Re: Death Penalty: vision 2020: Eric E.

[Eric Engerbretson <votive@earthlink.net>]

Ted wrote:

>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.

I would love to read them-- but I would always have in mind that one side of
the issue must be right, even if I am never able to fully determine which.
It would be stupid of me to assume that the basic tenet of both opposing
positions could be simultaneously God's true intent.   :¬)

>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?

Well, Ted, the question "who am I to say...?" could be easily turned toward
you and asked "Who are you...to say they are?"
I might also feel life was worth living, if I murdered someone gruesomely,
and yet still received three meals a day, cable TV, a rec room, and a warm
bed for the rest of my life. The real question is: is there a true standard
of justice that is outside of the human realm, and therefore unltimately
binding, or are justice and punishment simply an average of what most people
think is best at the time (a point in history and a point on the map).

>What prompted you to make such an unfounded statement?

The image in my mind seems pretty simple and was a pretty "founded"
statement, to my thinking.
If you were to take a dog, for example, and lock it in a cage until it died
of old age, it seems to me that is just another form of killing it. Some
would say even more cruel and inhumane than shooting it on the spot.  You
would have deprived it of its right to a natural life of freedom-- which
seems to me to be a form of killing, albeit prolonged.  Of course my
original statement that irked you was bordering on hyperbole, but it rings
true to me that being locked in a cage and deprived of freedom is simply a
long, slow, undignified death. I, personally, would prefer the dignity of
facing a quick, painless death that truly signified and symbolized the
horror of the crime I had committed.  I would feel humanity more valued and
respected that way.  By the way, have you seen the numbers of first-degree
murderers who are sentenced to life, and yet are later paroled anyway? Have
you seen the stats on the number of years the average first-degree murderer
serves in the U.S.?  I won't venture to remember the exact data, but I
remember upon reading those numbers having to pick my jaw up off the floor
and feeling simultaneously nauseous.

>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.

What I would "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" (*whew*)-- is probably the
same sort
of  thing you, Ted, would say to the relatives of a five-year old who was
raped and murdered by a man who had a four-foot-long rap sheet and was
supposed to have been in jail at the time.  The question is: which sort of
scenario happens more often?

I think our current system would work far better if criminals were simply
required to serve the amount of time that
the judge sentenced them to-- now there's a radical concept for you.

It seems that your decision to reject the death penalty is based on the fact
that mistakes are made that result in innocent people suffering. It appears
to me that any and every human system of justice will make mistakes that
result in innocent people suffering.  So-- since you want to talk facts and
logic, Ted, would it not then make sense to go with the system that results
in the comparatively LEAST amount of innocent suffering?  What if one system
provided a far smaller amount of suffering than the other?

If you look at the facts, and stay objective-- far, far more innocent people
suffer all sorts of horrors and injustices, and far, far more ill is done to
our society by criminals who are set free too soon by our current system, or
let off entirely, than the number of folks who have served time or been
executed unjustly.  Yes, the latter is horribly offensive to our visceral
justice-meters, but if you look at the former honestly and comprehensively
you will see that the one batch of suffering and unfairness far outweighs
the other.  

In my biased, fundamentalist opinion, the whole mess started when we thought
we could come up with a better system than God had devised.

God commanded the death penalty. So our trying to rise above that is us
saying we're wiser and more "in-the-know" than God.  The reason so many
innocent people have been convicted/executed/almost executed is because we
did it our way-- with a jury system that God never intended. Jurors will
always be swayed by emotions, and jurors will always be biased and jaded.
Jurors will always make mistakes.  Jurors will always be PEERS. I don't want
to judged by my PEERS! I want to be judged by someone who knows more about
law and who is trained to be more objective than my peers!  Ever since I
served jury duty and witnessed personally a largely incompetant jury, I very
greatly fear being judged by my peers.  But... God said the death penalty
could only be administered when there were two or three eye-witnesses. That
makes it far more unlikely to make a mistake than with our "enlightened"
justice system. Add todays' DNA testing and forensic medicine, and you would
have a pretty airtight system.

But if you want to argue that a system should be abandoned or rejected
because of a very small percentage of error (regardless of how severe the
errors would be for an individual), then we should far more quickly reject
the current system of imprisonment and parole.  Look at the numbers of
murderers who should have been in jail for an earlier crime when they
committed the murder. Look at the numbers of how many get out and kill
again.  Look at the numbers of how many the state determines are
rehabilitated that aren't. Look at the numbers of how many the state
determines are lunatics when they aren't or sane when they aren't.  Look at
how many criminals commit crime after crime after crime, and train others to
do so, because they don't have cause to fear the system (in fact, they've
been proactively trained that they don't have to fear it).  I once was
picked up hitchhiking by a man who lived in his car for a few months of
every year, and then purposely didn't pay his child support, and skipped
probation, so that he would get to spend most of each year in prison,
because, and I quote, "Life inside is so much more comfortable and enjoyable
than life on the outside."

You can count the mistakes on the capital punishment side on your fingers--
to count the mistakes on the side of the current system you need a Pentium
III.

The side you are rooting for makes far more blunders and mistakes that ruin
lives than the capital punishment system does. So, since the current system
makes so many more mistakes, then shall we abandon it and go with the system
that makes fewer mistakes and does a better job of deterrance?  Somehow I
think that even with "facts and logic" on its side, most people won't. But
why?

>But who made the decision that justice is just a matter of dollars and
>cents?

>Ted

No one did and I certainly never would.  I was simply trying to emphatically
make the point that something seems strange about a system that spends
$50,000-80,000 dollars a year to keep a criminal comfy, and yet can't
provide health coverage for it's honest citizens, and can't afford to give
decent pay to its most valuable employees-- educators.

I am very glad to hear that you love music, Ted. It is almost my greatest
passion. Come out and hear me sometime!  I can still sing pretty good for a
guy with strange logic and a whacky brain. Musicians are supposed to be
wierd-- it's part of the image we have to keep up. Please know that no
matter how presumptuous I may sound in my writing, I mean everything I say
with all due respect to all types of people that God created in his image. I
enjoy debating and discussing, but I never intend to offend, and I believe
love and fellowship has to overide all argument.  I hope that is clear. That
is one reason why I love music-- it usually communicates clearly and without
offense.

My best regards,

Eric Engerbretson