A Priest Asked For Mercy For His Murderer

2024 Author: Steven Freeman | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 08:15

Twenty years before he was kidnapped and executed, the Catholic priest René Robert signed a letter asking that if he were killed, the person responsible not be sentenced to death.

"I request that the person convicted of murder for my death is not subject or endangered by the death penalty under any circumstances," the religious wrote in 1995 in the document.

Now his superiors in the Catholic Church have turned to Robert's last will to save the life of the man convicted of his murder last April in a forest in the state of Georgia.

Authorities blamed the death of the priest in St. Augustine, FL, on an express whom he had apparently been helping to straighten his life.

According to the prosecution, Steven Murray was the one who kidnapped Father Robert after asking him to take him to Jacksonville, FL, and ended up murdering him.

The defendant, who has a criminal and drug addiction history, told a local San Agustin newspaper in statements that he had no plans to murder the 71-year-old priest when he kidnapped him. "I was scared and killed him," he confessed.

The Augusta, GA judicial district attorney's office is seeking the death penalty for the defendant on the grounds that his crime was "scandalous, unfortunately vile, horrible or inhuman."

The Bishop of San Agustín, Felipe Estévez, interviewed the prosecution to ask that the priest's will be carried out by withdrawing the request for capital punishment in the event that Murray is found guilty.

"The victim's wishes should be respected and taken into account when making a decision," he added.

More than 7,400 people have signed a petition requesting compliance with the will expressed by the priest in the document, which was found in his personal file.