The Conservative Case Against the Death Penalty

Reader Comments
Back to article

If you have some time, just read this article. You may come to a different conclusion than I did. But, the evidence is pretty convincing. And, isn't our criminal justice system based on guilt beyond a reasonable doubt?
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/09/07/090907fa_fact_grann

Mer of CA 11:03AM April 07, 2011

Your comment is so right on. Thank you!

Pamela Skjolsvik of TX 9:24PM April 03, 2011

The Catholic Church never embraced the seamless garment of life doctrine of Cardinal Bernadine. She couldn't.
Consistent with Church teachings, even Bernadine understood the moral/theological differences between the execution of a guilty murderer and the abortion of an innocent.
The very recent (final amendment, 2003), official Church statement on the death penalty is based upon the secular security of prisons, allegedly rendering the need for executions "very rare, if not practically non-existent" (CCC2267).
The secular realities of the world's prison systems conflict with that conclusion and notable Catholic scholars find this secular based change in Catholic teaching in conflict with traditional and, once thought, eternal teachings on this topic, as in the same section:
"For your lifeblood I will surely require a reckoning.... Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for God made man in his own image." "This teaching remains necessary for all time." (CCC2260)
This is a command, the foundation of which is pro life, based upon justice, not secular security.
The current Church death penalty standard is a matter of prudential judgement, morally licit, meaning good Catholics can support more executions. No Catholic can approve of any abortion, under any circumstances, as such are viewed as always a profound moral evil.
Other issues in the pro life discussion: The Church teaches that killing in just wars, self defense and defense of others can be morally licit and a moral obligation. The seamless garment requires much more nuance than you revealed.
It is untrue that "more than 130 people have been released from death row because of evidence of their innocence" (2). You simply accepted a blatant anti death penalty deception. Possibly, the number is 25 or about 0.3% of the 8000 so sentenced. None were executed. 8 were removed from death row, based upon DNA exclusion.
In Illinois, the death penalty system had been completely reformed and no current death row cases, all sentenced under those reforms, had any claim or evidence of actual innocence. . Gov. Quinn was well aware of that.
There has not been a confirmed case of an innocent executed in the US, at least since 1930 (3). Cases whereby murderers have murdered, again, just since 1973, are almost too many to count, but likely number around 28,000 (4).
The death penalty is a greater protector of innocents, in at least three ways, over a life sentence (5).
Of all human endeavors that put innocents at risk, is there one with a better record of sparing innocent lives than the US death penalty? Unlikely.
There is no evidence that the reduction in death sentences has any connection to the number of innocents sent to death row over the past 38 years.
contd

Dudley SHarp of TX 11:54AM April 03, 2011

If you took another persons life no matter how it was done and proven guilty. as far as im concerned you had just then gave up you rights as a human and should leave this world the same way as the life you took was. everyone has choices in their life some obey the laws some done. take a look at society with children today they are lazy no respect most have no ambitions to be anything jsut skipping by life day by day taking what ever easy route then can. kids today are out of control why ? because the is no discipline giving at home because parents are afraid they might go to jail when disciplining their child how ridiculous. 20 plus years ago thats how you learned respect if you were lacking it. now im not saying a life beating but a belt sure worked for my family 1 time with that and the next day we were on the right track. i see my brother raising his 3 kids and they have no respect for anything not even our freedom and choose not to honor our own flag that so many Americans have dies to defend to give us iur freedom. i am just sick of all this dispute. Back prisoners it costs more to house 1 prisoner than most Americans even make in 1 year, and they get better health care. something is wrong with the picture. in my opinion and i know many others that agree. i am a proud supporter of our freedom. thank you.

Freedom isn't FREE someone always pay. of NM 1:53PM April 01, 2011

I hope its ok to put in this link...
http://www.greatamericans.magnify.net/video/PTSD-I-Grieve-2
Before he was a guy on death row he was somebody ...
He didn't come from outer space... he grew up here... now
Some where in the life of the man on death row
was a profound loss...
he passed that loss on to his victim...
I'm using this one... because I am a veteran... and I know what
it feels like...
Any idea how many soldiers have carried home their profound loss
and committed suicide because they couldn't carry it any more
or murder... or sought out death by cop to end it.
Or maybe he was so battered in their childhood they stole some other little kids
childhood from them ... passing the loss on to them...
It keeps going... each one wanting to open up a hole in somebody
elses life so they can try and dump some of their grief into it. Not ok.
Its the circle.. the pass the grief on circle... that needs to stop...
One person at a time.
Starting with me... committing to not passing it on.
Without Easter Sunday, there is nothing Good about Good Friday.
It is really bad.. and the Apostles ran... carrying their grief...
who am I now without Jesus...
So when a victims family comes forward and says... let it stop... Here.
It is a profound Sign of God's Love...
In the Breath of that Moment... I hear... He's ALIVE! and among us still.
...amen

Be Peace of TX 12:56PM April 01, 2011

While I admire them for being forgiving. They don't understand difference between justice and forgiveness. They don't have a bit of empathy and sympathy for other murder victims' families. They are just fooled and influenced by the abolitionists who want to protect murderers! This MVFR, journey of hope are people who think murderers are victims! IF the whole of USA abolishes capital punishment, our murder rates will rise like the 1970s when we did not have capital punishment. To those abolitionist: “When I think of all the sweet, innocent people who suffer extreme pain and who die every day in this country, then the outpouring of sympathy for cold-blooded killers enrages me. Where is your (expletive deleted) sympathy for the good, the kind and the innocent? This fixation on murderers is a sickness, a putrefaction of the soul. It's the equivalent of someone spending all day mooning and cooing over a handful of human feces. Sick and abnormal.” quote by Charley Reese

JusticeX84 6:03AM April 01, 2011

"GOD is the only one who can and should take a life. We have to stop playing GOD in this country."
Nonsense!
If he have not a divine right I frankly admit that he has no human right--no warrant or authority derived from man--that will authorize such a solemn and fearful act. Though we should not, in the first instance, take into account the consequences of any decision, as having direct authority in influencing our reasonings upon the question, still it is important that we have some respect for them as arguments and incentives to a calm discreet and patient investigation of the premises from which are to be adduced conclusions so deeply involving the interests of the world.
And what, let me inquire, would be the consequences should it be decided that no man has no right to take away the life of man on any account whatsoever? Is it not the right to inflict upon him any penal /315/ pain whatever involved in this question? A single stripe may kill; nay, a single stripe inflicted by an officer of justice, and that no very violent one, has sometimes killed. A man has no right to punish at all in any way, if he may not in that punishment lawfully take away the life of him that is subjected to it. He has not even the right to imprison or confine a person in jail, workhouse or penitentiary, if he have not, in any case whatever, the right to kill. How many die in jails, workhouses and penitentiaries, from causes to which they would not have been exposed but in those places of punishment!
But, further, if a man has not the right to kill, nations have no right to go to war in any case, or for any purpose whatever. We argue that whatever power a Government has is first found in the people; that men can not innocently or rightfully do that conventionally, or in states, which they can not do in their individual capacities. True, when a government is organized, the citizens or subjects of it cannot use or exercise the powers to legislate, to judge, to punish, which, by the social compact, they have, for wise purposes, surrendered or transferred to the Government. Still, the fundamental fact must not be lost sight of- -that NATIONS HAVE THE RIGHT TO DO THOSE THINGS ONLY WHICH EVERY INDIVIDUAL MAN HAD A RIGHT TO DO ANTERIOR TO THE NATIONAL FORM OF SOCIETY. If, then, man had not originally a right to kill him who killed his brother, society never could, but from a special law of the creator, have such a right. And such, we may hereafter show, was originally the divine law. The natural reason of man, or a divine law, enacted that the blood of the murdered should be avenged by the blood of the murderer, and that the brother of the murdered was pre-eminently the person to whom belonged the right of avenging his blood.

JusticeX84 5:55AM April 01, 2011

Dear TomW,
http://www.mvfr.org

Scott Taylor of MA 1:31PM March 31, 2011

GOD is the only one who can and should take a life. We have to stop playing GOD in this country.

Maria of CA 1:18PM March 31, 2011

We are able to reverse judgment or pardon those have been unjustly imprisoned. It happens everyday.
However, there is no way to pardon those innocents who have been killed by the state.
Further, many of those convicted await their death for years. Often they have truly changed their spiritual identity, personality and character. Few among us would claim the same identity and values at 50 as we had at 15. Who then are we executing decades after the crime? Perhaps a truly different person than who committed the crime.
Protect society by segregating murderers form society and other inmates. But, understand that people make mistakes; criminals, judges and juries. There's no redress or worldly redemption for the dead.

R.L. Schaefer of CA 12:07PM March 31, 2011