RALEIGH, North Carolina (AFP) – The United States executed the 1,000th person since capital punishment was reintroduced in 1976, when Kenneth Boyd was given a lethal injection at a North Carolina jail.
I wonder if our nation will ever look back on this day and regret it. Probably not, we’re not really into dwelling on the kind of messed up stuff we’ve done in the past now, and it’s likely that we won’t be in the future either.
while it can be justified for one person to take another person’s life (when threatened or i believe even a “crime of passion” can be justifiable), but it is inherantly wrong for a society to ever take a life.
So should Tookie be saved? Have you signed the petition?
Yes, Tookie should be saved, but not because of anything he’s done individually, but for the reason Nathan mentioned above, which I completely agree with.
He sure had big muscles!
Who is tookie?
I guess you forgot about slavery.
do a google news search on tookie, that’ll give you plenty of information, better than what i could say.
Poor guy named Nguyen in Singapore was hung within the past 24 hours because of drug smuggling. I can’t find any real statistics (ones that do not contradict one another and represent the actual truth) on how severe punishment (capital punishment) deters people from drugs in Singapore.
Dan, I was specifically referring to slavery (among other things our country was built upon, like genocide). Not saying that everyone doesn’t know about it, just that we seem to ignore it when we take the moral high ground in things like current foreign policy matters.
As for statistics, I’ve seen a lot of stuff that indicates that the death penalty is not an effective deterrent, but as with most statistics, people who disagree with the conclusions will find their own statistics to manipulate to prove their points.
My position on the death penalty has nothing to do with whether it is an effective deterrent or not; I would oppose it even if it were 100% effective.
I agree, effective isn’t a good mesurement for right and wrong.
Back to your first comment, Jared. It’s possible that someday our society will look back with sorrow on the use of the death penalty to rid us of undesirables, but I think it will be LONG before they look back with sorrow on use of abortion to rid us of undesirables. Just as there are people who don’t think that abortion is actually “wrong”, for one reason or another, so there are also those who don’t think the death penalty is “wrong”, for other reasons. And for the record, I don’t agree with either group.
Me too, and I think you’re probably right about which one we will “progress beyond” first.
Let me preface this with saying that I am not a proponent of the death penalty. First of all I don’t think it is effective. I think a lifetime of hard labor would be not only a better deterent, but would also be more effective in rehabilitating those prisoners who will be released. Second of all, I try to place myself in the job of the person pushing the button to inject the poison. Third of all, I believe that the death penalty is for the family members of victims a means of vengeance rather than justice.
With that said, I do believe that governments have the authority to kill as a means of justice.
“(3)For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and he will commend you. (4)For he is God’s servant to do you good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God’s servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.”
Romans 13:3,4 NIV
I do not believe that the phrase “he does not bear the sword for nothing” leaves room for a lot of interpretation. I believe Paul purposely alludes to capital punishment in this verse. Actually, since those are ultimately the word’s of God and not Paul, I think God purposely alludes to capital punishment. As with all authority, the authority of governments to implement capital punishment comes with huge responsibility. If capital punishment is sincerely done out of serving justice to one who has murdered, I believe that governments are justified in implementing it.
I don’t believe that this passage necessarily means that God endorses the means of punishment that the government in place uses. If that were the case, it would mean that God was condoning the Roman government’s persecution and sometimes killing (including crucifixion) of Christians.
In context, I believe it’s primarily used to tell the people that even though the government may be corrupt, it is still right to live under it, as long as it doesn’t contradict what God’s will would lead one to do. At the time when people were first experiencing the tremendous freedom that the gospel that Christ brought them (as opposed to the religious systems they were used to), they had to be reminded that it didn’t mean they were “above the law”.
If you want to get into a really literal application of this passage to modern times, here is one I find more interesting, from verse one (immediately above this): “there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God”. I wonder how people who would interpret this passage literally would apply this passage to our recent actions in dealing with Saddam?
In addition, while “justice” may be served in executions (although that’s debatable), I would still be opposed to them. As Christians, if we believe that God offers his forgiveness to anyone who would accept it, then the worst thing we could possibly do would be to cut off the opportunity for someone to make that choice to receive his gift.
But regardless of all that, as Nathan said above, I still think it’s ridiculous to say that killing someone (who is already in custody and prevented from hurting anyone else), solely as a punishment for them killing someone else is just plain wrong. Think about it in any other crime; should a rapist be sentenced to be raped? I believe that most people would say no, so why would they justify this, which is even worse?
Ahhh statistics, gotta love statistics. Interesting that you’ve seen a lot of (truthful?) statistical that support your point of view but those who disagree with you are sure to have manipulated some to fit theirs. The truth is that death sentences are given so sparingly in the U.S. and are actually carried out to completion so infrequently that trying to derive any meaningfully information about its effects is pure snake oil science.
But let’s say that it was proven that the death penalty deterred, for instance, child murderers. You guys still wouldn’t support it? To me it would be a trade between someone who has no respect for life and someone who hasn’t even had a chance to live. Not a hard choice.
Oops, that was me, the blood thirsty, fascist loving, racist. Not sweet little Kristen.
I figured that from reading the comment.
If you read what I said above, I never indicated that the statistics that support my point of view were correct and the others weren’t; I said that people who disagree with statistics usually just don’t believe them and eventually dig up their own. That doesn’t say anything about one side or the other, I was saying it’s usually common to both sides of an argument.
And, yes, as I said above, the death penalty being wrong has nothing to do with whether it’s a deterrent or not. You could deter a lot of stealing by chopping off people’s hands that steal, that doesn’t make it a right thing to do. You could also (potentially) slightly reduce things like terrorism by endorsing practices like imprisonment for years without charges and/or torture of said prisoners; that doesn’t mean that it’s the right thing to do.
Furthermore, your logic is completely flawed when you say it’s a tradeoff between the killer’s life and that of someone who doesn’t have a chance to live, because the victim has already lost their life, and the killer’s death will neither change that nor prevent anyone else from dying, since they are in custody and should never have another opportunity to kill. Unless you are talking about your completely hypothetical scenario in which the effectiveness of the death penalty as a deterrent is proven effective; but like you said above, you can’t really prove that.
Most of the rest of the “civilized” world has already progressed beyond the death penalty, and a lot of them have better murder rates than we do, and I think that does say something important, if we want to get into statistics.
Paragraph number two I entirely agree with.
Concerning the Roman government, do you really think that their motive in persecuting Christians was jusitice? I don’t. That is why I stated that governments have a huge responsibility in ensuring that capital punishment is implemented only to serve justice and not for any other motives.
Remember, I don’t think the death penalty is a good choice, for pretty much all the same reasons as you. However, I can guarantee you, with the prison ministries that are in place in the U.S., that every death row inmate has many opportunities to recieve the gift of God’s grace. I suppose if they lived their entire life out without being put to death, then they would have more opportunities, but people don’t die without the opportunity to recieve God’s grace. Even those who never hear any sort of presentation of the gospel can know of God through creation and their conscience.
I don’t think we are going to come to agreement on whether or not capital punishment is biblically justified, or on very many issues concerning the war. So concerning those paragraphs I will just disagree and leave it at that.
The above comment references JaredB’s comment at 6:12p.m. of 12/2/05.
I agree that everyone does have an opportunity, but I sure don’t want to be the one who endorses inherently limiting the number of those opportunities by cutting someone’s life short. If God really wants to kill someone, he’s done it before, and he can do it again. I think it says a lot that he doesn’t.
Deterrent De*ter”rent, n.
That which deters or prevents.
My logic is not flawed. You said when referring the to the death penalty as a deterrent that “I would oppose it even if it were 100% effective.” What would it mean if something was 100% effective as a deterrent? I interpret that as that the death of convicted criminals–child murderers in my example–would prevent the death of children in the future. Which make an unpleasant but easy decision for me to make. The other examples you brought up aren’t similar enough to make a meaningful comparison.
Also, I never said it is impossible to determine if the death penalty is an effective deterrent or not. I just said with the data available you can’t make much of a case either way.
But you’ve said twice now that you don’t think that with the data available you can prove that it is a deterrent, so therefore you cannot use that as a basis for justifying it.
You and I may disagree in the hypothetical world in which such a case might be proven, but there’s not much point in discussing that.
If any other examples I bring up are not similar enough to matter, then I guess I don’t have much else to say about it.
How about one last example, just for the heck of it: we recently were discussing the abortion issue on another blog. I think that we both seemed to agree that since there is no clear answer to when “life” begins, that it is the right thing to do to avoid performing abortions. I don’t see why you can’t apply the same logic to this case: if it’s unclear whether killing someone will save a life in the future (and it is at least unclear, if not an unprovable assumption), then we must err on the side of not killing that person.
And… just because it may be AN effective tactic, doesn’t mean it’s the ONLY effective tactic or the MOST effective tactic. Could it be there are ways to deal with the sickness in society besides killing other people?
And just an observation. It appears that the celeb’s who are against the killing of Tookie, didn’t have much to say about Terry Schaivo, stand up for assisted suicide, and are all about a “woman’s right to choose”. So their arguments don’t mean anything to me. They aren’t against it because they have a reverence for life. It seems that they just don’t believe in personal responsibility. I know that’s a big generalization, but I’m just talking about the few situations and comments that I’ve heard lately.
OK, but saying you don’t think something can never be proved is a lot different than saying that even if it was proven you would ignore it. I just thought it was an interesting hypothetical that was brought up. I never said it should be used by policymakers in the real world, but our society should be decisive and have the guts make the tough decisions rather than lying around passively. That said, of course the ends don’t always justify the means, but in some cases they do.
The death penalty and abortion are at opposite ends of the spectrum for me. In one case we are talking about a person who hasn’t had a chance to function in society and in the other case were talking about someone who has proven they have no right to be a functioning part of society.
As for the whole effective tactic thing ma ma j, the comments you made were saying that if the death penalty was 100% effective it would still be off the table. If you would of said “even if it is 100% effective I would oppose because there is this other tactic that’s 50% effective,” then that would be a different question. I would still pick the 100% effective option but whatever.
Not me.
I would always err on the side of NOT killing someone, in any circumstance. You guys always make things so difficult.
Well, I could have burned Randy Jr.’s mouth with hot coals when he said that mean thing to Jamie Cole when he was 7. That would have probably been 100% effective in stopping him from ever committing the same crime and also probably would have deterred any other of my children from saying any mean things to anyone else. But I don’t think it would have been the right thing to do. Peace out, baby!