Posted on 11/26/2012 12:26:57 PM PST by CHRISTIAN DIARIST
It’s been 20 years since I sat across a conference table from the attorney representing Robert Alton Harris, a double-murderer who had spent 13 years on California’s Death Row.
The attorney hoped to make the case that, despite his crimes, Harris should be spared his scheduled date with the executioner. He related that the convicted murderer was born with fetal alcohol syndrome. That he was neglected as a child. That he was abused as an adolescent.
I’m sorry, I told the attorney. Your client killed two boys. He deserves to pay the forfeit for taking innocent lives.
And not long after that, Harris died in California’s gas chamber. His was the Golden State’s first execution since 1967.
I thought about Harris, the killer, after watching “Benji,” a documentary on the life and death of Chicago high school basketballer Ben Wilson, which debuted last month and re-aired yesterday on ESPN.
Wilson was rated the nation’s best in class in 1984. And just days before he was to begin his senior season, he got into a beef with two 16-year-old gang members, Billy Moore and Omar Dixon.
Moore pulled a .22-caliber pistol out of his waistband and shot 17-year-old Wilson twice. The high school basketball star died in the hospital.
Wilson’s murder made national news. And nearly three decades later, the circumstances of his premature death has made for a most poignant documentary.
Yet, what I found most poignant was not Wilson’s tragic story. Not his funeral, which drew more than 10,000 mourners. Not the grace with which the young man’s mother, a devout Christian, comported herself after her son was violently taken from her.
But the redemptive story of Billy Moore, young Ben Wilson’s killer.
Moore was sentenced to 40 years in prison for Wilson’s murder. He spent 19 years behind bars before being granted parole in 2004.
Agreeing to appear in the documentary, Moore remembered praying that Wilson would survive the shooting that would claim his life. Perhaps, he said, praying as hard as the victim’s mother.
At his sentencing, Moore said, he spoke to Mr. and Mrs. Wilson, Ben’s grieving parents. “I gave them my deepest apology,” Moore said. “I didn’t want to be the one who stole (their son’s) dream.”
Today, Moore is a youth counselor. In 2009, he actually was recognized as a successful example of rehabilitation in a White House ceremony.
Twenty years ago, I would have argued that Moore should have been tried as an adult in Ben Wilson’s death and, if convicted, sentenced to life in prison, if not sentenced to death. I also would have strenuously objected to his parole, after serving little less than half sentence he actually received.
But my thinking has evolved over the past two decades.
I now believe there is no one beyond God’s redemption. Indeed, His Word promises: “Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.”
Billy Moore, the reformed killer, is living proof.
But I now believe there are some convicted offenders who are truly repentant; who deserve forgiveness and mercy notwithstanding their crimes.
I leave it up to God. I don’t think what I believe really matters to anyone other than God and myself.
I always thought those poor Menendez boys should have been treated with leniency. After all, they were orphans.
All that mercy crap is just the liberals’ way of saying that no one is responsible for anything - there is no free will.
In the liberal mind, the only ones who deserve punishment are people who say un-PC things.
You can forgive them all you want.
Society should not. Let them do their time first.
What you said.
I now believe there is no one beyond God’s redemption.Execution won't interfere with that one way or the other.
Of course there should be mercy, that in no way removes the personal responsibility and punishment for the crimes.
I watched a show the other night...a sports documentary about two young men who combined to kill a great basketball player in Detroit for nothing other than a shove.
They made a point that while one of the two spent 20+ years incarcerated and then continued to be a career criminal - the other one came out a new man and is now giving lectures in Detroit about how to not “go down the wrong road”. They bragged about the 50% recidivism as if it were a coup.
I suppose I’m getting a tad mean in my old age (or coming closer to my grandfather’s philosphy)..but I know how to keep recidivism at 0% for all murderers.
If you ned somebody to give lectures in schools how about letting the guy who has worked every day for UPS - spent 10 years as a box kicker - then got promoted to night shift manager.
“Murderous” by what standard? There’s the legal standard and the moral standard.
Also, if a parent walks in on someone molesting their child, chases that fleeing someone down and kills them in hot blood, that may be murder but mercy might be in order.
On the other hand, if someone kills another in cold blood to eliminate them as a witness to something or the other, mercy probably is not in order.
There is nothing that I know of that would remove the possibility of redemption in God’s eyes of any individual where their criminal sentence is still carried out to the full extent of the laws of man.
I’m for the victim of the crime pardoning their killer. When they do, sounds fair to me.
I watched a show the other night...a sports documentary about two young men who combined to kill a great basketball player in Detroit for nothing other than a shove.
They made a point that while one of the two spent 20+ years incarcerated and then continued to be a career criminal - the other one came out a new man and is now giving lectures in Detroit about how to not “go down the wrong road”. They bragged about the 50% recidivism as if it were a coup.
I suppose I’m getting a tad mean in my old age (or coming closer to my grandfather’s philosphy)..but I know how to keep recidivism at 0% for all murderers.
If you need somebody to give lectures in schools how about letting the guy who has worked every day for UPS - spent 10 years as a box kicker - then got promoted to night shift manager - then made day foreman - and now has a nice house and is putting his kids through college.
Just goes to show how even the taking of a life is relative, but for some reason, people don’t like to hear about relativism.
Actions have consequences.
Nothing emboldens sin more than mercy.
if one commits a crime, the price must be paid. Period.
If that criminal is trulrepentantnt, then he/she is right with G_d and whejudgmentnt comes, they have nothing to fear. Before that day, they have to be punished for what they did. If it is death. So be it.
Being merciful would be to execute them within 6 months of the convictiuon.
More merciful to the killer not to be living in prison and more merciful to the victims relatives.
Over 600 killers on death row in California and 99% will die from old age.
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