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LittleSoldier
Guest
Thank you, Ender. I do appreciate your help with this.
- Status
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LittleSoldier
Guest
Please read post #646. I would like to discuss the issues, please. If you have a problem with any post you are free to report said post to the moderator.
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dudleysharp
Guest
Yes, I believe he did.
He states: âThere may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia.â
Any good Catholic may have a legitimate. different opinons on the death penalty. Legitimate means that it is acceptable to have a different opinon than the Chuch. If it were not allowed, it would not be legitimate.
That is because it is based upon a prudential judgement, with which I find both EV and CCC have some serious problems.
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Hboggs
Guest
I support the death penalty 100% not so as to âdeter future criminalsâ, which we know does not work, but in order to rid society of those who by their actions have brought the sentence upon themselves. As a child, offenses such a rape also carried the death penalty and we had far fewer such crimes. Now you can murder someone and more than likely not face the death penalty. I am not trying to change the mind of those who oppose the death penalty as I have as much chance as they do of changing mine. Hangâum on the courthouse square as in the old days and let people see the consequence of not obeying the law.
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Bill1940
Guest
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billsnaer
Guest
Some arguments are never over. California voters passed initiative propositions in 1972 and 1978 that firmly established the death penalty. In a shocking 1986 election, the Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court and two Associate Justices were denied reconfirmation, largely because of their rulings overturning death penalty convictions. In a 1986 Field Poll, 83 percent of Californians supported the death penalty. A 2006 Field Poll registered only 67 percent, but another Field Poll in 2010 showed a rise to 70 percent support.
With this forty year history, overturning the California death penalty does not look promising, but Senator Loni Hancock (D-Oakland) has introduced a measure in the California Senate to do just that. The measure has received the explicit support of the California Legislative Network, the legislative lobbying arm of the California Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Both clergy and lay Catholics professionally involved in the institutional Church are overwhelmingly opposed to the death penalty. Although there are notable exceptions, this would seem to be a matter of political ideology rather than Catholic theology, though the ideology is dressed as theology. The matter is often discussed as if rejection of capital punishment is a self-evident principle of Catholic teaching, but it doesnât usually take two millennia to discover self-evident moral principles.
The 1994 first edition of the Catechism in Paragraph 2266, specifically allowed the death penalty âin cases of extreme gravity.â The 1997 second edition removed that language and inserted language in Paragraph 2267 that still allows the death penalty âif this is the only way of effectively defending human livesâŚ.â So, the question is whether the death penalty saves lives.
Supporters of Senator Hancockâs bill claim that Californiaâs budget woes make the cost of enforcing the death penalty untenable. Opponents say that cost can be solved by streamlining the appeals process. But, the debate should not be about dollars. How much would we be willing to pay in taxes to avoid the killing of a teenage rape victim or an abducted child?
Opponents of capital punishment deny its potential for prevention. Sister Helen Prejean spoke at a March, 2011 luncheon sponsored by the Center for Restorative Justice Works at St. Angela Marici Parish in Brea, California. She is known for her book, âDead Man Walking,â that recounts her spiritual guidance of Elmo Patrick Sonnier before his execution.
Eight people from the Diocese of San Bernardino attended the event, and the diocesan newspaper enthusiastically covered the meeting. It reported that âSr. Prejean spoke excitedly about the recent repeal of the death penalty in Illinois and urged California Catholics to push for the same in their state.â
Less than a month later, Jitka Vesel was murdered in Illinois. DuPage County Stateâs Attorney Robert Berlin revealed that, âThe defendant did indicate that he researched whether Illinois had a death penalty and the defendant was aware that the death penalty had recently been abolished, so he knew then that he could go through with this plan.â
Sonnier makes an especially bad poster child for abolition activists. After raping a teenage girl, Sonnier and his brother killed her and her boyfriend because Sonnier did not want to go back to prison. He risked his life for that extra chance of avoiding apprehension. He represents the segment of criminals for whom the death penalty is not a deterrent. But the killer of Jitka Vesel represents the segment for whom the death penalty is a deciding factor. Is it not obvious that, without the death penalty, more rape victims and abducted children would be killed to improve the perpetratorsâ chances of avoiding arrest?
It is a fundamental truth of human nature that we use less of things as the price increases; the economists call this âmarginal demand.â True, not everyone buys a car that uses less gas, and not every murderer lays down his weapon for fear of the costly penalty of death. But, when one does, a life is saved.
The abolitionists have one good argument â the remote possibility that an innocent person could be sentenced to death because he was found guilty âbeyond a reasonable doubt.â This problem could be resolved by changing the death penalty standard to âbeyond any doubt.â Some murderers would then escape execution, but the lifesaving deterrence of the death penalty would be retained, and the fear of its unjust application removed.
In the end, itâs a trade-off. Whose life should pay for a vicious murder, the murdererâs, or that of an innocent victim like Vesel, who would have been spared if the death penalty had not been abolished?
With this forty year history, overturning the California death penalty does not look promising, but Senator Loni Hancock (D-Oakland) has introduced a measure in the California Senate to do just that. The measure has received the explicit support of the California Legislative Network, the legislative lobbying arm of the California Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Both clergy and lay Catholics professionally involved in the institutional Church are overwhelmingly opposed to the death penalty. Although there are notable exceptions, this would seem to be a matter of political ideology rather than Catholic theology, though the ideology is dressed as theology. The matter is often discussed as if rejection of capital punishment is a self-evident principle of Catholic teaching, but it doesnât usually take two millennia to discover self-evident moral principles.
The 1994 first edition of the Catechism in Paragraph 2266, specifically allowed the death penalty âin cases of extreme gravity.â The 1997 second edition removed that language and inserted language in Paragraph 2267 that still allows the death penalty âif this is the only way of effectively defending human livesâŚ.â So, the question is whether the death penalty saves lives.
Supporters of Senator Hancockâs bill claim that Californiaâs budget woes make the cost of enforcing the death penalty untenable. Opponents say that cost can be solved by streamlining the appeals process. But, the debate should not be about dollars. How much would we be willing to pay in taxes to avoid the killing of a teenage rape victim or an abducted child?
Opponents of capital punishment deny its potential for prevention. Sister Helen Prejean spoke at a March, 2011 luncheon sponsored by the Center for Restorative Justice Works at St. Angela Marici Parish in Brea, California. She is known for her book, âDead Man Walking,â that recounts her spiritual guidance of Elmo Patrick Sonnier before his execution.
Eight people from the Diocese of San Bernardino attended the event, and the diocesan newspaper enthusiastically covered the meeting. It reported that âSr. Prejean spoke excitedly about the recent repeal of the death penalty in Illinois and urged California Catholics to push for the same in their state.â
Less than a month later, Jitka Vesel was murdered in Illinois. DuPage County Stateâs Attorney Robert Berlin revealed that, âThe defendant did indicate that he researched whether Illinois had a death penalty and the defendant was aware that the death penalty had recently been abolished, so he knew then that he could go through with this plan.â
Sonnier makes an especially bad poster child for abolition activists. After raping a teenage girl, Sonnier and his brother killed her and her boyfriend because Sonnier did not want to go back to prison. He risked his life for that extra chance of avoiding apprehension. He represents the segment of criminals for whom the death penalty is not a deterrent. But the killer of Jitka Vesel represents the segment for whom the death penalty is a deciding factor. Is it not obvious that, without the death penalty, more rape victims and abducted children would be killed to improve the perpetratorsâ chances of avoiding arrest?
It is a fundamental truth of human nature that we use less of things as the price increases; the economists call this âmarginal demand.â True, not everyone buys a car that uses less gas, and not every murderer lays down his weapon for fear of the costly penalty of death. But, when one does, a life is saved.
The abolitionists have one good argument â the remote possibility that an innocent person could be sentenced to death because he was found guilty âbeyond a reasonable doubt.â This problem could be resolved by changing the death penalty standard to âbeyond any doubt.â Some murderers would then escape execution, but the lifesaving deterrence of the death penalty would be retained, and the fear of its unjust application removed.
In the end, itâs a trade-off. Whose life should pay for a vicious murder, the murdererâs, or that of an innocent victim like Vesel, who would have been spared if the death penalty had not been abolished?
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Francis95
Guest
I do not support the death penalty for several reasnons. We are all called to love one another. Sometimes that is very difficult, even when it is something as simple as that idiot that just cut me off on the highway. I always have to look at Jesus as an example on how I should act. We are all called to imitate Jesus and Jesus loved all. Think of the person you love most in the worldâŚif that person committed a murder, could you be the one to flip the switch? Could you be the one to kill, via the electric chair, your spouse or 16 year-old child that was tried as an adult? I agree with the church that that person needs to be punished but also time to reflect on their sin and repent. I believe I am also sinning when I deny someone the opportunity to repent and confess a sin. People can change. I believe that life, a gift from God, is sacred and should be cherished so I donât approve of abortion and I do not approve of the death penalty.
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LittleSoldier
Guest
I love your point about believing you are sinning when you deny those opportunities to people. I think thatâs true although although I hadnât thought of it before. I agree. Certainly we are all called to follow Jesus and His teachings and one of those teachings is âLove your neighbor as yourself.â I donât see the death penalty as an act of love. I agree with the Church that it should be restricted to when there is no other way to protect the public - after all, allowing a murderer to go around and kill innocent people isnât very loving to those innocent people. But executing - taking away the life (at least on earth) of a human being is not loving toward him.
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veggiebab
Guest
No I certainly donât
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LittleSoldier
Guest
First I would like to wish everyone a very happy Thanksgiving!
Second, I read the following article this morning, liked it and would like to share it:
Catholics and Capital Punishment
"Catholic opponents of the death penalty sometimes seem to lose sight of the primary purpose of punishment. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says, âPunishment has the primary aim of redressing the disorder introduced by the offense.â If I commit a serious offense against society, I bring about a disorder, and the point of punishment is to reestablish the lost order. If I willingly accept my punishment, âit assumes the value of expiation.â And it can protect you from future crimes I might commit. The Catechism thus gives three purposes of punishment: defending public order, protecting people, and moral change in the criminal.
"Paragraph 2267 reminds us that âthe traditional teaching of the church does not exclude recourse to the death penaltyâ but then adds, âif this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.â This appears to make a secondary purpose of punishment override the primary. That appearance has led to some fuzzy thinking. The correct meaning must be that the primary aim of punishment can be achieved short of exacting the death penalty. A single means-say, life imprisonment-restores the order lost by the crime, protects society against future crimes of the incarcerated, and gives the prisoner a chance to repent.
"The paragraph should not be read as making the protection of society trump everything else. Why? Because imprisonment protects society against future possible crimes. But the criminal cannot be punished for what he might do; he is in prison because of what he has already done. If life imprisonment is to serve the primary purpose of punishment, it must, like the death penalty, be primarily justified as sufficiently âredressing the disorder introduced by the offense.â
"Paragraph 2267 is concerned exclusively with a secondary purpose of punishment: protecting society. Unless, as suggested, âprotecting societyâ be taken to comprehend âredressing the disorder.â (Paragraph 2266 distinguishes âdefending public orderâ from âprotecting peopleâs safety.â) One sometimes hears in the clamor to end the death penalty that retribution is no longer the aim of punishment. But if there is no cause for retribution, punishment is unjust: All that would excuse it is the fear that someone might in the future harm us and that solitude might better his soul.
"Enthusiasm sometimes obscures the fact that the Catechism âdoes not exclude recourse to the death penalty.â However rare such recourse might be, even if it were only once in a millennium, it would have to be justified. The long and rich tradition of Catholic morality has made clear what that justification is. That doctrine is what would justify capital punishment, however rarely exacted. Which is why that doctrine must not be, however implicitly, trashed. We should not preen ourselves, as we join the somewhat motley parade of opponents of capital punishment, that we have advanced beyond our tradition to a higher plane of morality.
"Actually, the Holy Fatherâs campaign against having recourse to capital punishment is a corollary to his evaluation of dominant trends in modern culture. Ours, he has said, is a culture of death. We live in a country where, as Russ Hittinger puts it, the state whose primary purpose is to protect the lives of its citizens has farmed out the right to take innocent life to abortionists. Such a state loses the moral authority to exact the death penalty. It is not because we are so nice but because we live in such a bloody society that we might oppose having recourse to capital punishment.
"Neither should we invoke human dignity as if our free actions do not specify us morally. A murderer and an innocent babe are poles apart morally. To talk about capital crimes as if they do not touch the moral essence of the agent is to trivialize human behavior and adopt the outlook of most others who oppose the death penalty. They are against punishment as such. They will go on from capital punishment to campaign against life imprisonment-it is already happening in Europe. In the all-too-familiar modern twist, it is the one who exacts just punishment, not the criminal, who is condemned.
âCatholics must never forget how countercultural they are, even when they oppose the death penalty. Of course the liberal establishment opposes it but for essentially different reasons. They do not believe in moral responsibility. They do not believe in a life beyond this one. We should not even have words in common with the Gentiles, someone advised. That would be hard to do, but surely our thoughts have little in common with theirs.â
123helpme.com/view.asp?id=11178
Second, I read the following article this morning, liked it and would like to share it:
Catholics and Capital Punishment
"Catholic opponents of the death penalty sometimes seem to lose sight of the primary purpose of punishment. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says, âPunishment has the primary aim of redressing the disorder introduced by the offense.â If I commit a serious offense against society, I bring about a disorder, and the point of punishment is to reestablish the lost order. If I willingly accept my punishment, âit assumes the value of expiation.â And it can protect you from future crimes I might commit. The Catechism thus gives three purposes of punishment: defending public order, protecting people, and moral change in the criminal.
"Paragraph 2267 reminds us that âthe traditional teaching of the church does not exclude recourse to the death penaltyâ but then adds, âif this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.â This appears to make a secondary purpose of punishment override the primary. That appearance has led to some fuzzy thinking. The correct meaning must be that the primary aim of punishment can be achieved short of exacting the death penalty. A single means-say, life imprisonment-restores the order lost by the crime, protects society against future crimes of the incarcerated, and gives the prisoner a chance to repent.
"The paragraph should not be read as making the protection of society trump everything else. Why? Because imprisonment protects society against future possible crimes. But the criminal cannot be punished for what he might do; he is in prison because of what he has already done. If life imprisonment is to serve the primary purpose of punishment, it must, like the death penalty, be primarily justified as sufficiently âredressing the disorder introduced by the offense.â
"Paragraph 2267 is concerned exclusively with a secondary purpose of punishment: protecting society. Unless, as suggested, âprotecting societyâ be taken to comprehend âredressing the disorder.â (Paragraph 2266 distinguishes âdefending public orderâ from âprotecting peopleâs safety.â) One sometimes hears in the clamor to end the death penalty that retribution is no longer the aim of punishment. But if there is no cause for retribution, punishment is unjust: All that would excuse it is the fear that someone might in the future harm us and that solitude might better his soul.
"Enthusiasm sometimes obscures the fact that the Catechism âdoes not exclude recourse to the death penalty.â However rare such recourse might be, even if it were only once in a millennium, it would have to be justified. The long and rich tradition of Catholic morality has made clear what that justification is. That doctrine is what would justify capital punishment, however rarely exacted. Which is why that doctrine must not be, however implicitly, trashed. We should not preen ourselves, as we join the somewhat motley parade of opponents of capital punishment, that we have advanced beyond our tradition to a higher plane of morality.
"Actually, the Holy Fatherâs campaign against having recourse to capital punishment is a corollary to his evaluation of dominant trends in modern culture. Ours, he has said, is a culture of death. We live in a country where, as Russ Hittinger puts it, the state whose primary purpose is to protect the lives of its citizens has farmed out the right to take innocent life to abortionists. Such a state loses the moral authority to exact the death penalty. It is not because we are so nice but because we live in such a bloody society that we might oppose having recourse to capital punishment.
"Neither should we invoke human dignity as if our free actions do not specify us morally. A murderer and an innocent babe are poles apart morally. To talk about capital crimes as if they do not touch the moral essence of the agent is to trivialize human behavior and adopt the outlook of most others who oppose the death penalty. They are against punishment as such. They will go on from capital punishment to campaign against life imprisonment-it is already happening in Europe. In the all-too-familiar modern twist, it is the one who exacts just punishment, not the criminal, who is condemned.
âCatholics must never forget how countercultural they are, even when they oppose the death penalty. Of course the liberal establishment opposes it but for essentially different reasons. They do not believe in moral responsibility. They do not believe in a life beyond this one. We should not even have words in common with the Gentiles, someone advised. That would be hard to do, but surely our thoughts have little in common with theirs.â
123helpme.com/view.asp?id=11178
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veggiebab
Guest
Icannot possibly agree with the death penalty for 2 good reasons. 1. The person may be innocent and 2.Ibelieve nly Gd can
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4gsd
Guest
Iâm sorry to say that no, it is not a way different case than abortion. This is the principle of âThe Consistant Ethic of Lifeâ. If life could be compared toâŚsayâŚa brick wallâŚeach and every brick in that wall is integral to the structural integrity of that wall. If you remove one brick, or two bricks etcâŚwell, you then compromise that wallâs structural integrity. It is therefore for this reason that our Church, while condemning abortion can (and DOES) only logically condemn Capital Punishment, War, Imperialism etc. The consistent ethic of life philosophy is one of the most beautiful aspects of our Churchâs teaching when applied to everyday life.
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RWMorris
Guest
I voted YES. But I only support it in extreme situations.
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surritter
Guest
Sorry, but this doesnât quite square with Catholic teaching. There is indeed a consistent ethic of life, but the Church clearly teaches that abortion and capital punishment are eons apart, though on the same spectrum. Iâd be glad to quote official Church documents to this effect, if needed.
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billsnaer
Guest
In his book, âRender Unto Caesarâ (Doubleday,) Archbishop Charles J. Chaput brought some balance to the matter of giving equal status to issues like abortion and the death penalty. He wrote:
âIn offering his own thoughts on Catholic social teaching, the late Cardinal Joseph Bernadin warned against the misuse of his âseamless garmentâ imagery to falsely invest different social issues with the same moral gravity. Many social issues are important. Many require our attention. But some issues have more weight than others. Deliberately killing innocent human life, or standing by and allowing it, dwarfs all other issues.â
âIn offering his own thoughts on Catholic social teaching, the late Cardinal Joseph Bernadin warned against the misuse of his âseamless garmentâ imagery to falsely invest different social issues with the same moral gravity. Many social issues are important. Many require our attention. But some issues have more weight than others. Deliberately killing innocent human life, or standing by and allowing it, dwarfs all other issues.â
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estesbob
Guest
The church does not teach that at all In fact they teach that None of the other issues you mention rise to the level of abortion. Pope benedcit himself stated Catholics could in good conscience support capital punishment and the the wars being waged by the US.
I oppose the death penalty in all cases but do not like to see the Churchs teaching on it distorted. Although you you have not done so it is very common for Pro-choice Catholics to claim a moral equivalence between supporting abortion and supporting Capital punishment and thus rationalize voting for pro-abortion candidates being acceptable for Catholics
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LittleSoldier
Guest
Iâm afraid this is not Church teaching. First of all the Church does not condemn capital punishment; sections 2266 and 2267 in the CCC make it clear that capital punishment can be used. Abortion, on the other hand, is an intrinsic evil which can never be approved (which is why âpro-choice Catholicâ is an oxymoron).
The Church also does not condemn war, but unjust war. My Dad, a life-long Catholic who went to Mass every day after he retired, fought in WWII in the Navy. He didnât sin by doing so.
The right to life of unborn children forms the base upon which all other rights rest. Using your brick wall, the right to life of unborn children would be the row of bricks that, if removed, would cause the wall to topple. All the rights that every human being is entitled to just by virtue of being a human being mean nothing to a dead baby and that is why the Church fights so hard to end the practice of abortion.
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surritter
Guest
Now we know why you call yourself LittleSoldier! Good respect for our WWII vets 
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billsnaer
Guest
A MUCH-IGNORED ASPECT OF THE CATHOLIC CATECHISMâS TEACHING ON THE DEATH PENALTY
Paragraph 2267 quotes and references Paragraph 56 of âEvangelium Vitaeâ:
â56. This is the context in which to place the problem of the death penalty. On this matter there is a growing tendency, both in the Church and in civil society, to demand that it be applied in a very limited way or even that it be abolished completely. The problem must be viewed in the context of a system of penal justice ever more in line with human dignity and thus, in the end, with Godâs plan for man and society. The primary purpose of the punishment which society inflicts is âto redress the disorder caused by the offenceâ.(46) Public authority must redress the violation of personal and social rights by imposing on the offender an adequate punishment for the crime, as a condition for the offender to regain the exercise of his or her freedom. In this way authority also fulfils the purpose of defending public order and ensuring peopleâs safety, while at the same time offering the offender an incentive and help to change his or her behaviour and be rehabilitated.(47)
It is clear that, for these purposes to be achieved, the nature and extent of the punishment must be carefully evaluated and decided upon, and ought not go to the extreme of executing the offender except in cases of absolute necessity: in other words, when it would not be possible otherwise to defend society. Today however, as a result of steady improvements in the organization of the penal system, such cases are very rare, if not practically non-existent.
In any event, the principle set forth in the new Catechism of the Catholic Church remains valid: "If bloodless means are sufficient to defend human lives against an aggressor and to protect public order and the safety of persons, public authority must limit itself to such means, because they better correspond to the concrete conditions of the common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.(48)â
The first two footnotes (shown in parentheses) refer to Paragraph 2266 of The Catholic Catechism, the third footnote refers to Paragraph 2267. Because Evangelium Vitae was published in March 1995, just one year after the first edition of the Catechism and two years before the second edition, it is the** first** edition that the encyclical quotes, the very same paragraph 2266 that accepts the death penalty for offenses of âextreme gravity.â Two years later, the editors of the second edition of the Catechism quote Evangelium Vitae to support a more restrictive view of capital punishment.
The problem has enlarged one step further because of the interpretation many have placed on the concept of âbloodless means [being] sufficient to defend human lives against the aggressorâŚâ This is being interpreted as defining only the threat posed by a specific convicted killer. If he is in a high security prison, he cannot kill anyone else, and human lives are adequately protected. Ergo, the death penalty is unjustified.
The alternative argument is that, in the absence of the death penalty, a rapist or kidnapper will face approximately the same penalty whether he kills the victim or not, but his chance of escaping capture and conviction increases if the victim is killed. This will not protect every victim from death, but for some it will be âsufficient to defend human lives against the aggressor.â
In the end, the question is whose life should pay for a vicious murder. Should it be that of the murderer in a present case, or that of a future innocent crime victim whose life would have been spared if the threat of the death penalty had been present.
Paragraph 2267 quotes and references Paragraph 56 of âEvangelium Vitaeâ:
â56. This is the context in which to place the problem of the death penalty. On this matter there is a growing tendency, both in the Church and in civil society, to demand that it be applied in a very limited way or even that it be abolished completely. The problem must be viewed in the context of a system of penal justice ever more in line with human dignity and thus, in the end, with Godâs plan for man and society. The primary purpose of the punishment which society inflicts is âto redress the disorder caused by the offenceâ.(46) Public authority must redress the violation of personal and social rights by imposing on the offender an adequate punishment for the crime, as a condition for the offender to regain the exercise of his or her freedom. In this way authority also fulfils the purpose of defending public order and ensuring peopleâs safety, while at the same time offering the offender an incentive and help to change his or her behaviour and be rehabilitated.(47)
It is clear that, for these purposes to be achieved, the nature and extent of the punishment must be carefully evaluated and decided upon, and ought not go to the extreme of executing the offender except in cases of absolute necessity: in other words, when it would not be possible otherwise to defend society. Today however, as a result of steady improvements in the organization of the penal system, such cases are very rare, if not practically non-existent.
In any event, the principle set forth in the new Catechism of the Catholic Church remains valid: "If bloodless means are sufficient to defend human lives against an aggressor and to protect public order and the safety of persons, public authority must limit itself to such means, because they better correspond to the concrete conditions of the common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.(48)â
The first two footnotes (shown in parentheses) refer to Paragraph 2266 of The Catholic Catechism, the third footnote refers to Paragraph 2267. Because Evangelium Vitae was published in March 1995, just one year after the first edition of the Catechism and two years before the second edition, it is the** first** edition that the encyclical quotes, the very same paragraph 2266 that accepts the death penalty for offenses of âextreme gravity.â Two years later, the editors of the second edition of the Catechism quote Evangelium Vitae to support a more restrictive view of capital punishment.
The problem has enlarged one step further because of the interpretation many have placed on the concept of âbloodless means [being] sufficient to defend human lives against the aggressorâŚâ This is being interpreted as defining only the threat posed by a specific convicted killer. If he is in a high security prison, he cannot kill anyone else, and human lives are adequately protected. Ergo, the death penalty is unjustified.
The alternative argument is that, in the absence of the death penalty, a rapist or kidnapper will face approximately the same penalty whether he kills the victim or not, but his chance of escaping capture and conviction increases if the victim is killed. This will not protect every victim from death, but for some it will be âsufficient to defend human lives against the aggressor.â
In the end, the question is whose life should pay for a vicious murder. Should it be that of the murderer in a present case, or that of a future innocent crime victim whose life would have been spared if the threat of the death penalty had been present.
L
LittleSoldier
Guest
Thanks. I miss my Dad very much but I know Iâll see him soon.Now we know why you call yourself LittleSoldier! Good respect for our WWII vets
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