The Death Penalty and Me

“Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made man.”  Meaning: “one, who takes another person’s life, has forfeit his own right to life, because man has an inviolable value.”  (Genesis 9:6, NIV)

I have lived in two death penalty states in my life.  One with a more brutal past and one with a more brutal present.  The first state is Virginia; it has had a total of 1277 executions since the institution of the death penalty.  Virginia’s bloody past now barely registers.  The number of executions since 1976 has been 102 and the death row population is 21 and only one of those people is a woman.

By contrast, California has only had 709 executions since institution, and 13 since 1976.  But their death row population is 667.  California’s never ever grants clemencies no matter how reformed the convicted felon has become as we saw with the gang leader back in 2006.  Virginia has granted 7 clemencies. 

I don’t think that the Death penalty is a deterrent to crime, because if a person does not respect the life of others, they do not respect their own.  The murder rates for both these states are similar, Virginia is lower at 5.2 per 100,000 people, and California is slightly higher at 6.8, and this seems to be climbing.

I also checked out the crime in my country of Panama,   The crime there seems to be climbing as well, but what I found was that Panama was given one of the highest ranking for tourist safety from the Pinkerton Intelligence Agency.   Of course if you walk around flashing your money, it is going to be taken but who does that?  Recently, a government study on crime in Latin America found Panama with a lower crime rate than Costa Rica, which is typically thought as the safest Latin American country to travel to. There is no “Death Penalty” in Panama.(Schabas, 2002) Panama abolished the death penalties along with it’s declaration of Independence in 1903.  It is part of a group of Latin American Abolitionist countries that include Ecuador, Uruguay, Costa Rica, Colombia and Venezuela. ( Anckar, 2004) Panama has remained an abolitionist country independent of what regime ran the country.  In light of that, and its Crime rate, I really don’t think the Death Penalty Really helps that much.  I had not realized that having lived in a relatively safe place would magnify the crime that I hear of in the news to gargantuan measures.

Now my position on the death penalty has changed from my harsher beginnings.  When I was a kid, I was brutal in my views on the death penalty.  What was wrong is wrong and I believed in “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth…” (Exodus 21:23-25, NIV).  I wanted so badly to see a person pay for what ever they did, with a like brutality.  As I grew older I began to realize that there were things that weren’t so clear cut.

As I am growing in my faith I find myself looking to the souls of these people that get put on Death row.  Though capital punishment is a philosophical, humanistic and social issue, it is also a religious issue; since it deals with morality and mortality.  It brings up existential questions that many Christians have with this subject. The most important and conclusive fact is that the Bible as a principle accepts the capital punishment as a legitimate form of punishment. The Bible gives “the divine sanctification” to the death penalty.

God commands capital punishment as his expression of righteousness.  He imposes punishment because he values mankind and when someone crosses the line this is something very serious to the creator.  Without order and without punishment we would only be creatures lacking responsibility that could do whatever we wanted to each other without being held responsible for anything.

But there was one time, (Gen 4:1-16, NIV). Cain is not sentenced to death even though he murdered his brother Abel. Instead God chose to mark him, so that he would not be killed.  It was a crime of passion, and he was allowed to live. If God could do that, who are we to take that upon our hands?   

Then Jesus Came and paid it all… So if Jesus paid for the sins, why should we put someone to death?  I am still a bit gray in how I feel about the death penalty as I am still trying to figure it out.

 Youth who have been convicted of violent crime should not be subject to the death penalty.  I believe that Youths are more likely to change for the better in a more nurturing environment.  The only way that they can be nurtured is by remaining alive.

References

Schabas, W (2002). The abolition of the death penalty in international law. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Anckar, C (2004).  Determinants of the death penalty , Florence,KY.  Routledge pg,119

Death Penalty Information Center; Death penalty information by state  retrieved: March 14, 2009 http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/state/