Capital punishment

Wed Jan 30, 2002 9:47 am

Since we are on the subject of capital punishment, here are my thoughts:

First I want to acknowledge that no one can claim to be completely right
when discussing moral issues. But the position one takes (with conviction
and forethought) speaks for where his heart lies.

From a moral point of view, I take no issue with those who patently oppose
capital punishment -- even for the most heinous and deliberate torture and
taking of human lives -- if they felt it to be an agonizingly unsavory
position to uphold. If one feels that it is unjust to let murderers (and
only in cases where incontrovertible proof of guilt and malice can be
established) live while the victim(s) direct and indirect lay dead or
suffer, that the killer deserves to die but we simply do not have the
god-given right to take lives, then the argument for opposition is
understandable and acceptable. There are times when we are prohibited to act
on what is right, but the will of the heart is what we are measured by.

For those who uphold a murderer's right to live as an issue separating the
deed from the man, how then shall that person live his life? Do we need to
tend to his nutrition, health, comfort and entertainment? Why incarcerate
him at all, since punishment is an archaic and barbarous concept in this age
of enlightenment. It will not bring back the dead, and many pooh-pooh the
deterrence factor. With no moral outrage and cavalier dismissal of the
plight of the victim, to ardently support and defend the life of a murderer
is, it seems to me, ironic in its unintended mockery of the dead and the
lives that should have been preserved but was taken away.

It is noble to feel pity or compassion (moral, not personal) towards one who
committed acts of murder. There are those who await the possibility of
remorse or penitence. I would say that if is to be, then he would then take
his own life at the realization of the gravity of his deed. Compassion from
a moral perspective is understandable, but I find it hard to accept those
who would try to defend or befriend an unrepentant murderer. Where is the
outrage for the crime? Where is the contempt for evil? Where is the tear for
the victim?

There is no moral without justice. One may relegate justice to god, but to
not loudly judge in one's heart that a murder as wrong and deserving of
punishment allows evil to lurk and fester. If a society holds each life to
the highest of esteem, it must be demonstrated by the severity of punishment
it metes out when one is brutally diminished.