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He was potentially changing politics in America forever.

Thirty-one states in the U.S. still have the death penalty, though five of those states are under a moratorium imposed by a governor. Missouri ranks with 88 executions since 1976. But in a state in which the Pope’s words could sway conservative lawmakers, change could be afoot.

“I think the Pope’s condemnation of the death penalty is in line with the waning support in the U.S.,� said retired St. Louis University law professor Stephen Thaman.

In 2012, Thaman was co-chairman of an American Bar Association committee that found with how the death penalty was applied in the Missouri criminal justice system.

• That the severely underfunded public defender system — among the lowest in the country — limits effectiveness of counsel.

• That there is no active system of policing prosecutorial misconduct.

• That a lack of tight controls over the witness identification protocol leads to the potential for false testimony.

• That too many aggravating circumstances listed in the law increase the opportunities for the death penalty to be applied in arbitrary fashion.

The report didn’t call for a moratorium but came close. And in the years since it was presented, it still sits on a shelf collecting dust. There have been few changes by the Missouri Legislature to address the serious legal concerns.

Paul Litton, at the University of Missouri School of Law, said the recommendation about Missouri having too many aggravating circumstances was among the most serious changes if lawmakers wanted to make sure the death penalty, if used at all, was applied fairly.

The purpose of putting aggravating factors into the law, Litton says, is to make sure that only the “worst murders� end up being death penalty cases.

“Because Missouri has so many aggravating factors,� says Litton, who was a co-chairman of the ABA death penalty assessment team, “the purpose of them is lost.�

He agrees that the pope’s announcement could have a significant effect on how Missouri lawmakers view the death penalty. But he points to a local political result as something that could have a more immediate effect: Ferguson city councilman Wesley Bell’s defeat last week of longtime St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Bob McCulloch.

“That’s huge,� Litton said.

Bell campaigned on his opposition to the death penalty, which McCulloch long supported.

When then-Gov. Eric Greitens stopped last year the execution of convicted murderer Marcellus Williams and appointed a panel to examine whether newly discovered DNA in his case could exonerate him, McCulloch was dismissive, saying there was that Williams was innocent of the brutal murder in 1998 of former Post-Dispatch reporter Lisha Gayle.

That panel later this month.

Whether or not Williams committed the crime, Pope Francis’ new decree says, he doesn’t deserve to die. The death penalty is now “inadmissible.�

That teaching, officially part of the Catholic catechism, finds itself in contradiction to majority opinion in the U.S., where 53 percent of American Catholics still favor the death penalty, according to a Pew Research Center survey this year. Those findings mirror general findings for all Americans, though the 2018 findings buck a trend that had death penalty support in 2016.

Perhaps the pope’s words will make a difference.

As will Bell’s election in St. Louis County.

For the next four years, at least, this county will be sending no more men or women to die.

In a state that in recent years has been so desperate to send men in prison to their deaths that it on the black market using untraceable cash payments, that’s progress.

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The men Missouri has executed since 2000