Consistently Pro-life

Sometimes we long feel the need to speak up on a particular subject, yet wait for a defining moment. For me, it was the shock I felt when I realized I agreed with Jimmy Carter.


This is something that does not often occur. In fact, I am not even sure I agree with the former President on Christianity or the Bible. But I do agree with Carter on this, even though my reasoning is different:


It is time to end capital punishment.


Carter says so in an opinion piece published online at the Associated Baptist Press. While I encourage you to read the article, I will summarize his reasoning:

1. The majority of people and police chiefs are against it.
2. The focus is on punishment, not rehabilitation.
3. The death penalty is not a deterrent to murder and other violent crimes.
4. The cost to defend and offer appeals for death row inmates is "astronomical."
5. Scripture leans more towards mercy than punishment.
6. Capital punishment is biased towards the poor and minorities.

Here are my comments to Mr. Carter's points:

1. Polls from people and police chiefs should not determine policy. Laws should. If there is a case to change the law, make that case.
2. Rehabilitation may feel good, but it is rarely effective.
3. This point is mostly true, but not for the reasons cited. Many capital punishment states may have a higher rate of homicides, but there are too many other factors (population, wealth, even weather) to make that a valid statistic.
4. This statement is definitely true.
5. Scripture decidedly leans towards mercy, but it also promotes justice.
6. This statement is true as well (at least statistically). The quality of defense is greater for people of means.

So, I agree with President Carter on some reasons (racial and economic bias, lack of deterrence, the legal cost of appeals), and not on others.


As inferred, I arrived at my conclusion both before reading Carter's article, and from a different direction. My reasons for opposing the death penalty are--

• It buys us nothing. There is no societal benefit to the death penalty. Yes, it may bring closure to a grieving family, but it does not lift the nation or the people. In fact, it may have the opposite effect, creating a subtle "blood lust" in people who want a criminal to get his "just deserts." Finally, it has been proven that it is no more a deterrent than life without parole. 

• It cost us so much. Not only in terms of perhaps doing damage to our national psyche (and our spiritual health as well), but also in raw financial terms. The main losers are the taxpayers. As one law professor explains: "What we are paying for at such great cost is essentially our own ambivalence about capital punishment. We try to maintain the apparatus of state killing and another apparatus that almost guarantees that it won't happen. The public pays for both sides." The complete process of conviction, appeal and habeus corpus in a capital conviction  is often reported as 2 to five times greater than a sentence of life without parole. Even if the cost were equivalent (and they can be in long incarcerations), LWOP is still as effective as capital punishment, a severe, effective and permanent solution. 

• It usurps authority that belongs to God. Carter makes an interesting comment in this regard: " We remember God's forgiveness of Cain, who killed Abel, and the adulterer King David, who had Bathsheba's husband killed. Jesus forgave an adulterous woman sentenced to be stoned to death and explained away the 'eye for an eye' scripture." I would take it a step further. God said "Vengeance is mine." (Romans 12:9). This lust for revenge, either individually or corporately, is a wresting away of a right that belongs to God. I realize there are many scriptures that may be used to justify capital punishment. Yet historically, the practice was most used (and abused) by totalitarian, amoral and God-less societies, from the Romans of Jesus's day to the Nazi, Soviet, Chinese and Middle Eastern governments of our own time.

• It may kill/have killed innocent people. No doubt this was more true in the past, before improvements in forensic science and DNA testing. Yet wrong decisions are probably still being made, and many are being reversed. In the final analysis, a wrongly imprisoned person can be released--a wrongly executed person cannot be resurrected (at least by the state).

• Finally, as a Christian, consider that as long as a person is alive, he or she has the chance to allow God to perform a work of real redemption. Read the stories of Karla Faye Tucker (executed in Texas in 1998), Jeffrey Dahmer and Manson cult killers Susan Atkins and Charles "Tex" Watson, all who seem to have genuinely embraced Christ. Thanks to saints like the late Charles Colson, prisons are full of such stories.

I am a peace with this decision. It has come with a lot of prayer and thought. But I do have a regret. In the past, I have challenged several people who were pro-abortion, yet anti-capital punishment, by saying that I would become anti-death penalty if they would become either pro-life or pro-death penalty, and thus we would both be consistent. I have lost that leverage.

And I have one interesting conundrum. If it weren't for capital punishment, Jesus would never have died on the cross, and I would still be lost, with no hope.
--Wayne S.