Christians And The Death Penalty

[HollywoodAFD 0]

For Christians who support the death penalty...How do you justify this stance with the "sanctity of life" argument used in the abortion debate? The justification that I see most often is that fetuses are "innocent" whereas convicted criminals have (probably) committed some heinous crime. If you believe that everyone is created in the image of the Christian god and that everyone has sinned anyway, why do some sins merit death while others do not?

[timwakefield 68]

Good question. I'm guessing based on your post that you are against the death penalty? I'm obviously not Christian, and used to be staunchly opposed to the death penalty. I've since changed my mind, and now I'm not sure. I mean as it is now it is extremely unfair, in that poor people are like a zillion more times likely to get put to death than rich people who can afford good lawyers. Also, 130 people who were on death row since 1973 have been exonerated. That does not mean they were moved from death row to the normal prison population - it means they were found not guilty on appeal, or based on new dna evidence. That is more than 10% of the number of people who have successfully been executed since 1976, which is the year that the death penalty was reinstated in this country. But on the other side of the coin, some people commit crimes which are so heinous and hateful that I do believe they deserve to die. Being put to death is unquestionably a worse punishment than life without parole. Having the state decide the day, hour, and minute of your death is the ultimate loss of power over yourself, and I think there are people who deserve that. I don't, however, think it should be used frequently. Child-murder, serial child-rape, and serial murder spring to mind as crimes worthy of the death penalty. There's no reason for a person who commits crimes like that to be allowed to live.

[Loismustdie 0]

I would absolutely love to support it but can't, simply put we can never really know 100% for sure if someone is guilty, we can only go with the highest probability, which still leaves room for error. On a deeply personal level I harbor the belief that some scum should die, but could never advocate actually doing it.

[Loismustdie 0]

Good question. I'm guessing based on your post that you are against the death penalty? I'm obviously not Christian, and used to be staunchly opposed to the death penalty. I've since changed my mind, and now I'm not sure. I mean as it is now it is extremely unfair, in that poor people are like a zillion more times likely to get put to death than rich people who can afford good lawyers. Also, 130 people who were on death row since 1973 have been exonerated. That does not mean they were moved from death row to the normal prison population - it means they were found not guilty on appeal, or based on new dna evidence. That is more than 10% of the number of people who have successfully been executed since 1976, which is the year that the death penalty was reinstated in this country. But on the other side of the coin, some people commit crimes which are so heinous and hateful that I do believe they deserve to die. Being put to death is unquestionably a worse punishment than life without parole. Having the state decide the day, hour, and minute of your death is the ultimate loss of power over yourself, and I think there are people who deserve that. I don't, however, think it should be used frequently. Child-murder, serial child-rape, and serial murder spring to mind as crimes worthy of the death penalty. There's no reason for a person who commits crimes like that to be allowed to live.

There is also no real reason to kill them. It's completely arbitrary, not to mention the crimes. I would argue that a white collar criminal who bilked 100 senior citizens out of there savings forcing them to eat cat food for the remaining 8 years of there life is just as bad and causes just as much damage as your examples. I agree that revenge sounds inviting but we delve into it it's just revenge, no more, no less. Locking them away for life is just as effective.

[HollywoodAFD 0]

I would absolutely love to support it but can't, simply put we can never really know 100% for sure if someone is guilty, we can only go with the highest probability, which still leaves room for error. On a deeply personal level I harbor the belief that some scum should die, but could never advocate actually doing it.

What if you were 100% sure of someones guilt? Video evidence with 100 witnesses.

[speedz99 145]

What if you were 100% sure of someones guilt? Video evidence with 100 witnesses.

The problem is that the legal system is subjective by nature. Once the door is open for executions people will argue about what type of evidence should constitute 100% certainty. I don't see a way to have a death penalty that could never possibly be enforced on an innocent man, so I'm against it.

[BigDMcGee 3,355]

The problem is that the legal system is subjective by nature. Once the door is open for executions people will argue about what type of evidence should constitute 100% certainty. I don't see a way to have a death penalty that could never possibly be enforced on an innocent man, so I'm against it.

This.It's all nice and well to come up with hypothetical situations where you can be 100 percent certain someone was guilty, like someone shooting Tom Brady live on TV or something. But you cannot make that hypothetical criteria law. It's impossible to make a law where "only if you're 100 percent certain". The testimony of witnesses are notoriously poor, in this day and age video tape can be edited, all sorts of things can happen, you can never be 100 percent, so it's useless to say "what if" because it is not achievable. Even with the criteria "beyond a reasonable doubt," which is an extremely high burden of proof, 130 people have been exonerated off of death row. I don't think by making the criteria "way, way, way beyond a reasonable doubt" will still prevent the innocent from being executed. The bottom line is, you can always let an innocent man out of jail, you can never resurrect them. Beyond that, I also question the whole concept of that a criminal who commits a heinous crime " deserves" to die. I just don't know from what moral/ethical out look this is coming from, but I'm uncomfortable with the entire idea of determining who "deserves" to live and die. I think, philosophically, our penal system should be about two things. I think it should reform those criminals who are capable of being reformed. I am highly interested in a criminal who will eventually be released learning life and philosophical/moral skills so that when they are released, they do not slip back into crime. For those criminals who are not capable of being reformed, the dangerously mentally ill, the serial compulsive criminals, the people that are so damaged that they don't know or are not capable of living another way. I would like those criminals to be removed from society for pretty much ever. I don't see the necessity of killing them, it's particularly expensive to kill them, and killing them ( in our current system) is not a deterrent. If we has a capital punishment system like, say, China or Saudi Arabia, it would be a deterrent, but we'd sacrifice many other freedoms in order to achieve the deterrent effect. I personally don't think revenge and vengeance should at all be the goal of our penal system. Revenge is for societies that don't have the resources to imprison, and I feel we're too advanced as a society for that. RE: Capital punishment for Christians. There were all kinds of people that were slaughtered in the bible, some of whom were wicked, but some just had the misfortune of belonging to the wrong ethnic group. I think there's absolutely nothing in the bible that suggest that god is against state capital punishment ( or slavery, for that matter).

[HollywoodAFD 0]

Let's make it personal. You are forced to witness the brutal rape and torture of you dearest love. The criminal has a history of doing this to many people and pleads guilty in a State with the death penalty. How do you feel about his execution?

[speedz99 145]

Let's make it personal. You are forced to witness the brutal rape and torture of you dearest love. The criminal has a history of doing this to many people and pleads guilty in a State with the death penalty. How do you feel about his execution?

Of course we would want him to be raped, tortured, and killed. That's why victims' families aren't in charge of sentencing.It's irrelevant in a serious discussion about the death penalty. Hell, if someone punched my grandmother and stole her purse I'd want to see his hands chopped off...but that doesn't mean it's right.

[HollywoodAFD 0]

I'm not suggesting the families be in charge of sentencing or if the penalty is right in your mind ... But if the sentence is death ... How would you feel about it? The State has determined that the penalty for his crime is death... How do you feel about it?

[speedz99 145]

I'm not suggesting the families be in charge of sentencing or if the penalty is right in your mind ... But if the sentence is death ... How would you feel about it? The State has determined that the penalty for his crime is death... How do you feel about it?

Good.

[SlapStick 0]

Thou shalt not kill.Christians are hilarious.

[timwakefield 68]

There is also no real reason to kill them. It's completely arbitrary, not to mention the crimes. I would argue that a white collar criminal who bilked 100 senior citizens out of there savings forcing them to eat cat food for the remaining 8 years of there life is just as bad and causes just as much damage as your examples. I agree that revenge sounds inviting but we delve into it it's just revenge, no more, no less. Locking them away for life is just as effective.

I'm not a strong supporter of the death penalty by any means, but I'm going to play devil's advocate. It's not completely arbitrary that people who commit the most heinous crimes would be met with the most heinous punishment. And crimes like serial-rape and serial-murder are not arbitrary as far as being capital crimes - they are committed by people who have an extraordinarily high chance of re-committing. People escape from prison frequently.Locking them away for life may be just as effective as killing them so far as keeping them off the streets (assuming they never escape and never make parole - many states do not allow for a life sentence with no possibility of parole) , but may not bring the victims' families the same sense of justice. Let's say a man kidnaps your 7 year old daughter, rapes her in the most horrifying way, tortures her, and then finally kills her and leaves her in a ditch like dead rat. You don't think it would bother you to know that that man, who was caught, prosecuted, and convicted, is still out there living, breathing, enjoying the fame his crimes brought him, maybe watching a little tv, enjoying a candy bar now and then, masturbating to the memory of your dead daughter, etc? While it doesn't do anything to dull the pain of losing a loved one, having the perpetrator put to death DOES often bring a sense of closure to the victims' families that life without parole does not.

[Swift_Psycho 1]

People escape from prison frequently.While it doesn't do anything to dull the pain of losing a loved one, having the perpetrator put to death DOES often bring a sense of closure to the victims' families that life without parole does not.

Do you have a source that says that people escape from prison "frequently"? Maybe I'm just ignorant, but I guess I didn't think escaping from prison was a common occurrance.In response to the bolded statement, where was this info taken from? From criminology and psych classes, and a documentary or two on the topic, what's been taught to me was that the exact opposite of what you said is true, that victims' families very frequently don't actually feel any better once the criminal has been killed. Not to say that there aren't some families that do, but you used the word "often," which indicates that people that don't feel better after the criminal is executed are the exception.I realize that you said you're playing devil's advocate, which is why I'm curious if you're presenting an argument that actually has support, or an argument that a death penalty advocate might make that doesn't have actual empirical evidence supporting their claims.

[speedz99 145]

It's not completely arbitrary that people who commit the most heinous crimes would be met with the most heinous punishment. And crimes like serial-rape and serial-murder are not arbitrary as far as being capital crimes - they are committed by people who have an extraordinarily high chance of re-committing.

Sure they're arbitrary. What if lawmakers decide that drug use is just as bad as rape? Those people have an even higher chance of re-committing. Your top two of crimes can't be taken as fact (even if most people agree).

In response to the bolded statement, where was this info taken from? From criminology and psych classes, and a documentary or two on the topic, what's been taught to me was that the exact opposite of what you said is true, that victims' families very frequently don't actually feel any better once the criminal has been killed. Not to say that there aren't some families that do, but you used the word "often," which indicates that people that don't feel better after the criminal is executed are the exception.

Well, we could debate the exact meaning of "often"...but I'll just shift his point to be that if it helps some families while the others are indifferent, it's a winning proposition. I'm confident in saying that very few victims' families feel worse after the execution.

[timwakefield 68]

Do you have a source that says that people escape from prison "frequently"? Maybe I'm just ignorant, but I guess I didn't think escaping from prison was a common occurrance.

From Slate.com (it is outdated but still gives a general idea) "In 1998, the most recent year for which data are available from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 6,530 people escaped or were AWOL from state prisons. That was a little more than one-half of 1 percent of the total population of 1,100,224 state prisoners." Slate suggests that this is "not very often," but I would beg to differ. From Wikipedia, some notable and recent American prison escapes:

# The Texas 7 escaped on December 13, 2000. Six of them were captured after over a month and a half on the run, the 7th killed himself before being captured.# In New York, two convicted murders escaped from Elmira State Penitentiary in July 2003, both recaptured in 2 days.# Brian Nichols on March 11, 2005 escaped from the Fulton County courthouse in Atlanta, by overpowering an officer and taking her pistol. He then murdered a judge, a court reporter, a police officer and US Customs Agent. He then held a woman named Ashley Smith hostage for a night in her own home, before he allowed her to leave to visit her daughter. Once she was released, she called the police, and he surrendered peacefully to SWAT officers who arrived on the scene.# In 1999, Leslie Dale Martin and three other inmates on Louisiana's death row escaped from their cells at the Louisiana State Peniteniary. They were caught within hours before they even managed to escape prison grounds. The four men had managed the escape with the use of hacksaws that had been smuggled in for them by a bribed corrections officer. Other corrections officers were inattentive to the inmates' two to three week effort at cutting their cell doors and window. After the escape, two corrections officers were fired and two others were demoted. Martin was later overheard by two corrections officers plotting another escape, which included taking hostages and commandeering a vehicle to ram the prison's front gates. Martin was immediately moved to the holding cell outside the Death Chamber, a month before his execution in 2002.# On November 4, 2005, Texas Death Row Inmate Charles Victor Thompson escaped from the Harris County Jail by acquiring a set of street clothes and pretending to be a representative from the State Attorney General's office to fool the corrections officers. He was recaptured two days later in Shreveport, Louisiana, 200 miles from where he escaped.# Ralph "Bucky" Phillips escaped from prison on April 2, 2006, in New York, by cutting through the ceiling in the kitchen with a can opener. On June 10 he was suspected of a shooting which ended with two troopers dead. Bucky was later caught in Warren County, Pennsylvania, on September 8, 2006, his escape led police on the largest manhunt in New York state history.# Kelly Allen Frank (who had plotted to kidnap the infant son of talk-show host David Letterman) and William John Willcutt escaped from a Montana prison on June 8, 2007. Both were recaptured on June 13, 2007.# On December 15, 2007 inmates Jose Espinosa and Otis Blunt escaped from the high-security level of the Union County jail in Elizabeth, New Jersey. Espinosa was awaiting sentencing on an aggravated manslaughter charge, while Blunt was being held in lieu of bond on robbery and weapons charges. They escaped by scraping away the mortar around the cinder blocks making up the cell walls. They then smashed the block, hid the pieces in a footlocker and covered the holes with pin-up pictures. To delay knowledge of the escape, they made dummies out of sheets and pillowcases and left them in their beds. Espinosa was recaptured on Tuesday, January 8, 2008. Blunt was recaptured the following day Wednesday, January 9, 2008 in Mexico City, Mexico.# Eight inmates charged with violent crimes escaped from the Curry County Adult Detention Center in Clovis, New Mexico on August 24, 2008. The eight men escaped by climbing prison pipes in a narrow space inside a wall, then using homemade instruments to cut a hole in the roof. The jailbreak was featured on a September 6 episode of America's Most Wanted. Four inmates remain at large as of mid-September, including a convicted killer and a man charged with murder.[8]

Personally I wouldn't want any of those dudes on the streets for even 10 minutes. Of course prison escape is a problem with the prisons not the courts, but it should be taken into consideration that it does happen, and always has, and probably always will.

I'm confident in saying that very few victims' families feel worse after the execution.

Agreed, and some of them feel better. I mean I don't have any statistics to back that up, and I doubt statistics on that even exist, but I have read a number of case studies where the victims' families either wished the death penalty was an option, or were glad when that person was eventually put to death. I think the clearest answer is to ask yourself the question that speedz answered earlier: if somebody brutally raped and murdered one of your loved ones, would you want that person dead? Most people say yes.

[HollywoodAFD 0]

Most 'escape' through the legal system...not necessarily climb over the fence.In a perfect world where money and space is unlimited, one could argue that we should just lock these people up so they can't commit their crimes again. That's just not the case when you look at how much money it costs to house and feed a killer.To put this in an economic prospective, on the average each prisoner cost $22,000 per year, and the cost of new construction averages almost $54,000 per bed (AAE "Prison"). The 883,593 prisoners are costing the American taxpayers approximately $19.4 billion plus another $61.7 million for the construction of the 1,143 spaces needed. Why should we, the tax payers/the victims, support these criminals? It's true that not all the prisoners are hard core, but in 1992, 2,575 prisoners -- all murderers -- were sentenced to death .Back on track.... for Christians... simple answer.. do you believe it is OK to execute another person?

[YonYonson 156]

Lets just shoot them out back behind the courthouse. That will save money.

[speedz99 145]

From Slate.com (it is outdated but still gives a general idea) "In 1998, the most recent year for which data are available from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 6,530 people escaped or were AWOL from state prisons. That was a little more than one-half of 1 percent of the total population of 1,100,224 state prisoners." Slate suggests that this is "not very often," but I would beg to differ.

Well, what exactly does AWOL mean? Guys in minimum security who just never came back from some outside activity? We're talking about criminals who would be in max lockdown, so that stat might not be useful to us.

From Wikipedia, some notable and recent American prison escapes:

It happens. But notice that the number of notable and recent escapes from death row on the list is much higher than it should be based on the percentage of inmates in the system...that was poorly worded, I'm just saying that your own post makes is seem like death row inmates actually have a higher rate of escape.

I think the clearest answer is to ask yourself the question that speedz answered earlier: if somebody brutally raped and murdered one of your loved ones, would you want that person dead? Most people say yes.

I think that question should have nothing to do with it. Again, there's a reason why defendants aren't tried and sentenced by the victims' families. The legal system is designed to take that kind of emotion out of the equation. Forget the murder, if someone only raped one of my loved ones I'd want him killed. That doesn't make it right.

[HollywoodAFD 0]

Well... I am a Christian and I've been honest with my sins. I can tell you this... if someone did something horrible to a member of my family... I would dedicate my life to finding them and doing things to them only Hannibal Lecter could dream up. You could write SAW 6 with what I would do.I know that's wrong... but it's just a fact.

[timwakefield 68]

It happens. But notice that the number of notable and recent escapes from death row on the list is much higher than it should be based on the percentage of inmates in the system...that was poorly worded, I'm just saying that your own post makes is seem like death row inmates actually have a higher rate of escape.

Meh, I don't really think that's a conclusion we can draw. It's perfectly reasonable to assume that wikipedia considers a death row escape to be highly notable, so there is a higher chance that such an escape will be on their list. The list is certainly far from complete.

I think that question should have nothing to do with it. Again, there's a reason why defendants aren't tried and sentenced by the victims' families. The legal system is designed to take that kind of emotion out of the equation. Forget the murder, if someone only raped one of my loved ones I'd want him killed. That doesn't make it right.

I kind of agree with you here, but I'm also kind of not sure. Why do we punish criminals? To keep them off the streets? To reform them? To bring justice to their victims? I don't think there is a clear cut response to that question, but certainly there is a measure of justice for the victim.

[Swift_Psycho 1]

Why do we punish criminals? To keep them off the streets? To reform them? To bring justice to their victims?

You kind of hit the dynamite question there. I got to say that I have a ton of interest in that topic myself. A fair percentage of people who commit the crimes we would consider death penalty worthy have some sort of mental issue going on upstairs. Do we factor that into consideration? Do we "excuse" bad behavior because of it? Perhaps no, or perhaps enough so that at least the death penalty should be taken off the table.Of particular interest to me are straight sociopaths, and how morally culpable they are for their actions. Perhaps they are monsters, but punishing someone for their actions when they lack the ability to understand morality itself (or even empathy) in the way that we do seems strange to me. I'm tempted to say that I want them off the streets to prevent further harm, but "punishing" them beyond that, no matter what they did, may be wrong. Of course I realize my attitude would likely change if my friends or family were ever raped/murdered by such a "monster," but my rational assessment is that these people aren't necessarily deserving of any particular punishment.Sidenote: I should say that my opinion comes with an uncommon background belief, and that is that philosophically I am a soft determinist. Since I'd also argue that soft determinism just regresses back to hard determinism, you might say that I'm not particularly sure I believe in free will at all, and I certainly don't believe that we have free will to the extent that most people feel we do. Because of how that affects a lot of my worldview, it isn't hard to see why maybe my opinion on how I feel about criminals would differ from others.

[timwakefield 68]

Of particular interest to me are straight sociopaths, and how morally culpable they are for their actions. Perhaps they are monsters, but punishing someone for their actions when they lack the ability to understand morality itself (or even empathy) in the way that we do seems strange to me. I'm tempted to say that I want them off the streets to prevent further harm, but "punishing" them beyond that, no matter what they did, may be wrong. Of course I realize my attitude would likely change if my friends or family were ever raped/murdered by such a "monster," but my rational assessment is that these people aren't necessarily deserving of any particular punishment.

It's a very interesting question for sure - if somebody is deemed mentally ill, we generally lock them up in a mental hospital rather than a prison when they commit a crime. People are also able to use 'temporary insanity' as a defense, although that is usually not a good strategy based on the usual result - that the jury doesn't buy it. But how do we treat psychopaths/sociopaths (those words are synonyms)? Generally we hold them fully responsible for their actions, assuming they meet the IQ requirement of legal sanity or whatever. The thing is, although they lack empathy, sympathy, or any moral guidelines in their brain, they certainly are aware of the moral guidelines of the society they live in, and are aware that breaking laws comes with consequences. Just because they don't feel the slightest bit of remorse does not mean that they did not understand that their actions were regarded as corrupt and illegal.

[Loismustdie 0]

I'm not a strong supporter of the death penalty by any means, but I'm going to play devil's advocate. It's not completely arbitrary that people who commit the most heinous crimes would be met with the most heinous punishment. And crimes like serial-rape and serial-murder are not arbitrary as far as being capital crimes - they are committed by people who have an extraordinarily high chance of re-committing. People escape from prison frequently.Locking them away for life may be just as effective as killing them so far as keeping them off the streets (assuming they never escape and never make parole - many states do not allow for a life sentence with no possibility of parole) , but may not bring the victims' families the same sense of justice. Let's say a man kidnaps your 7 year old daughter, rapes her in the most horrifying way, tortures her, and then finally kills her and leaves her in a ditch like dead rat. You don't think it would bother you to know that that man, who was caught, prosecuted, and convicted, is still out there living, breathing, enjoying the fame his crimes brought him, maybe watching a little tv, enjoying a candy bar now and then, masturbating to the memory of your dead daughter, etc? While it doesn't do anything to dull the pain of losing a loved one, having the perpetrator put to death DOES often bring a sense of closure to the victims' families that life without parole does not.

I believe it is arbitrary, but someone brought that up already, and to be perfectly honest my daughter- and my wife for that matter- are as sacred to me as anything, and I believe if something happened, dear God please don't let it ever be so but if it did I would not expect someone else to do my dirty work for me, I would do it myself, and throw myself at Gods mercy. I believe 100% that it is not the moral answer but I think it is the human answer, that being said, from a christian perspective the calling is to be better than human. I don't know that I could be so good in that situation. BTW, thanks for the horrifying scenario. I will sleep like a baby this week I am sure.

[timwakefield 68]

I believe it is arbitrary, but someone brought that up already, and to be perfectly honest my daughter- and my wife for that matter- are as sacred to me as anything, and I believe if something happened, dear God please don't let it ever be so but if it did I would not expect someone else to do my dirty work for me, I would do it myself, and throw myself at Gods mercy. I believe 100% that it is not the moral answer but I think it is the human answer, that being said, from a christian perspective the calling is to be better than human. I don't know that I could be so good in that situation.

As far as being arbitrary, yeah that's a bit of a fallacy in my argument, but I was mostly playing devil's advocate with that post.

BTW, thanks for the horrifying scenario. I will sleep like a baby this week I am sure.

Sorry for that, but that was also kind of the point - to shock you with the worst scenario imaginable, because things like that really do happen, and the perpetrators of such crimes are the people I was talking about as deserving of execution.BTW I wasn't specifically talking to you there, and I didn't even know you had a daughter until just now, so sorry if hit home a little too much =\. On a slightly related note, I recently learned that John Walsh, the host and creator of America's Most Wanted, is the father of a boy who was abducted and murdered in 1981 (at age 6), and that John and his wife helped create the Missing Children Act of 1982 and the Missing Children's Assistance Act of 1984. Before I had just figured he was a guy who looked good on tv, but I totally gained a lot of respect for him when I learned about his son and his efforts to help stop similar crimes from occurring, and, with his show, to stop their perpetrators from getting away. I found it strange that my idea of him changed so much based on the fact that his son was killed, but it did. Oh and his son's killer was never brought to justice, although the main suspect did die in jail for an unrelated crime, but was never charged in Adam Walsh's murder.