As a public defender for 24 years, including five as director of the Missouri State Public Defender System, Mary Fox sought to educate juries—and sway them against the death penalty. Now in her retirement, she’s bringing that advocacy to a new audience: her fellow Catholics.
Fox’s role is as coordinator of the Archdiocese of St. Louis’ new Death Penalty Abolition Program, which aims to rally Catholics in hopes of influencing policy in the state. A member of Christ the King Catholic Church in University City, Fox said she was eager to take on the assignment, but had two conditions: One, she insisted it would be on a volunteer basis. Two, she wanted just the briefest chance to catch her breath before starting. “I retired June 30, and I said, ‘I need at least 30 days to clean my house,’” she says.
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And now that she’s on the job, the role has real urgency: Missouri is scheduled to execute a man, Lance Shockley, on Oct. 14.
To Fox, Shockley’s case is a perfect example of why the death penalty needs to be abolished. There is no DNA evidence tying him to the 2005 murder for which he was convicted (Shockley’s lawyers are fighting to try to pause the execution to get evidence collected at the scene tested). Says Fox, “This is a case where the only evidence against him is circumstantial. There’s no statement by him connecting him to it. There’s no physical evidence connecting him.” After the jury deadlocked on punishment, a judge sentenced Shockley to death—something that Fox notes is only possible in two states.
Shockley is also a committed Christian, one who found God at a Catholic retreat in his fifth year in prison, as he recently recounted to the St. Louis Review. He’s president of the Restorative Justice Organization at Potosi Correctional Center, and for four years, served as a representative for the Christians at Potosi group. He has close ties to the St. Louis archdiocese’s auxiliary bishop Mark Rivituso, who was recently installed as the archbishop in Mobile, Alabama.
The religious composition of Missouri’s leadership has recently changed. Both Attorney General Catherine Hanaway and Gov. Mike Kehoe are Catholics—something that wasn’t true of their immediate predecessors.
But Fox’s focus is not on lobbying people in power, but on individual parishioners, with the hope of mobilizing them. “I’m going to be discussing and educating, making certain that people know what the Church’s position is, and hearing their concerns as to why they might disagree, and having good discussions where we’re willing to talk about why this is consistent with the Church’s pro-life position,” she says.
No less than Pope Leo XIV is lending heat to those conversations. The Chicago-born pontiff earned international headlines Wednesday when he waded into U.S. politics by answering a question about an award that a Catholic institution was set to give to U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Illinois), a supporter of abortion rights.
“Someone who says I’m against abortion but is in favor of the death penalty is not really pro-life,” Pope Leo said. “And someone who says I’m against abortion but I’m in agreement with the inhuman treatment of immigrants in the United States, I don’t know if that’s pro-life.”
Fox notes that when Pope John Paul II came to St. Louis in 1999, he implored then-Governor Mel Carnahan to spare the life of a man on death row. Carnahan then commuted the sentence of Darrell J. Mease, just weeks before his scheduled execution.
But not all Catholics know, or understand, the church’s position. “They understand, no question about it, that the Catholic Church is pro-life and that we respect life, but the church teaching on the death penalty has changed over the years,” Fox acknowledges. “I was doing a presentation at the Mother of Perpetual Help assisted living facility the other day, and one of the residents reminded me that previous popes have had their own executioners.”
Fox would like to see Gov. Kehoe follow the lead of Illinois and 22 other states and abolish the death penalty (another three states have issued moratoriums). Absent that, however, there are smaller reforms, such as the fact that along with Indiana, Missouri is the only state that allows judges to act unilaterally to hand down a death sentence when a jury is deadlocked, as happened in Shockley’s case.
Says Fox, “I really do think that the majority of our legislature is pro-life and respects life, but it’s going to need the voice of the people within their districts and within their communities to speak back to them for them to take action.”
Even if they don’t, change is underway in Missouri partly thanks to the actions of prosecutors who have staked out a position refusing to seek it (in the case of former St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell) or simply opted against it when surveying the cases before them (as proved true for both the last three St. Louis circuit attorneys). Fox also credits the work of her former office, which has vigorously opposed the death penalty even in cases when prosecutors are intent on getting it. Coupled with the spree of executions in Missouri in recent years, that means only five inmates remain on death row in the state.
Fox believes her fellow Catholics can help spare their lives. She recalls an event at her own parish, Christ the King, that suggests people are open to engaging with the issue.
“There were people, I think, who came into that with doubts about whether or not the death penalty should be abolished, and think once they heard in terms of how the death penalty is used, the need for protecting the dignity of every person no matter what they have done, I think most of the people who walked away from that saying, ‘Yes, I would like to see the death penalty abolished in my state,’” she says. “It’s really an educational process.”
