Death Penalty: Re: Eric E. vision 2020

["Ted Moffett" <ted_moffett@hotmail.com>]

Eric, and others

Thanks for the follow-up!  We may disagree, but I sense from you a kind of 
sincerity and lack of duplicity that I find comforting, unlike some of the 
other Christian's I have been trying to engage in honest debate with, who 
really DO NOT address the points I make when we exchange ideas, past one or 
two exchanges.

I am pretty sure you are the Eric I have known to be a musician in the 
Moscow area.  If so, I also love music, and have proclaimed it my "Religion" 
many times, though I mean this metaphorically, of course.
I find much of the spiritual music of Western civilization to be marvelous 
and truly inspired, so my friends who find me listening to Hildegard von 
Bingen (spelling?) are taken aback by the religious critic enthralled by the 
music of a medieval nun.

Anyways, if you remember, I offered to present to you scholarly works by 
Christian thinkers who are at polar opposites on the death penalty, both for 
and completely against.  Remember?  This is my way of demonstrating the 
seriousness of this disagreement within Christianity.

A clever enough mind can find arguments and facts to support just about any 
position on anything, and make it sound reasonable.  Most people believe 
what they do based on their upbringing and emotions and peer pressure, and 
what makes them economically or politically successful (how many politicians 
go to church to push up the polls?), etc.  Most want to believe their 
choices are rational and freely chosen, at least here in the USA where 
individuality and freedom is an image to live up to, even if to a great 
extent this is an illusion.

To your latest assertion that a life sentence is execution, I believe you 
have not surveyed the opinions of those serving life sentences to discover 
if they agree with you.  There are many serving life sentences in prison who 
know they will die in prison, but have still found life worth living, and 
who are you to say the life they have found is equivalent to an execution?  
What prompted you to make such an unfounded statement?  And given the 
ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN errors that our justice system will make in determining 
guilt, what would you say to the relatives of the people who spent years in 
prison on death row only to be released when it was proven they were 
innocent, if they had been executed, and then proved innocent.  This is such 
an egregious wrong that to avoid the possibility it will ever happen is 
enough by itself to ban the death penalty, though of course society will pay 
a cost for this decision, as you indicate.  You forget perhaps that to 
insure the fairness of the death penalty there are incredible costs to 
society also, which must be balanced against the costs of life in prison.  
But who made the decision that justice is just a matter of dollars and 
cents?

Ted

>From: Eric Engerbretson <votive@earthlink.net>
>To: <ted_moffett@hotmail.com>
>Subject: Eric E.  vision 2020
>Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2002 23:39:52 -0700
>
>Ted,
>
>I sent this to the 2020 list, but I don't think it made it on somehow, so I
>thought I'd send it to you directly:
>
>
>
>Ted wrote:
>
>It is not always true that someone who has murdered will murder again,
>especially if they are locked up for life, so Mr. Wilson's assertion is
>false that if you do not execute someone guilty of murder you are in effect
>             sentencing the murderer's next victim to death.
>
>
>Locking a criminal in a cage until he dies IS executing him.... it simply
>takes a bit longer and millions more tax dollars that could have been 
>better
>spent.  I believe that captial conviction should be tougher to prove (as 
>the
>Bible commands: "two or three witness", DNA, etc.), so that there are no
>false verdicts, and the penalty should be tougher to survive.
>
>Eric Engerbretson
>




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