[sitetest]

Dear don-o,

To me, the primary use of the death penalty is to execute the most dangerous persons in society, to prevent them from killing/harming others in the future.

The most dangerous persons in a society are those who have no internal restraint preventing them from committing gross and heinous crimes, up to and including murder. Persons such as repeat serial and mass murderers are those most likely to have the least internal restraint from killing again.

Abortionists fit this definition to a T.

If our laws were sensible, all repeat abortionists would be mandatorily executed upon conviction for the heinous crime of abortion. I don't rejoice in the necessary death of any sinner, but it is necessary to protect the wider society from the moral enormities that are abortionists.

sitetest

[don-o]

You don’t have to kill him to assure that he never murders another baby. Perhaps removing his thumbs or even his hands would do the trick.

I have slowly, but surely come to oppose capital punishment on the ground that the governments that are imposing it lack the moral authority to do so since 1973.

[Mrs. Don-o]

Don-o and I go back and forth on this all the time. I used to be very firmly against the death penalty, and I still am, as per what the Catechism says, except...

You know that movie from 15+ years ago, "Dead Man Walking"? It was about that prison-religious-counselor-nun Sr. Helen Prejean and the murderer she was trying to spiritually aid, unrepentant double-rape-murderer Matthew Poncelet.

It was supposed to be an anti-death-penalty movie, but I swear it just about turned me around the other way. It was vividly portrayed that that man would NOT have faced what he did, honestly confessed his guilt and repented, unless he had had the pressure of his own impending execution weighing upon him.

In fact, the main dramatic tension of the whole movie is the question, "Will he ever face the truth? Will he ever admit it?"

< It really made me think about the self-delusion which can be so deep in a human soul, like a fang of Satan, and the stern and desperate measures needed to draw it out.

[Mrs. Don-o]

And I know, the Catechism doesn't say that the death penalty is intrinsically wrong, like murder. But it does say that in countries which can provide true life imprisonment without possibility of release, life imprisonment should be the penalty.

But does even the U.S. provide "true" life imprisonment? Or aren't murderers released all the time because of re-sentencing cout orders, overturn of jury verdicts on technicalities, even jailbreaks?

Releasing a known murderer is like the whole damn system being an accessory to murder.

I read somewhere that ther are 500 homicides a year by offenders with a PREVIOUS CONVICTION for homicide --- in California alone!