It seems like the Catholic Church has much sympathy for murderers, criminals, and terrorists, and little sympathy for the victims of their priests.
"Hate the sin but love the sinner." Lah-dee-dah-dee-dah-dee-dah ...
I agree that fear of a imposing the death penalty wrongly is a good argument for not imposing it. I do not subscribe to this argument, but respect it.
I'm not totally against the death penalty. If we
know with absolute certainty that someone committed a murder, I'm okay with the death penalty. What I'm not okay with is convictions based on circumstantial or second- or third-hand evidence ... the kind of evidence that has convicted people who were found (20 or more years later) to be totally innocent based on DNA. That's what leaves you wondering how in the world they were convicted in the first place, and makes you glad they weren't executed.
Back in my [much] younger days, there was a case in New Haven, Connecticut. A young woman named Penny Serra (Sera?) was murdered in a parking garage. The New Haven police early on fixated on a young man whom they were absolutely certain was the killer. They harassed him for years, and basically ruined his life. That's bad enough but, because they were so busy pursuing him, they overlooked other clues. Something like 25 or 30 years later, a DNA sample brought them to a cab driver, who was subsequently convicted (don't remember if he confessed) of the murder. One tends to wonder if they might not have caught him years earlier if they hadn't been so certain the innocent young man was the killer.
It's difficult to support the death penalty when you know the police are prone to pursuing innocent people because of their preconceptions, and the prosecutors are more interested in winning a conviction than they are in ensuring that justice is done. Sadly, the world we live in is not the ideal world I was brought up to hope for.