mercy for the guilty, is punishment for the innocent...
Posted on 09/11/2011 12:25:59 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
I said here last night that the California GOP audience cheering the announcement that Texas has executed 234 condemned murderers under Rick Perry was a vile, repulsive thing.
Even when I was for capital punishment, I believed this.
Justice may require execution, but we should never rejoice in taking the life of another human being. At best, capital punishment is a necessary evil. I quit believing in capital punishment when I became convinced that the state is not trustworthy to use this power responsibly.
It happened about 10 years ago, when it emerged that a forensic scientist in Oklahoma whose testimony had been key to many convictions, including capital convictions, was actually quite incompetent. I lost track of the story, so I don't know if any of the prisoners executed thanks in part to her testimony were later exonerated. Even if they hadn't been, the fact that men were sent to their death based on the expert testimony of an incompetent scientist is chilling.
In Texas, If you are a conservative inclined to trust Rick Perry's remarks about its soundness, I invite you to read the New Yorker's long report about the Cameron Todd Willingham case. When this became a controversy in Texas, Perry went out of his way to block an official inquiry into the facts. I don't believe this hurt him, either. People have a strong need to believe in capital punishment, and they will accept anything that allows them to support it with an untroubled conscience.
I understand why people believe in capital punishment.
Personally, I believe that if you take a life cold-bloodedly, you should have to forfeit your life. But I do not believe that the government is capable of delivering the ultimate punishment in a fair, accurate manner, 100 percent of the time.
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearreligion.org ...
Amen !shalom b'SHEM Yah'shua HaMashiachGenesis 9:6
Gen 9:6 "Whoever sheds man's blood,
By man his blood shall be shed,
For in the image of God He made man.
even Obama fans cheered when they heard UBL was killed
Or they could be cheering for the principle that the laws of Texas are only the business of the people of Texas.
They were not cheering for the executions, they were cheering to disorient the libtard reporter who was asking an idiotic question (again)
—try 5 Matthew v39, KJV—in the Sermon on the Mount—
I would give them stale bread and tepid tap water. Unfortunately, I don’t get to make the rules.
mercy for the guilty, is punishment for the innocent...
“There comes a time in the history of every people when they become so pathologically soft and tender that they actually side with those elements of their society that harms them; i.e. criminals”-A Great Historian 1888
“Revenge” requires capital punishment, NEVER “Justice”.
Life, in ALL ITS FORMS, is a precious gift from G_d. Who lives and who dies is for G_d, never for governments.
To “Forgive” is also for G_d, NEVER for victims of heinous crimes. Let the animals loose in a fenced yard. Give very sharp axes, acetylene torches and nail guns to those affected by the animals actions, let NATURE take its course.
Governments should NEVER have the power of life & death. Over 1 million innocent lives are vacuumed out every year in the US because of government. We’ve seen that and other atrocities played out many times in our bloody history.
OTOH, if interested citizens wish to mete out just rewards for anti-social behavior, who am I to interfere?
I agree with Gov. Perry on this subject.
Indeed. The world is not as we would wish, and in part it is because injustice is not punished. Many criminals avoid a punishment consistent with their crime. Sometime, the innocent perish, but for the criminal not to get his due is something much more common.
I thought of that, too. That was an execution without a trial, too. You are right.
The only execution here in Texas that bothered me was Karla Faye Tucker. She had totally changed her life behind bars, was a model prisoner for many many years, became Christian, and lead other women to Christ. But she met her fate with the confidence that she was forgiven, and going to heaven.
Hopefully she is at peace now. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karla_Faye_Tucker
I believe that the audience cheer in support of the
death penalty was a response to Brian Williams’
“gotcha” attempt on Perry.
Brian Williams and the rest of those network clowns
always pretend to be neutral and GOP politicians
pretend to believe in that neutrality. Sickening.
Newt gets it in a way. But his outburst was directed
at the moderator’s attempt to divide the Repub can-
didates. The issue is so much more deeper and pervasive
than moderators trying to instigate a food fight.
Conservatives need to question the premise of MSM
interview queries and begin to pull the covers off
the lib toadies masking as objective journalists.
Justice may require execution, but we should never rejoice in taking the life of another human being. At best, capital punishment is a necessary evil.
I think that gentleman misunderstood the cheering of the crowd. I know that if I were there I would not have been cheering for the taking of the lives of 234 of my fellow humans but instead I would have been cheering for final justice for 234+ victims of terrible crimes.
People have a strong need to believe in capital punishment, and they will accept anything that allows them to support it with an untroubled conscience.
Personally, I believe that if you take a life cold-bloodedly, you should have to forfeit your life. But I do not believe that the government is capable of delivering the ultimate punishment in a fair, accurate manner, 100 percent of the time.
Anyone who ever sits on a death sentence case can tell you it is not an easy thing that the state asks you to do. When you are asked to judge the guilt or innocence of a person and by that judgment bring that person’s life to a premature end; the words beyond a reasonable doubt need to be well understood and taken to heart.
Justice is never easy and mistakes are made but for civilization to endure it is absolutely necessary. The current state of civilization in Europe today is a clear demonstration of the results of slow and unsure or non-existent justice. The violence and skyrocketing crime rates are a clear result of a lenient justice system.
Civilization is the only true social contract; a term that the Left so frequently uses to describe the redistribution of wealth. By this they mean that by taking money from those that have much and giving it to those who have less we will ensure a peaceful civilization with little crime. Well the results of that contract speak for themselves.
The real social contract that is civilization is that the individual surrenders the right to seek his own justice to the state. If the state fails to carry out that justice for enough of the people who have been wronged for long enough the criminal element in society will come to no longer fear justice for crimes committed and will commit crimes at will. When justice for the injured carried out by the state comes to be seen by the people as a failed contract the people will seek justice for themselves and civilization will fail.
Chaos will ensue.
Leal, a Mexican national, raped a 16 year old girl with a broomstick, bashed in her head and left her lying naked in the street, dead.
He was convicted in 1994. Executed just this year.
The liberals would have preferred that he be housed, fed, allowed to use exercise equipment and watch movies the rest of his life in prison.
To the author:
Oh, grow up! They were not rejoicing - they were making a political statement.
Tucker later related to her sister Kari Dean Garrett [hereinafter referred to as Kari] that when she and Garrett entered the apartment bedroom, she put a pickax to Dean's head and “told him not to move, m______ucker, or you're dead.” Dean began begging for his life, and Tucker started to strike him with the pickax. Tucker expressed that every time she struck Dean she received sexual gratification. There was a girl hiding under some sheets in the bedroom, and because the lights were on and Dean had said Tucker's name several times, Tucker and Garrett decided to kill her as well. Leibrant testified that, after he was called into the apartment by Garrett, he heard a gurgling noise in the bedroom, walked back to the bedroom, and witnessed Tucker pull the pickax out of a body, smile, and hit it again. Leibrant then left the scene and walked for about an hour before he called Ronnie Burrell to come pick him up. Both Garrett and Tucker were angry with him for leaving the scene, but to make amends he helped Garrett dispose of Dean's El Camino later that evening. Leibrant was not offered any deals for his accomplice testimony except that the judge hearing his cases would be made aware of his cooperation.
Examination of the bodies revealed that Dean had been struck in the head and had several stab wounds. There were a total of 28 stab wounds, 20 of which could have been fatal, along with the fatal skull fracture. Dean's female companion, Deborah Ruth Thorton, also died from multiple stab wounds to the chest and stab wounds and blunt trauma to the back. A pickax like the one recovered at the scene could have caused the wounds that killed both of the decedents.
According to the Old Testament, a capital sentence is to be carried out only on the testimony of two eye-witnesses to the crime.
According to the New Testament, capital punishment is to be carried out only by those who are without sin.
Applying Biblical standards would eliminate false convictions of the innocent based on incompetent lab work, circumstantial conjecture, or the corruption of evidence -- the kind of situation cited by Dreher, and not really that infrequent.
When Jesus was confronted with the woman caught in adultery, His argument against her being stoned to death was not that she didn't deserve it, but that there was nobody there who was morally fit to execute the sentence. It was a commentary not on the woman directly, but on everybody else in that self-righteous, blood-excited crowd.
And are we better than they were? We are a society which has killed 50,000,000 of its own young without any national repentance, and hence a society which does not collectively distinguish between the blood of innocents and criminals. We have Supreme Court which has been in open defiance of the Court of Heaven for over 40 years. It is not a court system nor a society which I would trust to handle power over life and death.
And Jesus' point in the John 7 incident was not that a grave sinner doesn't deserve capital punishment, but that the rest of us, with our unclean hands, are unqualified to carry it out.
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