Home > Social Issues > Death Penalty > Is The Death Penalty Right or Wrong? Part 3

Is The Death Penalty Right or Wrong? Part 3

Published Nov 20, 2005
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We are told that it is state-sanctioned murder to carry out the death penalty, but if that is true is it state-sanctioned kidnapping to keep a person in prison? Are fines state thievery?  It is incredible that opponents of the death penalty tell us that it perpetuates violence. They  can’t see the vast difference in a person who takes another person’s  life and the state doing so after a fair trial. Government is supposed to protect the innocent and punish the guilty. Those are the two functions of government, yet our states are failing at both.

It is almost always true that those people who oppose the death penalty for convicted killers (and I think that kidnappers, rapists and traitors should get death as they did 50 years ago) almost always are loud proponents of abortion!  Let’s see now: they don’t want vicious killers to be killed, but they do want innocent, unborn babies to be butchered! I don’t  understand that kind of thinking.

I have asked my opponents if I have a right to defend myself if a person is trying to kill me, and most of them agreed that it is acceptable. I then asked them, “If it is morally and legally right for me to defend myself—even killing my attacker—before I am killed, why is it wrong for the state to kill him after he has killed me?” They are strangely quiet.

Often, in desperation, my death penalty opponents remind me that most  nations have banned the death penalty as cruel and inhumane. I usually pause for a few seconds and say, “So?”  When European nations were ruled by tyrants like Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, etc., we didn’t emulate them by looking for a home-grown dictator, so why follow them in their folly now by abolishing a reasonable and scriptural tool for the sake of society? European nations are also collecting the fire arms from law-abiding citizens and opening their borders to almost anyone. Should we follow them in that direction? I think not.

We are told that we should forgive the killer, but I remind them that no killer has asked for my forgiveness. Besides he didn’t take the life of one of my relatives so I don’t have the right to forgive him. During a talk show I forgiveness and mercy was mentioned as it related to the Susan Smith case—the mother who drowned her two little boys. I had just demanded a death sentence for her, but the judge I was debating asked, “But what about mercy, Dr. Boys?” I replied, “Mercy you get from God; from the courts you expect justice.”

He said, “But the clergymen in her small town have all asked for mercy in her behalf.” I said, “Her two children would liked to have seen some mercy from her, but instead they were pushed into a lake to drown. Besides, preachers asking for mercy is not an argument, since most preachers pull on panty hose each morning  and wear lace on their shorts.” The host said, “What did you say?” I then repeated it, and he said, “I thought that’s what you said.”

We members of society must demand of our legislators that crime not pay. That message must resonate to every city and country town that killers will not be pampered and made heroes in the media. Killers will be executed and after all, that can facilitate the best kind of rehabilitation. If a man knows he is going to die in 30 days, while the ACLU, PAW, NAACP and other radical groups whine, weep, and carry candles for him, then maybe he will experience the ultimate in rehabilitation and turn to Christ for genuine salvation.

State officials had better get the message that we must feel safe in our home, car, and streets or the seeds are sown for anarchy, vigilante justice, and lynch law.

Tags: death penalty

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Scott R. Harrington
May 27, 2008 9:31pm [ 1 ]

Dear friends, Once the government puts an innocent man to death, what is there to be done to bring him back to life? A disproportionate number of those men (and women) who are executed are non-white people and people who are poor. People with money (of any race, like O.J. Simpson) go scott-free, while innocent people are sometimes, occasionally, put to death for crimes they did not commit. Eyewitness testimony is inherently unreliable, as people are prone to errors of judgment and of false memory; science has proven this to be the case; often, no DNA evidence was available when a person was first wrongfully convicted of killing (murdering) someone; and many people mistakenly identify another person for the actual perpetrator of a violent crime. Putting anyone to death although violates the Spirit of the Law "Thou shalt not kill." There is no place in a Christian, civilized country, for the death penalty. True conservatives, who believe inherently in limited powers for the government, should not surrender to the government the power of life and death: life is, and should always be, in God's hands, not in a judge's or a jury's hands. Since people are basically sinful, there is nothing to prevent government officials, or people with private, self-made opinions, from sentencing others to death from impure, vindictive motives, or because they believe, and wrongly so, that "The Bible says ...". Since we have, under our constitutional system, a separation of church and state, we cannot appeal to the Bible the enforcement of the civil and penal laws of our land; the Bible belongs to the Orthodox, and to all true Christians, wherever they be found, and not to the United States government, or to any government, for that matter. May God have mercy on all of us; what, but the mercy of God, is there to prevent injustice to any one of us being done by an over-zealous, theocratic government imposing the death penalty upon any of us as private citizens. If a person has really committed murder, the penalty should be, for all duly convicted, life in maximum security prisons, without possibility of release. Take care. Sincerely, Scott Harrington

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