SALT LAKE CITY -- Next week, the state parole board is expected to decide whether death row inmate Elroy Tillman will be allowed to live.
That's not necessarily a choice the state should make, according to some of Utah's religious leaders, while others including the LDS Church argue the death penalty is solely a matter of law.
"I think we as a society have to be concerned with the morality of our actions toward the prisoner just as we have to be concerned with the morality of the prisoner's actions toward society," said the Most Rev. George Niederauer, bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City.
The Catholic church, while stopping short of barring the death penalty outright, has decreed that there is virtually no reason to put prisoners to death.
Representatives of Utah's dominant religion, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, would not comment on Tillman's case specifically but maintains a hands-off attitude toward the death penalty.
The church "regards the question of whether and in what circumstances the state should impose capital punishment as a matter to be decided solely by the prescribed process of civil law," said church spokesman Dale Bills. "We neither promote nor oppose capital punishment."
The Evangelical Lutheran Church of American and United Methodist Church officially oppose the death penalty, and the Episcopal Church issued a resolution more than 20 years ago urging followers to lobby against it.
Jewish leaders from the National Council of Synagogues have issued a joint statement with the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, declaring that "God alone is the author of life."