Recently, in wake of the sentencing of Moussaoui, my girlfriend raised some good arguments about the death penalty. This reminded me that I've been meaning to put down my thoughts on this issue for quite a while.

Arguments Against the Death Penalty

I can think of several very good reasons for opposing the death penalty, some secular, some based in JudeoChristian belief:

1. The Death Penalty is expensive. It turns out it costs much more, due to the numerous appeals, to sentence someone to death than life in prison. All other things being equal, shouldn't we choose the cheaper alternative?

2. The Death Penalty is not a deterrant. For most of my life, I've heard studies have shown the death penalty has no deterrent effect. If so, then we're wasting lives for no good reason.

3. The DP is permanent! What about innocent people? If we give a man life in prison, and later find evidence showing he was innocent, we can always free him later. True, we can never give him back the lost years, but that's still something. If we applied the death penalty, there would be no possibility of correcting mistakes.

And I would add that our own system of justice seems so very imperfect; perhaps if we had fewer miscarriages of justice, and/or less racial bias in the application of the DP, then we might consider it. But not now, under these circumstances.

Now my own most important reason:

4. Prison is about protecting citizens and rehabilitating criminals, not punishment. The New Testament tells us: "Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: 'It is mine to avenge; I will repay,' says the Lord." (Romans 12:19)

I understood this verse as meaning that although we as Christians had a duty and obligation to improve society, and protect people from harm, it wasn't our job to carry out God's vengeance on people. Prisons shouldn't be about retribution. Indeed, look at murder: How could we correct that situation? Can we bring a dead man back to life? No: it's not possible

Here are a few arguments tossed in by others, which I have also found persusive at one time or another:

5. A lifetime in prison is a bigger punishment than a quick death. In fact, this argument was tacticly invoked by Moussaoui's judge, when he said Moussai would "die with a wimper" -- referring apparently to his expectation that Moussai would die, at an old age, a relatively pleasant death -- compared to, say, 9/11 victims who starved to death among the rubble.

6. What if they would have eventually repented and been saved? Imagine if the DP were applied after 20 years, but after 30 years they might have eventually come to know Jesus? By keeping them alive longer, we increase the chance a person will have this experience.

Since I'm aware that the bible seems, in general, to allow the death penalty, and since most my objections above were practical, not theoretical, my (honest) statement, among other Christians, has been that I have no problem with the death penalty in theory; I just oppose its application in our current system, with all of its flaws.

So did all that sound good and persuasive? I hope so! To me, these seemed like a nearly-airtight case against the death penalty; one I believed heartily until perhaps as little as two years ago. Obviously, as you can guess by this paragraph, I've changed my views since then.

I often tell people that though I'm now a conservative, by nature I'm basicly a "liberal" -- my first reflexes typically seem to lead me adopt a "liberal" (i.e. left-leaning) policy on each new issue. It's only later that I begin to see where I went wrong.

And so now it seems to me that I've been wrong on every single argument above. I hope you were persuaded with me, since that will make reading the arguments on the other side more entertaining.

So, without further ado, and in no particular order, here are...

Arguments in Favor of the Death Penalty

(Stated by contradicting the arguments above:)

1. The Death Penalty is expensive. So what? Since when was justice primarily a matter of price? If the cost was the main issue, then would opponents of capital punishment be persuaded by advocating fewer appeals (or even a quick hanging), thus making the death penalty a very inexpensive option?

Of course not. So this is a meaningless argument: the issue should be doing the right thing -- not the cheapest thing. Sorry that I presented such a stupid argument above, but, hey, I'm repenting here.

2. The Death Penalty is not a deterrent. Looks like I was misled here: It turns out some very complete and persuasive studies show the death penalty actually is a deterrent, and saves lives: the deterrent effect seems to amount to about 18 lives for each murderer executed, even under our very drawn-out system.

To look at this the opposite way: if true, then by opposing the death penalty you condemn about 18 innocent people to death for each murderer's life you save. That's not a moral tradeoff I'm comfortable making.

3. The DP is permanent! What about innocent people? True, but the odds are very low. As I understand it, there is about one person killed per state per year by capital punishment. Even if we assume all were innocent, this still means your odds of dying this way are nearly nill.

But what about the innocent person? The possibilty of error always exists. But that is never a reason to stop from doing the right thing -- only to try harder to make sure it is the right thing before acting. This should lead us to much-needed reforms, not opposition to capital punishment.

For example, I don't think we should apply capital punishment in cases which are based largely upon circumstantial evidence -- only in cases where there is hard evidence of guilt.

(To Christians: If you believe in the bible, surely, you might think that some innocent people might have been stoned by early Jews for murder. Yet that possibility wasn't enough to make God tell the Jews not to carry out a punishment. If God wasn't persuaded by this argument, then why are you?)

As I pointed out in #2, in this imperfect world, innocent people will die either way. Capital punishment has surely killed innocent people, but apparently, when we choose to avoid capital punishment, we also cause innocent people to die.

So we can only choose the policy which results in the least dead innocent people. If an execution saves about 18 innocent lives, then it means the tipping point happens when more than 17 out of every 18 people convicted of the death penalty are actually innocent.

I can't honestly say I believe we're anywhere near that.

Final trivia point here: I've recently learned that the death penalty is no longer disproportionately applied to blacks. Now a white man is more likely to receive a death sentence than a black man. (Sadly, the race-baiters have switched to saying the US is unjust because the death penalty is more likely to be applied to the killers of white people -- who are, of course, most often white. Endlessly clever, aren't they?)

4. Prison is about protecting citizens and rehabilitating criminals, not punishment. [Scripture quote about vengeance being wrong.] Eventually, I woke up and realized I, and a huge portion of the pacifist community, were missing a fundamental truth about God and his interactions with man.

We, tipping our hats to the bible, would say: "Oh, well, we shouldn't kill because only God has power over life and death." Well, true enough, but that's a bit like saying that soldiers shouldn't start a battle because only the Congress has the power to declare war -- and soldiers sure aren't Congressmen!

The missing ingredient in both is the idea of delegation. The soldier can do his job when he is acting under a delegation of war by Congress. Likewise, when we keep society safe by various means -- potentially including the application of force, even lethal force -- we do so because God has granted that power to the state.

As the book of Romans says:

The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted... [the one in authority] 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 13:1-4)

Note all that bit about the sword? It wasn't typically used to adminster a mere spanking! Then, as now, "the sword" primarily meant killing, and Paul is saying the government -- even a corrupt, evil, imperfect government like Rome -- is carrying out a legitimate God-appointed function when wrongdoers are punished or even killed, or dissauded from doing bad things in the first place.

God says something like this in the Old Testament as well: He instructs the Jews to follow his laws -- including capital punishment for murder, explicitly "so that innocent blood will not be shed in your land" (Deut 19:10). God apparently thought there was a deterrent effect.

Finally, there's this idea that God is the ultimate judge, not us. (True!) And that we are wrongly acting in his role if we carry out a punishment. (False!) In fact, in some cases, God holds people guilty for the failure to carry out justice, including the death penalty. God wants some semblance of justice to be carried out even here, below, as an illustration of ultimate things.

5. A lifetime in prison is a bigger punishment than a quick, painless death. Really! If so, then why are people crusading for the end of the death penalty as "cruel", and unfitting for a "civilized" society? If life in prison is so much worse, then why aren't they crusading to abolish that instead -- possibly even advocating death as more merciful?

6. What if they would have eventually repented and been saved? One can just as easily make the opposite argument: Often, people only look to God at their lowest moment. Sometimes, for example, an alcoholic must hit rock bottom before "looking up", so to speak. We're familliar with the false love of "enablers" who help them continue to live the deceit.

Perhaps the same is true with murderers. Perhaps the opportunity to know when you are dying, and that it is a certainty, could provide some with the shock needed to start asking ultimate questions -- whereas dying, unexpectedly, of a heart attack at age 58 would not. Perhaps there are some, who have killed, and who might repent if given the death sentence, understanding for the first time they cannot "get away with" every sin.

In fact, this seems to have happened with Carla Faye Tucker, Ted Bundy, and Jeffrey Dahmer, murderers who claimed to have repented and found God after receiving the death penalty. I'm not aware of any cases illustrating the opposite. (Feel free to supply them if you have them.)

Well, as best I can see, these six either neutralize or trump their counterparts above. If you have evidence to the contrary, again, that's why we have comments.

But I'm not done yet (sorry!); there are still two more arguments...

7. The death penalty is fair.

I was recently reminded of the biblical punishment for theft: the thief was forced to pay back double what he (or she) had stolen. Why?

The first quantity was for restitution: the one who had lost property now had it back. Yay! Things are now put back as they should have been.

And the second? The basic idea behind much biblical justice is identification with the other: Love your neighbor as yourself. You're another him, he's another you. Him losing something is the same as you losing something. So the thief not only gave back what was stolen in the first place, but he learned what it was like to live without that stolen item.

This is very good incentive management, actually: it drives home the point that we should do unto others what we want done to us -- because it very likely will be! (It also re-enforces Jesus's later teaching that as we measure it out, it will be measured back to us.) If absorbed and re-enforced as a general principle, it could result more people behaving towards others as they'd expect towards them.

If we think this rule makes sense for the theft of a horse or cart (and I personally can't see how it wouldn't), then what rule makes sense for a life?

And, for Christians...

8. The God of the bible favors the death penalty.

I almost hate to mention this one because I can hear people screaming about separation of church and state. But I'm not advocating that whatever is in the bible should instantly become law: I'm simply arguing that Christians (and Jews, if I may be so bold as to suggest) allow the bible to influence their views, whatever the larger society accepts or rejects.

(I favor loving your neighbor as yourself. I would not for a moment suggest that as a law: we're moving directly into thought-police there. But I would also be shocked to hear a self-professing Christian say they were personally opposed to the idea, in contradiction of Jesus's teachings on the matter. I believe in enacting whatever laws the majority favors; but it is also fully legitimate for me to speak to fellow Christians about the bible.)

A common (Christian) retort would be that this is in the "Old Testament" and thus all that stuff doesn't apply to us anymore. Well, some does and some doesn't. Honoring your parents was in the Jewish Law. So is it okay to treat them like dirt now? How about adultery? Or coveting? All good now?

God's support for capital punishment (for murder, of course) isn't limited to Jewish law. Before the covenant with the Jews, it is one of the few rules he gives to Noah. (Genesis 9:6) In the New Testament, Jesus affirms Pilate's control over life is death was instituted by God (John 19:10-11), and, as mentioned above, Paul's arguments in Romans 11 assume it as well.

And even in Jewish law, God doesn't say it like: "This is one of those things I want you Jews to do", as he does with the tassles, beard-trimming, pork-avoidance, etc. He says it as though it were a universal principle:

"Do not pollute the land where you are. Bloodshed pollutes the land, and atonement cannot be made for the land on which blood has been shed, except by the blood of the one who shed it." (Numbers 35:33)

That's quite a bit of textual evidence to dismiss so easily; I would hope those who consider themselves believers would think seriously about each citation.

Well, what about mercy?

I'm hugely in favor of mercy, having received quite a lot of it myself. Yes indeed, I'm very big into mercy.

But people are confusing mercy with permissiveness. They are two totally different things. Mercy is not the absense of law or a penalty -- mercy is forgiveness of a penalty, upon conviction, and upon repentence. You can't have mercy without conviction, or without penalties. Indeed, without the penalty itself, the concept of mercy is utterly meaningless.

Talking about mercy is good and fine stuff -- though I find it amusing that people who say we shouldn't mix church and state then argue that we should not have the death penalty because the bible told us to have mercy on our enemies.

But the question, as I said above, of when to apply mercy is different than the question of what the general penalty should be. And why limit discussions of mercy to the death penalty? Why not pre-forgive all theft and extortion? And why should mercy simply mean reduction to life in prison? Why not be even more merciful, and let the person go, if we don't think they pose a continuing threat?

These are interesting questions; and I believe they reveal that the argument is not very well thought-through. It appears to be the selective invocation of a principle as an mere argument device, not a guiding rule taken seriously in all circumstances. I'm all for mercy, but I don't believe mercy consists of eliminating this one specific law, in all cases, repentant or not. To treat it that way is to cheapen the concept of mercy itself.

So, that's it. If you have a beef with my stuff, have at it below. G'day!