There are some crimes for it is inappropriate to simply offer an apology and for which rehabilitation is not an option.
I had a professor long ago who said, “I could be a pacifist and oppose the death penalty except I meet too many people that deserve to have the sh*t beat out of them.”
He was right.
An evil man can do a good act. He did save some corrections officers’ lives.
He also killed a fellow inmate.
He won’t do that again.
That a civilized society would allow a person who purposefully takes the life of an innocent person to keep theirs is morally, ethically, judicially and religiously wrong.
“Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.”
― Samuel Johnson, The Life of Samuel Johnson LL.D. Vol 3
G-d may determine our relationship to God, that is not and should not be our judgement. Our secular laws are not about convicting FOR G-d. Our laws and any justice in them is secular, period, for our society, not G-d’s. That justice needs to be for society, not G-d. G-d even tells us to obey our secular laws. Sometimes that even means accepting their penalties rather than going against what we know or believe G-d wants us to do. The death penalty is neither against nor for G-d. It is our own secular judgement for a secular result, period. Finally, murder and capital punishment are not, morally, the same thing. The true Aramaic words in the Ten Commandments are “Thou shall not MURDER”, not thou shall not kill. No other meaning can be derived from those words arriving as they did to a society that accepted and imposed capital punishment as lawful to them.
The more and longer we defy God proscription, the more we suffer the sheddung of innocent blood.
Bump