Jesuit Linked With Judge Sotomayor

Cesar Perales, president of the legal defense fund, now called LatinoJustice PRLDEF, said Sotomayor’s critics are taking the memo out of context. He said it is a “fair reading” of the document to conclude that Sotomayor was anti-death penalty at the time, but he said the authors were only “recapitulating” arguments against capital punishment made by religious and civic groups.

Perales said the driving force behind the document was Fr. Joseph P. Fitzpatrick, S.J. a fellow board member and Jesuit priest who also signed it and is now deceased. He could not specify Sotomayor’s precise role.

The Supreme Court on which Sotomayor may serve has been increasingly divided over the death penalty in recent years. The justices last year upheld lethal injection, a method of execution used by nearly all states, but they have clashed over decisions rejecting the death penalty for child rapists and juveniles.

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