oregon Ducks game. In September 2019 Lawson was found guilty on identical sex abuse charges and sentenced to two years in prison.

Bean’s lawyer, Derek Ashton, was also arrested on a felony computer crime for the alleged payoff and posted bail Oct. 30. The Oregon State Bar opened an ethics investigation against him in September.

Bean and Ashton are accused of arranging a $200,000 payment to the alleged victim, who was 15-years-old at the time of the alleged crime.

Steve Sherlag, Bean’s new criminal defense attorney, rejected the charges against his client.

“While we are shocked at the new charge and the state’s apparent shotgun approach, Mr. Bean unequivocally denies all of the state’s claims and their attendant innuendo,” Sherlag said, according to Williamette Week. “We look forward to exposing the full truth in open court and a full acquittal as justice requires.”

The Human Rights Campaign has many corporate partners in its LGBT activism. It has lobbied businesses to push for “LGBT equality” in legislation and corporate policy, to recruit self-identified LGBT employees and to give financial support for LGBT organizations through LGBT-targeted marketing or advertising and philanthropic support.

The organization has been critical of Catholic teaching and practice as well as leaders like Pope Francis and the U.S. bishops. It seeks to promote lay Catholic allies who oppose what the campaign characterizes as “the U.S. hierarchy’s anti-LGBTQ actions,” according to the campaign website’s Catholic initiatives section.

In 2014, the Human Rights Campaign responded to the charges against Bean. It said that Bean is one of 80 board members of the organization and he has no daily oversight or responsibility for its programs. He had taken a voluntary leave of absence from the board “until his issues are resolved,” a spokesman told CNN.

CNA sought comment from the Human Rights Campaign but did not receive a response by deadline.

In Ashton and Bean’s initial response to the charges, they proposed a “civil compromise,” which under Oregon law can sometimes resolve criminal cases through an approved payment to an alleged victim. However, Lane County Judge Charles Zennache refused to allow it, Williamette Week reports.

August court filings from Lane County Deputy District Attorney Erik Hasselman claim to have evidence of possible criminal conduct showing Ashton used $220,000 to pay the alleged victim not to show up or testify during Bean’s 2015 trial, The Oregonian reports.

Portland Police Bureau Detective Jeff Myers said Bean’s lawyer Ashton and the alleged victim’s lawyer worked to reach a civil settlement, 2019 court records say. ​They report a detailed plan to prevent investigators from finding the boy and that the alleged victim’s own lawyer allegedly helped him hide.

A defense motion over the summer from one of Bean’s lawyers indicated that Deputy Lane County District Attorney Erik Hasselman claims to have evidence that Bean, Ashton, the boy’s lawyer, and another attorney for a prosecutor’s witness “committed the crimes of bribery, witness tampering and ‘possibly’ money laundering.”

Bean attorney Kimberlee Volm, who filed the motion, told a judge that the statute of limitations had probably run out and would prevent charging Bean or Ashton with such charges.

KOIN 6 News said that the new arrests show that prosecutors believe they can proceed with some charges.

Bean has filed a $2 million civil lawsuit against Myers, the investigating officer; the prosecutor Erik Hasselman; and the alleged victim’s civil attorney Sean Riddell. The lawsuit claims they colluded into coaxing the alleged victim into falsely claiming Bean had sexually abused him, The Oregonian reported in September.

Riddell has filed a $6.15 million civil lawsuit against Bean on behalf of the alleged victim.

[…]

Washington D.C., Nov 5, 2019 / 04:00 pm (CNA).- A letter warning of a “climate emergency” signed by more than 11,000 scientists calls for a “gradual reduction” in the world’s population.  

The “World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency” was published in the journal BioScience on Tuesday, and was signed by 11,258 scientists from 153 countries.

In the statement, the signatories listed both economic growth and a global population increase as “among the most important drivers of increases in CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion.” The report called for “bold and drastic transformations regarding economic and population policies.”

The statement was published on Tuesday, after the U.S. formally declared that it was withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accord, an international agreement set to go into effect in 2020 under which many UN member countries pledged to reduce their carbon emissions.

The Vatican has supported the Paris agreement, with Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin stating last year that “climate change is an issue increasingly more moral than technical.”

On Tuesday, the warning issued by the scientists noted a “rapid rise in greenhouse gas emissions” in recent decades along with other factors such as rises in air transport, economic GDP, and energy consumption and a decrease in the size of the Brazilian Amazon rainforest.

The global population is increasing by 80 million people per year, the statement claims, and is a key driver of climate change. “The world population must be stabilized—and, ideally, gradually reduced—within a framework that ensures social integrity,” the scientists said.

Tuesday’s statement calls for “proven and effective policies that strengthen human rights while lowering fertility rates and lessening the impacts of population growth on GHG emissions and biodiversity loss.”

While the global population has continued to increase, fertility rates in many Western countries have already declined to replacement level or below.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the birth rate in the United States hit an all-time low in 2018 with the total fertility rate at 1.7—well below the replacement rate of 2.1. In South Korea in 2017, there were seven births per 1,000 people; Hungary saw its birth rate fall to 1.45 children per woman.

According to demographic prospects in the 2019 Revision of World Population Prospects, for the years 2015-2020, Western Europe was estimated at 1.68 live births per woman. Latin America and the Caribbean fell just under replacement level at 2.05 live births per woman. The African continent, by contrast, was estimated at 4.44 live births per woman.

Successful population control policies, the report noted, “make family-planning services available to all people, remove barriers to their access and achieve full gender equity, including primary and secondary education as a global norm for all, especially girls and young women.”

It cited another report by John Bongaarts and Brian C. O’Neill in Science Magazine that said efforts to slow population growth are being ignored as a legitimate solution to climate change.

Dr. Catherine Pakaluk, assistant professor of social research and economic thought at the Catholic University of America, told CNA in March that having children is a sign of optimism and that climate concerns should take a backseat to other factors.

“I think it takes a lot of courage to have a child, in any time,” Pakaluk said. “Having children in general seems to require a lot of courage and optimism.”  

Pakaluk, whose primary research area is in demographics and families, told CNA that having a child is an intimidating task, but one that is made easier with what she called “spiritual resources.”

Pakaluk also said rhetoric about overpopulation should be tempered by experience, and that while many believe vital resources are becoming more scarce, the opposite is often true.

“As the world population has grown, together with research, industry, and innovation, in fact, most of those scarce resources have actually become less scarce,” she said.

The professor noted that while the world’s population had typically ebbed and flowed before steadily rising over the last century, the “golden age” of sustained population growth is coming to an end.

Pope Francis’ 2015 encyclical on ecology, “Laudato Si,” paragraph 50 states that despite calls for population control as a solution to poverty, “demographic growth is fully compatible with an integral and shared development”.

“To blame population growth instead of extreme and selective consumerism on the part of some, is one way of refusing to face the issues,” the encyclical states of population growth as a false answer to climate change.

Developed countries may propose population control as a means by which to continue consuming resources at an unsustainable rate, while burdening developing countries with abortion, contraception, and sterilizations as well as effects of climate change, the encyclical said.

“It is an attempt to legitimize the present model of distribution, where a minority believes that it has the right to consume in a way which can never be universalized, since the planet could not even contain the waste products of such consumption,” the encyclical states.

Tuesday’s report was authored by William J. Ripple, professor of ecology at Oregon State University (OSU), and OSU associate research professor Christopher Wolf. It was signed by more than 11,000 scientists, ranging in disciplines and experience from biology professors to chemists, animal behaviorists, PhD candidates, research fellows, and heads of think tanks.

[…]

Oklahoma City, Okla., Nov 5, 2019 / 11:12 am (CNA).- The Oklahoma Supreme Court on Monday issued a temporary injunction against a law banning dilation-and-evacuation abortions. The injunction will stop the law from taking effect while a legal chal… […]

Washington D.C., Nov 5, 2019 / 04:00 am (CNA).- Senator Marco Rubio has called for “common good economics” ahead of a speech Tuesday on Catholic social teaching and the dignity of work, noting the need for a new economic vision to respond t… […]

Albany, N.Y., Nov 4, 2019 / 05:02 pm (CNA).- The Catholic Diocese of Albany is grieving the death of a local priest who was killed when his car was swept up in a flash flood on Halloween night.

“We are so saddened to learn of Father Thomas Conne… […]

Washington D.C., Nov 4, 2019 / 04:25 pm (CNA).- The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has canceled their invitation for Bishop Michael Bransfield, former head of the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston, to attend their upcoming annual fall meeting… […]

Washington D.C., Nov 4, 2019 / 04:00 pm (CNA).- The White House on Sunday finalized its quota of refugee admissions for the 2020 fiscal year, cutting the cap on U.S. refugee admissions to its lowest recorded level.

The White House said the fiscal year… […]

Lafayette, La., Nov 4, 2019 / 02:30 pm (CNA).- Catholic parishes throughout the Diocese of Lafayette in Louisiana raised more than $50,000 for three black Baptist churches that were the targets of arson attacks that have been characterized as hate crim… […]

Bismarck, N.D., Nov 4, 2019 / 01:40 pm (CNA).- The University of Mary’s School of Health Sciences will be named for St. Gianna Beretta Molla, a pediatrician and a mother who died after declining cancer treatment that could have harmed her unborn … […]