“No state can legally claim the right to kill”

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Agreed. We do not have the right to kill except in self defense. The death penalty just doens’t fall under that condition. The only defense I see of the death penalty lately is that they are too much of a burden to keep imprisoned and fed. Since when has a fellow human being for any reason been too much of a burden?
 
as i see it, society can take away a privilege but not a right. liberty is a privilege, but life is a right. therefore society can take away a privilege, say for example, by imprisoning someone, but cannot take away their rights (such as the right to life, which is God given).
 
How then, can states fail to protect the most innocent of all, the unborn, when someone wants to kill them?
 
vern_humphrey said:
How then, can states fail to protect the most innocent of all, the unborn, when someone wants to kill them?
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Because states have obtusely refused to recognize that an unborn is actually a person in its own right, whereas some monsters are assumed to be human.:mad:
 
helen_m said:
as i see it, society can take away a privilege but not a right. liberty is a privilege, but life is a right. therefore society can take away a privilege, say for example, by imprisoning someone, but cannot take away their rights (such as the right to life, which is God given).
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The State does not deprive the person of their right to life, the person deprives themselves of it.

Here is what Pope Pius XII had to say about it in a speech to medical professionals.
Even when it is the question of the execution of a man condemned to death, the State does not dispose of the individual’s right to live. It is then reserved to the public power to deprive the condemned of the benefit of life, in expiation of his fault, when already, by his crime, he has dispossessed himself of the right to life
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Pius XII, "Speech to the International Congress on the Histopathology of the Nervous System (September 13, 1952)

What was really interesting is that the Pope was making a clear distinction between the practice of euthanasia and the death penalty. That in the case of the first, the person has not forfeited their right to life, while in the case of capital crimes, the right to life has been forfeited.

Also note how Pope Pius referred to the life of the condemmned. It became a ‘benefit’ not a right.
 
rwoehmke said:
Because states have obtusely refused to recognize that an unborn is actually a person in its own right, whereas some monsters are assumed to be human.:mad:
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Precisely. And as long as this situation exists, it is very difficult to discuss social justice – how can any society that permits such things be just?
 
Does that archbishop have a heart? He seems to care less about the little girls who were raped and murdered!
 
Gisella said:
Does that archbishop have a heart? He seems to care less about the little girls who were raped and murdered!
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No to mention that he denies these men the dignity of execution.

Yes, I said “dignity.” To be treated as a free moral agent and held to consequences, is to be treated with dignity. To be killed when your action warrants death is to be permitted to take responsibility for your acts.

Also, of course, it is still questionable whether, when a person’s crime otherwise warrants death, the state has the right to force the people (by the coercive power of taxation) to feed and shelter those who are, in essence, their mortal enemies. Whether, that is, someone’s crime renders them incapable of living among us, and renders it incumbent upon the state to restrain them in perpetuity–does the state have the right to demand we keep our enemies alive, when it is admitted (even by all but the most fanatical seamless-garmenters) that they warrant death?

There is also the fact that it is a denial of human dignity to say someone can be “rendered harmless”–it is not possible so to do, without violating their basic human rights (lobotomy would do it, short of that I doubt it). Have the humility to kill such offenders, rather than the hubris and presumption to claim they cannot hurt anyone.

But then, I am not subject to angelistic fallacies.
 
The idea that the death penalty is immoral seems to contravene God’s own laws through the Old Testament (especially Leviticus) where execution of guilty parties for certain crimes is not only allowed, but commanded. Jesus never refutes the judicial act of execution, but the taking of ‘personal’ vengeance (as the Pharisees had re-interpreted the ‘eye for an eye’ verse into saying it was okay for one to get back at others but the original intention of the verse was to dictate how judicial punishment should be apportioned); however, I’ll add I think we have botched up the death penalty.

If you look in history at ancient countries that used the death penalty (i.e. stoning in Ancient Israel, the brazen bull in Greece and crucifixion in Rome or beheadings and burning at the stake in Europe), you’ll see that it was supposed to be cruel and public so as to be a deterrent (I’ll bet if we turned rape into a crime that would warrant public, as in televised nationally, stonning or crucifixion, said crime would go down drastically). Now, though, we do everything we can to make the execution as humane as possible and as private as possible, it loses its deterrent affect (which, I think, is the real goal of executions…after all, one could argue keeping someone alive as long as possible but locked up in a tiny cell for the rest of their life is a worse punishment than say lethal injection or something).
 
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