The Supreme Court is soon to hear a case discussing the constitutionality of lethal injection as a method of execution. The argument is that the three chemical cocktail used to execute inmates is an example of cruel and unusual punishment because the first chemical, an anesthetic, is not always successful at anesthetizing the whole body so inmates experience conscious suffocation, which is excruciatingly painful.
Should the court rule that it is cruel and unusual (highly unlikely), it would put a de facto moratorium on executions since the three chemical lethal injection is used in most states that practice the death penalty. (However, it would not end them in my home state of Nebraska due to the unacceptable fact that we still use the electric chair as our sole method of execution.)
As the prior sentence might indicate, I’m strongly opposed to the death penalty. I think Derek Webb nails it when he says, “Peace by way of war / is like purity by way of fornication / it’s like telling someone murder is wrong / and then showing them by way of execution.” However, I know many of my brothers and sisters completely disagree. If you’re of that opinion, I’d love to hear back from you. Why do you favor capital punishment?
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This entry was posted 2 years, 1 month ago on Sunday, January 6th, 2008 at 6:22 pm and is filed under the real world intrudes, things not to mention in polite conversation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
To be honest, I’ve been a hardliner FOR capital punishment most of my life. It’s also something I’ve been taking a look at recently and am really not sure where I should stand anymore, in particular the discussion that surrounded the shootings in Colorado. I’ve had many people in the past ask how I can be both Pro-Life and Pro-CP, and it seems to me my primary reason was that someone who murdered others gave up their right to living. I don’t seem to really have a good support to stand on for being Pro-CP right now, so that’s why I’m personally revisiting it.
I am one who completely disagrees.
I would not lump capital punishment (or all warfare, for that matter, although that would be a slightly different topic) with murder.
My justification for capital punishment would be Genesis 9, where God makes a covenant with all people for all time–one that has never in any way been modified, so far as I can tell. This was not the special covenant that God made with a specific group of people (the offspring of Abraham), but that God made with the new beginners of the entire human race that started with Noah. So, just as God has promised the entire human race by covenant that he would not destroy them, so the entire human race is forbidden from murder, since that would be to desecrate the divine image; furthermore, the death penalty is prescribed for any of the human race who nevertheless break God’s commandment against murder.
Jake, I would be very interested to hear your reasons for understanding capital punishment to be the same thing as murder. In Genesis 9, the rationale seems to be the following: (1) God sets apart murder as a most heinous sin; (2) God prescribes the highest punishment, capital punishment, for such a heinous sin.
So, here is the crux of the issue for me: if God sees murder as something so awful as to single it out here and to apply to it the highest punishment, why then would you classify the punishment God prescribes as being in the same category as the crime? That would be an understanding of God that has him saying, “I hate X, so if anyone does X, then I approve of X.” That doesn’t make sense to me.
Also, I simply do not see anything Jesus says about love to overturn this law, since how would an ideal of loving our neighbor change about the way that we protecting the image of God? It seems to me that the logic of Genesis 9 is that to love one’s neighbor means to value his/her life so highly that, if someone else takes it, that someone must be punished. And, in the covenant that God set up with all humanity, God named the appropriate punishment: death.
So, in turning back to Webb’s song, we are NOT talking about purity by fornication, but something more akin to purity by sex in marriage. In my judgment, Webb’s logic goes wrong here by saying that some sex is fornication, so all must be wrong; some imposed death is murder, so all imposed death must be wrong; (some alcohol use is abuse, so all use must be wrong, etc…).
Anyway, those are a few of the reasons that I am in favor of capital punishment. It is not something I delight in, but I don’t think God does either. Rather, I see it as a ugly necessity–but still very much a divine command necessity–of a fallen world.
I’d love to hear your response to these arguments because I’m sure that it isn’t the first time you have heard them. What has overridden them as you have thought about this issue?
I believe God has given the magistrate a sword to wield against the wicked. Eye for eye, life for life. To say that the murderer who takes a life should not be required to yield his, somehow devalues the life he took.
That’s the principle.
I’m also willing to listen to arguments that our modern implementation is screwed up and unfair, and inequally applied, and all the rest. If we are doing it in the wrong way for for the wrong reasons (not in the fear of God who sanctions it, but because of “deterrence” or some downstream reason), then maybe God judges our society as too childish to be trusted with it.
And if I could choose, I’d take the guillotine. Seriously. Instant, complete, and you don’t feel a thing.
Jacob- Keith kinda hinted at where I’m headed in why I’m opposed to it. First off, I should say that I think there’s two really different schools of thought that I’ve observed within the anti-capital punishment camp. One group is opposed to it, period. They would argue that there is no situation in which capital punishment is acceptable. The second group is more moderate. They would argue that if we could know beyond all doubt that we were executing a guilty person, than they’d find it acceptable, however they’re skeptical about our ability to implement it perfectly (IE without executing an innocent person) and they would rather ban it then run the risk of executing even one innocent person.
For now, I’m in the second camp. The idealist in me wants to go all the way and be in that first group, but I can’t get around the passage you brought up.
In other words, my argument isn’t so much with the concept, as the way it’s implemented. (Perhaps it would’ve been helpful to say that in my original post
) For example, Texas has executed more people than any other state in recent years. But since we began using DNA as evidence in cases, they’ve also released more people who they had imprisoned and then it turned out that the DNA proved they were innocent. Just a few weeks ago they released a man who had been in prison for 26 years who was recently proven innocent by DNA evidence.
So when I hear that my question becomes, “How many innocent people have they killed in Texas?” We know they’ve imprisoned a lot of innocent people and so it’s only logical to fear that they have executed innocent people as well.
Consequently, I think it’s better to simply ban capital punishment and use life in prison w/out parole as the maximum sentence. It still is a severe penalty (and yes, there’s still chance for error) but at least there’s no chance of us killing an innocent person.
(On a side note, I know I didn’t really engage with the biblical text you mentioned. That’s mostly because I’m still trying to figure out what I believe the biblical role of the government is and my thoughts are a total mess right now. We’ll just need to talk about it sometime.)
Jake–
I respect the second camp (your position), but I get pretty annoyed with the first camp–I think that they stretch and devalue the meaning of “love” by saying that it would be “unloving” to use capital punishment. I probably should have mentioned my sympathies for the justice of execution (that is, only executing the guilty, and making sure that there aren’t the racial biases that plague our system now) in my first post, but I was more bringing in the biblical warrant–the issues of how to ensure that we only execute the guilty are a little more complex. (The Torah required two eye-witnesses. Not a bad idea.)
As far as the role of the government, I really think that Romans 12-13 is helpful. In 12:19, Paul writes, “Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’” Now, I know some people who would use this verse against capital punishment, and if the passage quit there, I would probably agree with them.
However, Paul moves right into being subject to authorities, “For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger [I'm 95% confident that it is the same basic word as "Vengeance" in the Greek, but I haven't done anything with Greek since last semester] who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.”
The line of argumentation is that we are never to avenge ourselves, but to leave it to God on a personal level. Still, though, God expects governments to implement capital punishment out of reverence for life–in other words, God desires for a government to be his avenger.
Still, I know that there are a lot of political issues here that muddy the water, like the ones I mentioned earlier, but also the economic issue that appeals courts cost so much money. I don’t really know how to solve this, so I am mainly speaking from a theological perspective rather than a pragmatic perspective.
Jacob- Yeah, I’ve been thinking a lot about Romans 12 and 13 as I’m processing the theological case you’re making for it. My main objection right now is more pragmatic. Is it possible that there is a time when capital punishment would be the just thing to do? Perhaps yes. That’s as far as I feel comfortable going right now. As much as my head tends to think you’re probably right, I remember seeing video of Saddam’s hanging and I remember feeling nauseous and thinking I was going to throw up. And I know he did horrible things to his people and if there were ever a case where capital punishment was merited, it was with Saddam. But watching it I was terrified by the site and couldn’t imagine there being anything that could possibly justify what was done to him.
Still processing the biblical arguments that you’re making, hopefully we can talk more about them.
Just to add to the confusion:
I have some sympathies with what I guess we’re calling the “second position.” However, I would not want to articulate is as the fact that we are unable to be “perfectly sure” the person is guilty. It seems to me that while Scripture prescribes fairness in the OT legal system (two or three witnesses, a judge), it still recognizes that this system could err. Yet it prescribes the death penalty quite often. Thus, I’m sure that the way God ordered things for Israel, some innocents were (tragically) killed, and this didn’t nullify the system.
What my issue would be is much more with systemic injustices in the system. Its not that we might find an innocent man guilty and deserving the death penalty, but that if we do it is FAR more likely he will be a poor minority than a rich corporate exec. Thus if the death penalty becomes essentially a tool of oppression, we need to fight to make it a just and equal system.
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