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 ...
Well said
I think a broad smile and light applause should suffice.
A small part of her debt is to the state and the law gives the state the power to lessen her sentence but the real debt of justice was to the victims and the victims’ families.
Really this woman had only one path to justice and that was through her death.
I think it was a Clint Eastwood movie in which the character says something to the effect that murder is the worst crime, you take every thing a man has and everything he is ever going to have. There is only one way to pay off a debt like that.
But your interpretation of this incident, is that Jesus really wasn't teaching standards at all? He just gave a weasel-worded comment to get himself out of a politically dicey situation, rather than give a clear teaching showing the more perfect expression of the will of God?
Can't say I'd buy that.
Thanks
It has taken years to learn to think this clearly.
And I owe much of it to Jim Rob and the people on this forum.
Unfortunately, when government refuses to execute a murderer, they usually instead place the murderer in protective custody (”prison”) where the victim’s family members cannot get to that murderer and administer justice themselves. For them, there is no closure.
“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.”
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You’ve stated what you think we CAN’T do to murderers. What is your solution offered instead? What about a guy who chops his family up in a shredder with no two witnesses? I’m not attacking your values BTW I honestly want to know.
The pom poms in the house belong to my stepdaughter. She is the only one trained to use them.
Agreed. After the last 50 years of '60`s liberalism and the lefts promotion of political correctness, Americans are left with a judicial system that works at a snails pace, if it works at all. And a system that finds the criminal a victim in many cases and the real victims left unprotected to the wrath of civil libertarians who undermine the Constitution with impunity.
Texas treats criminals with real consequences of justice. The rule of law is always worth cheering for.
If you want to delete this incident altogether --- put together an exacto-knife-edited version of the Gospels --- (sigh...) Welcome to The Jesus Seminar.
“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.”
Then apply the same “logic” to ABORTION!
WINNER!!
“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.”
It’s interesting that liberals tell us we should outlaw execution of cold-blooded killers because they fear that out of the hundreds and/or thousands of convicted killers, that one may be innocent. All this advocacy to protect that one “potential” innocent, and at the same time they won’t lift a finger to stop abortion...including late-term abortion...wherein every single life that’s ended is innocent.
This is a very compelling point Dreher makes, and I have a hard time arguing with it.
I realize justice is imperfect and does need to be rendered as best we can, but there's also a side of me that wonders if our society has the moral authority to carry it out in its strongest terms. Objectively speaking, a justice system that can produce an OJ jury, a Clinton presidency or the legal idiocy surrounding the prosecution of U.S. military personnel in Iraq has no business even putting people in jail, let alone executing them.
A problem of a different sort comes up when a man already doing life imprisonment reoffends: say he kills another inmate or a guard, or even a lesser-than-homicide but still grave offense such a forcible sodomy or other aggravated assaults. What more can you do? At that point, execution becomes more unavoidable as the criminal has demonstrated that even imprisonment has not proved sufficient to "protect society": since a guard or a fellow prisoner also constitutes part of "society".
I wish there were still penal colonies. Maybe some crevice in the planet Mars, or 5 miles under the Pacific in the Marianas Trench. Unfortunately, there's noplace so remote on Earth, anymore, that a criminal couldn't escape. I can easily envision well-organized criminals (terrorists or narcotraficantes) freeing their own with helicopters and heavy weaponry.
But hopefully, for those types we'd at least have the two eye-witnesses.
I owe a debt as well.
They also demand the execution of other innocents..eg Terri Shiavo, including pretending that starvation and dehydration is blissful.
Wouldn’t the obvious solution to the problem be to starve those on death row. They can bliss out.
They wouldn’t have gotten a conviction to be in question.
I am getting really tired of the PC crap that the criminal has more rights than the victim.
If you kill someone you should die and NOT after 20-30 years but within 20-30 days.
Texas says, “If you kill somebody, we’re going to kill you back. It’s our policy.”
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