May 29
COLORADO:
Nebraska death penalty vote gives hope to capital punishment opponents in
Colorado----ACLU will try to sway state's GOP lawmakers
Buoyed by conservative Nebraska's decision to do away with the death penalty,
capital punishment opponents say they will try to sway GOP lawmakers in
Colorado to follow suit.
"It's not going to be easy," said Denise Maes, public policy director of the
ACLU of Colorado. "I think we know that, given our attempts to repeal it in the
past."
Maes said the ACLU is part of the Better Priorities Initiative, a coalition of
organizations committed to repealing the death penalty in Colorado.
She said coalition members believe that the large amounts of money spent on
death penalty cases would be better spent elsewhere.
She acknowledges that many people still support the death penalty, but said
public opinion is changing.
"It's no longer in strong support," she said, adding that some victim's
families don't support it.
Death Row
There are 3 people on death row in Colorado.
Nathan Dunlap has been there the longest. He was sentenced to death in May of
1996, after killing 4 people at a Chuck E. Cheese restaurant in Aurora, in
1993.
Dunlap exhausted his appeals and an execution date was set, but Governor John
Hickenlooper, described by one supporter as "essentially a Quaker," granted a
temporary reprieve.
The other 2 inmates on death row, Robert Ray and Sir Mario Owens, were
convicted and sentenced for the ambush slayings of Javad Marshall Fields and
his fiance, Vivian Wolfe.
Fields' mother, Rep. Rhonda Fields, D-Aurora, supports capital punishment. She
called an earlier attempt to repeal the death penalty "a slap in the face."
Maes said Republicans in Nebraska made some very good arguments for change.
She said they realized that they were spending a lot of money on death penalty
cases when no one was getting executed.
"At the end of the day, it's a big government program that spends a lot of
money and does very little for people," she said.
When asked if the coalition would seek to put the issue to a vote of the
people, Maes said they would likely focus on the legislature.
"Elections are expensive," she said. "Sometimes it can come down to just a
bumper sticker exercise and a few commercials here and there, and I worry that
there's not enough thorough discussion, debate and good education."
When asked how soon Colorado might do away with the death penalty, Maes said
she didn't know.
"I think if we didn't have the Holmes (theater shooting) case it would be so
much easier," she said. "If he gets life and not the death penalty, I think
it's a little easier, because we're going to realize that we spent north of
$2.5 million on Holmes, before the trial started."
Coalition members didn't focus on Republicans during the last attempt to repeal
capital punishment, in 2013, because Democrats were in control of both houses.
"We were lazy and didn't need to," she said. "We thought we had it with the
Democrats."
The repeal effort stalled in the House Judiciary Committee after the Governor
voiced concerns.
Maes said, what happened in Nebraska has changed their thinking.
She said it's possible that lawmakers could come up with another proposal when
they convene in 2016.
"If Nebraska can do it, Colorado can do it," she said.
(source: thedenverchannel.com)
*************
Colorado should follow Nebraska and abolish death penalty
If Nebraska can do it, why not Colorado?
Abolish the death penalty, that is.
Nebraska has a unicameral, officially nonpartisan legislature, but there is no
doubt it is controlled by Republicans. And those red-state lawmakers last week
voted by a lopsided 32 to 15 to abolish capital punishment.
More surprisingly, they voted Wednesday to override Gov. Pete Ricketts' veto,
with only two senators switching their position.
Among the striking aspects of this chain of events is the pragmatism exhibited
by senators, some of whom actually support the death penalty but recognize that
it has become almost impossible to implement on a consistent (and therefore
fair) basis.
Nebraska hasn't put a murderer to death since 1997.
Colorado hasn't put a murderer to death since 1997, too.
And before that in Colorado, you have to go back to 1967 to find an execution.
Other lawmakers in Nebraska worried about the possibility of false convictions,
given recent exonerations elsewhere in the nation. And at least one
conservative senator voted for repeal in order to "follow through with my life
convictions, which is life from conception to natural death."
Colorado's legislature is divided between a Democratic-controlled House and a
Republican Senate, and any attempt to repeal the death penalty is likely to get
little traction in the upper chamber. But Republicans there might at least
consider the arguments from Nebraska.
Do they really believe, for example, the death penalty will ever be put to
regular use here? Do they relish the resource-consuming spectacles of endless
motions and delays in trials when the death sentence is in play (see Holmes,
James), or the prospect of decades of foot-dragging appeals?
False convictions in death-penalty trials are not an issue in Colorado, but
where exactly is the justice in executing one particularly heinous murderer
every few decades while many other equally heinous murderers are sentenced to
life without parole?
2 years ago Gov. John Hickenlooper derailed a move in the legislature to repeal
the death penalty, while also issuing a temporary reprieve to death-row inmate
Nathan Dunlap and declaring that he personally opposed capital punishment.
Unlike Nebraska's Ricketts, in other words, Hickenlooper presumably would sign
a repeal that reached his desk.
But it's got to get there first.
(soruce: Denver Post Editorial Board)
NEVADA:
Death penalty possible for woman and brother accused in hatchet attack
Prosecutors could seek the death penalty against an Idaho woman and her
brother, who face murder charges in the death of her husband.
Prosecutor Frank Coumou said the facts of the brutal attack on Enrique
Hernandez point to a case "we would consider seeking death" for Maria
Hernandez, 32, and her brother, Hector Gutierrez, 22.
Las Vegas Justice of the Peace Ann Zimmerman ordered the siblings held without
bail Thursday.
The Idaho woman and her brother were arrested Monday in Las Vegas on charges of
murder and conspiracy to commit murder after her husband was found nearly
decapitated.
Maria Hernandez told police she wanted her husband dead after he found out she
was having an affair, according to police.
Police said she had planned the slaying for about a month and held her husband
down while Gutierrez attacked him with a hatchet.
She initially called police near the intersection of Buffalo Drive and Eldora
Avenue, just south of Sahara Avenue, about 2:30 a.m., a police report said. She
and her husband were having car trouble, she said, when someone hacked him.
The woman told police that she and her husband, with whom she has 4 children,
were in town for a family member's quinceanera. They drove in from Idaho on
Saturday for the birthday party later that night. Gutierrez was in town from
California.
(source: Las Vegas Review-Journal)
CALIFORNIA:
Convicted South Gate murderer's death sentence overturned
The California Supreme Court on Thursday overturned the death sentence of a man
who wrote then-Los Angeles County District Attorney Gil Garcetti a letter in
which he called 2 murder victims "cowards" who "deserved what they got."
In a 67-page ruling, the state's highest court upheld Tommy Adrian Trujeque's
1st-degree murder conviction for the June 21, 1986, stabbing of his cousin's
boyfriend, Max Facundo, in South Gate, but reversed his 2nd-degree murder
conviction for the Jan. 23, 1987, stabbing of Raul Luis Apodaca at an East Los
Angeles upholstery shop.
In an opinion written by Associate Justice Ming W. Chin, the panel unanimously
found that Trujeque was "improperly charged and subsequently convicted of
Apodaca's murder" after the case against him was dismissed twice according to
the government and 3 times according to the defense. The panel also set aside
the special circumstance findings that Trujeque committed multiple murders and
had a prior 2nd-degree murder conviction.
The Supreme Court justices ruled that Trujeque's prior murder conviction from
1971 for the killing of Allen Rothenberg - in which the defendant was 16 at the
time of the crime - was obtained in adult court "in violation of the double
jeopardy clause" after he admitted an involuntary manslaughter charge in a
juvenile court.
Trujeque was charged with the killings of Facundo and Apodaca after he spoke
with investigators while in custody in San Diego County more than 10 years
after the killings.
In a 1998 letter that was sent to Garcetti, the defendant "admitted he murdered
both Apodaca and Facundo while 'fully aware of all my mental faculties'" and
urged the prosecution to seek the death penalty against him.
The justices noted that Trujeque's letter also stated that "both of those
cowards deserved what they got: death and an early expiration in life, to say
the least!" and that if he "had the opportunity to do it over I would cut off
their heads and send 'em both to their family!"
(source: my newsla.com)
USA:
The (hopefully) wobbly state of the death penalty
Let's take a count, shall we?.
With the state Legislature's razor-thin rejection of Gov. Pete Ricketts' veto
Wednesday, Nebraska became the 19th state to formally abolish the death penalty
-- and the 7th in the last decade. Others have come close. A single vote in a
Delaware legislative committee derailed an abolition effort there earlier this
month. Supporters say they will continue to push the measure, which has the
backing of that state's governor, Jack Markell, a former supporter of the death
penalty who recently described it as an "instrument of imperfect justice."
Legislators in Montana, Kansas, Arkansas and elsewhere have gained traction on
death penalty repeal bills as well.
But the nation is shifting away from capital punishment in other ways, too.
Governors in four states -- Colorado, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Washington --
have declared a moratorium on executions, citing doubts about the process. 6
states with the death penalty on the books haven't carried out an execution in
more than a decade. Problems with lethal injections -- from legal challenges to
an inability to procure the drugs -- have halted executions in at least 15
more states, and the U.S. Supreme Court is considering the constitutionality of
a protocol using midazolam.
In fact, since January 2014, 5 states -- Texas, Missouri, Florida, Oklahoma and
Georgia -- have conducted all but 2 of the nation's executions. Over at Time,
journalist David Von Drehle, who has covered the death penalty for nearly 30
years, writes this week that he thinks the atrocious system is on its way out.
And part of the shift, as I mentioned last week, is notable because more
conservative Republicans are backing repeal based on its expense and
ineffectiveness.
It can't happen soon enough. Beyond the immorality of executions, the system is
irredeemably flawed. The Death Penalty Information Center reported that through
the end of 2013, 15 counties accounted for 30% of executions since the practice
resumed in 1976. Yet those 15 counties "represent less than 1% of the total
number of counties in the country, and less than 1% of the total number of
counties in states with the death penalty."
So beyond disparities in application of the death penalty based on race and
class (the wealthy can afford better legal representation than the poor), there
are disparities in geography. Each state sets its own policy on capital
punishment, but even within states there are wide differences in death
sentences by county. Some of that can be attributed to differences in
population, and in homicide rates, but not all. For example, the Death Penalty
Information Center's report found that Los Angeles, Orange and Riverside
counties account for more than 1/2 the people on the state's death row, but
only 39% of the state???s population. And they account for only 40% of the
state's homicides (2000-13), according to state Department of Justice
statistics.
The decision on whether to seek the death penalty often comes down to
individual prosecutors, which puts an inordinate amount of power in the hands
of 1 person, further exacerbating the arbitrariness of the system. And the race
of the victim plays a big role. According to the most recent death row report
by the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund, in cases that have led to all 1,394
executions from 1976 to this past January, 76% of the victims were white and
35% of those executed were black. Yet federal homicide statistics show that
more than 1/2 the nation's homicide victims are black. As the Equal Justice
Initiative points out:
"More than 1/2 of the 3,095 people on death row nationwide are people of color;
42% are African American. Prominent researchers have demonstrated that a
defendant is more likely to get the death penalty if the victim is white than
if the victim is black. The key decision makers in death penalty cases across
the country are almost exclusively white. Despite decades of evidence showing
that the administration of the death penalty is permeated with racial bias,
courts and legislatures' refusal to address race in any comprehensive way
reveals a fundamental flaw in America's justice system."
So it's a government program that wastes tax dollars, often results in wrongful
convictions, doesn't achieve the intended goals (deterrence and justice), is so
arbitrarily invoked that it violates the U.S. Constitution and ultimately
degrades human life. No wonder more conservatives are coming around to
supporting its repeal, even as an analysis of recent polling shows the
oft-cited support among Americans in general is not as strong as it might seem,
especially when those surveyed are asked if they prefer the death penalty over
life without parole.
Maybe Von Drehle is right and the end is nigh. If so, then the U.S. would
remove itself from the uncomfortable companionship of other capital punishment
countries like Iran and China, and align itself with Europe and most of the
rest of the industrialized world.
Ultimately, it's hard to try to persuade the world to follow our moral lead on
human rights issues when we fail so badly on this one.
(source: Opinion; Scott Martelle, Los Angeles Times)
****************
In Iowa, Rand Paul sticks with death penalty skepticism
Rand Paul expressed deep skepticism of the death penalty Thursday as he
repeated his position that states should be able to decide whether to keep it.
The Kentucky senator, appearing at an afternoon book signing here, responded to
a question about the neighboring state of Nebraska's ban on capital punishment
this week.
"My first thoughts aren't that forgiving for someone who would hurt a member of
my family, but I also understand there have been times when we haven't gotten
the right person," he told reporters. "And somebody who is distrustful of big
government, like I am, is also distrustful of so much power being given to
government to kill somebody, when there might be a mistake. A lot of eyewitness
testimony has been shown over time not to be very good."
Paul complained that many witnesses in murder trials are not credible.
"We also have the problem of when you've got 3 thugs and they're all testifying
against each other, and 2 of them say, 'Let's say he did it,' and the other 2
say, 'Let's say he did it,'" he said. 'So your testimony is coming from people
who are not necessarily the best witnesses, as far as veracity."
The Nebraska legislature voted Wednesday to override the governor's veto of
their death penalty ban, making them the 1st red state to do so in decades but
the 7th state since 2007.
Paul, who has said in the past that death penalty is a state issue, used his
ideological support for federalism to avoid staking out a firm position.
"It's a tough issue," he said. "Most crimes are adjudicated at the state level
and should be, so there really are almost no crimes at the federal level really
under the Constitution that would require the death penalty - I think treason
being one. It isn't a big issue, I think as far as a change in federal policy,
and I would leave it for the most part to the states."
Paul did not take follow-up questions. The issue has been in the news recently
in the wake of the Boston Marathon bomber being sentenced - under federal
statutes, by federal prosecutors - to death. Paul did not mention the recent
episodes of botched executions, another of the main reasons cited by death
penalty critics.
Paul has made criminal justice reform, including the repeal of mandatory
minimums, central to his presidential campaign. He spoke to a crowd of 80 here
about an Iowa woman who was sentenced to more than 10 years in prison over her
use of methamphetamine.
The senator's stump speech mainly focused on his fight to let the Patriot Act
sunset on Sunday at midnight.
Speaking at a minor league baseball stadium on the banks of the Mississippi
River, Paul told the crowd that his voice is still raspy from speaking for
nearly 11 hours on the Senate floor last week about his opposition to the law.
He noted that his opposition has forced the Senate to cut short its Memorial
Day recess, reconvening Sunday evening in an 11th hour effort to prevent parts
of the program from expiring.
"I'm expecting a very cool reception from the other senators, but these are
important debates," he said, adding: "I don't know if I can win or not."
Paul also argued that he's the most electable candidate. He said polls have
shown he could beat Hillary Clinton in Colorado, Iowa, Pennsylvania and New
Hampshire.
"Quinnipiac did a national poll this week ... and only 2 Republicans, and I was
one of them, beat Hillary Clinton in a nationwide poll," he said. "So people
need to ask themselves, and Republicans need to ask themselves, who can win in
the fall?"
In fact, the Quinnipiac University poll he referred to showed Clinton leading
Paul by 4 points, 46 % to 42 %, in a hypothetical matchup.
**********************
How America's Death Penalty Ends----Nebraska marks an important new milestone
in the abolition of capital punishment.
The decision Wednesday by the state of Nebraska to abolish the death penalty
suggests that what seemed unimaginable as recently as a decade ago - namely
that the United States would join most of the rest of the world in abolishing
capital punishment - now seems well within the horizon of possibility.
The surprise move by the Nebraska legislature - overriding a gubernatorial veto
with a bipartisan and sweeping 30-to-19 vote - galvanized and focused public's
attention on America's death penalty for the 2nd time in just a month. On May
17, Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was sentenced to death. That
headline though, as dramatic as it was, tells us little about the future of
capital punishment in the United States; Tsarnaev's case reminds us that even
in liberal Massachusetts jurors can be persuaded that death is an appropriate
punishment for an unusually gruesome crime and a particularly unsympathetic
defendant whose guilt was never in doubt. Yet it should not distract us from a
clear headed appraisal of the present condition and likely future of America's
death penalty.
Nebraska's decision, though, represents a true milestone on the road to
abolition of the death penalty - a sweeping reversal of the 1990s
tough-on-crime era that saw governors almost bragging about the number of death
warrants they signed. The factors that led to abolition in staunchly
conservative Nebraska are the very same factors now finding receptive audiences
across the country: Put simply, conversation about capital punishment today is
less about those we seek to punish and more about the damage the death penalty
does to some our nation's most cherished values, to our beliefs in due process
and equal treatment and to our commitment to insuring that no innocent person
pays with his life for a crime he did not commit.
These concerns have, since 2007, led elected officials in New Jersey, New
Mexico, Illinois, Connecticut, Maryland and now Nebraska to end the death
penalty in those states. In each of them political leaders focused less on
abstract, moral arguments about who does or does not deserve to die and more on
the realities of a death penalty system that seems in many ways to be
irreparably broken. Thus, in December 2007 when he signed a bill making New
Jersey the first state in a generation to abolish capital punishment, then
Governor Jon Corzine said, "There are many reasons to ban the death penalty in
New Jersey. None is more important," Corzine continued, "than the fact that it
is difficult, if not impossible, to develop a foolproof system that precludes
the possibility of executing the innocent."
18 months later,New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson signed a bill ending that
state's death penalty. Richardson - who once supported capital punishment -
noted that at that time 130 death-row prisoners had been exonerated across the
nation, four of them in New Mexico. He observed, "Regardless of my personal
opinion about the death penalty, I do not have confidence in the criminal
justice system as it currently operates to be the final arbiter when it comes
to who lives and who dies for their crime." 4 years after Richardson's
statement, Governor Pat Quinn of Illinois echoed these same concerns when he
signed his state's abolition of the death penalty. "Since our experience has
shown that there is no way to design a perfect death penalty system, free from
the numerous flaws that can lead to wrongful convictions or discriminatory
treatment, I have concluded that the proper course of action is to abolish it."
When Connecticut's Governor Daniel Malloy ended his state's death penalty he
noted that he came to oppose capital punishment while working as a prosecutor.
"I learned firsthand that our system of justice is very imperfect," he said. "I
came to believe that doing away with the death penalty was the only way to
ensure it would not be unfairly imposed."
Similar sentiments were heard in Nebraska. "Lawmakers and Nebraska residents,"
Stacy Anderson, executive director of Nebraskans for Alternatives to the Death
Penalty noted, "recognize the realities of an error-prone system that risks
executing innocent people and harms murder victim family members. Conservatives
like me want to see policies that are fiscally responsible, limit the size and
scope of government, and value life. The death penalty fails on all counts."
(source: Austin Sarat, associate dean of the faculty and William Nelson
Cromwell professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College,
is author of Gruesome Spectacles: Botched executions and America's Death
Penalty----politico.com)
*****************
Why Conservatives are Now 2nd-Guessing the Death Penalty
For decades, conservatives have generally supported the death penalty as a way
of maintaining law and order. The nation itself has gone back and forth on the
issue, seriously curtailing it in several court cases and affirming it in Gregg
vs. Georgia in 1976. Since that time it has been the craze in a few states
(with Texas and Florida as the most obvious examples) and not practiced at all
by others (18 to be exact).
Social conservatives -- still one of the largest political blocs on the right
-- point to the Bible as a basis for the death penalty. Between an "eye for an
eye" in the Old Testament law, or the government's right to "bear a sword" in
the New, the Bible definitely deals with the topic. For most Christian
religions the New Testament is considered the basis of Christian theology,
since the "new law" fulfilled the old. In the New Testament, the scripture says
the death penalty is allowed but not required. Increasingly, social
conservatives have become comfortable with that reality.
In a conservative dominated Nebraska Legislature, there was an overwhelming
vote against the death penalty. So strong was the vote that it even survived a
veto attempt by the governor with a solid override. A coalition of strange
bedfellows -- individuals who would never support each other on most issues
came together to vote for the end of the death penalty. It was an impressive
political feat.
So what has led to such strange voting behavior in Nebraska and the rise of
groups such as Conservatives Concerned about the Death Penalty?
For years, people of all political persuasions have been concerned about the
incredible number of Americans that have found themselves incarcerated. Former
U.S. Senator Jim Webb, has stated that the U.S. has "5 % of the world's
population..." and "25 % of the world's known prison population." This
statement has been verified by PolitiFact and others. It is increasingly
obvious that governments are in the conviction business rather than in the
justice business. This has certainly made a case for caution.
Over the last few decades there has been a dramatic increase in the use of DNA
in convicting individuals of crimes. Often these convictions were proven false
and overturned. For many of those, the overturning of those cases came too
late. It is bad enough when governments warehouse people who are not guilty,
but it is unconscionable for anyone to die for a crime they did not do. Sloppy
crime scene investigations, disorganized labs, and innocent human error alone
make a powerful case of stopping short of the death penalty. Life without
parole makes so much more sense.
Many who are part of the modern conservative movement are actually,
"conservaterians." This group is often described as individuals who "feel like
libertarians around conservatives and like conservatives around libertarians."
Many are libertarians who simply are looking to develop some political clout by
working in the conservative movement. Others, like myself, are conservatives
who have simply become more libertarian over time. Regardless of how they fell
into the conservatarian numbers, they all have a healthy suspicion of
government.
For years, as a foot soldier in the conservative movement, I long advocated
support for the death penalty. Like millions of other Americans, I became
suspicious of a government that has an inconsistent track record when it comes
to crime, punishment and liberty itself.
What conservatives of all types have become uncomfortable with is the fact that
the government has become abusive and intrusive altogether. In recent years the
numbers of conservatives that blindly support the U.S. as the world police
force has narrowed to a swath called neoconservatives, and that group is
shrinking in numbers.
Richard Viguerie, the godfather of the modern conservative movement, may of put
the conservative position against the death penalty best, stating: "The fact
is, I don't understand why more conservatives don't oppose the death penalty."
He continued saying that the death penalty "is, after all, a system set up
under laws established by politicians (too many of whom lack principles);
enforced by prosecutors (many of whom want to become politicians--perhaps a
character flaw? -- and who prefer wins over justice); and adjudicated by judges
(too many of whom administer personal preference rather than the law)." He goes
on to say that "conservatives have every reason to believe the death penalty
system is no different from any politicized, costly, inefficient, bureaucratic,
government-run operation, which we conservatives know are rife with injustice."
The conservative movement against the death penalty is not reaction or
illogical. It actually makes perfect sense for a people that fundamentally
claim to distrust government.
(source: Kevin Price, Publisher and Editor in Chief, US Daily
Review----Huffington Post)
******************
Death penalty debate stirred by Boston sentence
The death sentence of convicted Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev,
combined with 4 allegedly botched executions in the U.S. last year and an
anticipated Supreme Court ruling on the death penalty this summer, has fueled
debate among evangelicals regarding the legitimacy of capital punishment.
Nebraska became the 19th state to ban the death penalty, when lawmakers
overrode Gov. Pete Ricketts' veto of a capital punishment ban May 27.
Whether taking a convicted murderer's life is just, whether the death penalty
is applied fairly across all races and economic classes and whether the common
execution method of lethal injection is humane are among the issues under
consideration. Some states have experienced difficulty obtaining lethal
injection drugs because European manufacturers have refused to sell them based
on moral objections to the death penalty.
A federal jury's May 15 decision to sentence Tsarnaev to death for killing 3
people and injuring hundreds more in a 2013 terrorist attack at the Boston
Marathon provoked a variety of responses among Southern Baptists.
"I certainly know many people who believe that in certain circumstances the
death penalty, as a legal function of the state and as a deterrent to crime, is
justified," Neal Davidson, pastor of the Boston-area Hope Chapel in Sterling,
Mass., told Baptist Press. "But I don't believe there's been any momentum in
our state to try to reinstate the death penalty. It's really quite interesting:
you had a federal trial with the death penalty on the table taking place in a
state that does not have the death penalty." Massachusetts is among the states
that have abolished the death penalty for cases tried in state courts,
according to deathpenaltyinfo.org. Individuals convicted of federal crimes in
those states may still be sentenced to capital punishment.
On one side of the debate, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary's Daniel
Heimbach told BP "it would violate the biblical ethic if our government did not
apply the death penalty" in Tsarnaev's case. On the other side, New Orleans
pastor David Crosby said he would suspend capital punishment if he could and
noted that death row inmates he ministered to said the term "capital
punishment" derives from the fact that people with no capital receive the
punishment more often than people of means who commit similar crimes.
Other evangelicals endorse the death penalty in a highly qualified manner or
are undecided about it. Davidson told BP he is "not categorically opposed [to]
or in favor" of capital punishment. He believes there is biblical warrant for
employing it as a means of just punishment and a deterrent to crime. But he
worries about the possibility of human error in death penalty cases and wants
to "err on the side of grace."
A 2000 Southern Baptist Convention resolution supported "the fair and equitable
use of capital punishment by civil magistrates as a legitimate form of
punishment for those guilty of murder or treasonous acts that result in death."
Other Christian groups that have affirmed capital punishment include the
Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and the National Association of Evangelicals.
The Assemblies of God has posted on its website a defense of capital punishment
that acknowledges disagreement among members of Assemblies of God churches. The
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the National Council of Churches, the
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A) and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops all
have opposed the death penalty.
A 2014 Gallup poll found that 61 % of Americans believe the death penalty is
morally acceptable. Support has dropped below 60 % only once in the past 13
years, according to a ReligionLink report. Most other developed nations have
abolished the death penalty.
Whether lethal injection is humane has been one focus of debate during the past
year, with four allegedly botched lethal injections in the U.S. in 2014,
according to NPR. In Oklahoma, convicted murderer Clayton Lockett appeared to
twist on the gurney after death chamber staff failed to place his intravenous
line properly, Reuters reported.
In Arizona, convicted double murderer Joseph Wood took nearly two hours to die
and had to be administered 15 doses of the lethal drug, according to USA Today.
The Supreme Court is expected to rule by the end of the current term on a case
challenging Oklahoma's method of lethal injection as a breach of the
Constitution's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment.
Biblical arguments
Heimbach, senior professor of Christian ethics at Southeastern, offered 2
reasons for "believing the Bible requires government to execute persons proven
guilty of premeditated murder," though he noted there are additional reasons.
"The 1st is because in Genesis 9:5 the Creator says that anyone guilty of
murder forfeits his own life by doing so," Heimbach said in written comments.
"And, since the sanctity of life ethic comes from God, and derives from the
Creator-creature relationship, this is a very strong argument. The 2nd comes
from the last part of Ezekiel 13:19 where God says sparing the lives of
murderers is a moral lie contrary to the sanctity of life ethic He requires."
Heimbach cautioned that governments should "never rush to judgment," "never
place retribution in the hands of private citizens" and "never demand killing
anyone based on feeling self-righteous anger, hate or fear." As with all
humans, the debt murderers owe "can be truly satisfied only by the death
penalty Jesus paid," he said.
The Boston Marathon bomber's trial illustrates how love and justice should both
be considered during sentencing in a murder case, Heimbach said.
"Biblical love never lessens what biblical justice requires, and it is love for
those whose lives were lost that demands the bomber forfeit his. Taking the
bomber's life cannot possibly pay for what he stole and should not be taken
this way. But what it can do, and should do, is tell the world and God that the
people the bomber murdered were deeply and truly loved, and that what he did
was irretrievably wrong," Heimbach said.
For Crosby, pastor of First Baptist Church in New Orleans, ministering to death
row inmates in Texas helped solidify a developing conviction that the U.S.
should abolish capital punishment. As a pastor in Texas, he led a weekly Bible
study for death row inmates for six years at the Mountain View Unit in
Gatesville. Among the inmates he baptized and discipled was Karla Faye Tucker,
a convicted double murderer whose highly publicized conversion to faith in
Christ occurred just before she met Crosby.
Tucker's 1998 execution by lethal injection marked the first time a woman in
the U.S. had been executed since 1984.
"I remember the moment that I knew she was dead, but I did not witness the
execution," said Crosby, who discipled Tucker 4 years and moved to New Orleans
shortly before her execution.
Crosby told First Baptist the following Sunday, "I am a citizen of this
republic. This is participatory government -- government of the people, by the
people and for the people. And here's one of the people who doesn't want to
kill these other people anymore."
The death penalty, Crosby told BP, too often is unjustly administered and does
not serve as a deterrent to crime.
"It's pretty evident that given the same charges [and] the same conviction,
poor people are more likely to be executed than wealthy people," Crosby said.
"Black people are more likely to be executed than white people. That's just
true statistically. It's undeniable."
The death penalty may be just in individual cases, Crosby said, but the racial
and economic disparities of the system should provoke objections among
believers.
During his doctoral studies at Baylor University, Crosby researched the death
penalty as a deterrent to crime and found lower murder rates in jurisdictions
without capital punishment. He also told BP it costs considerably less by most
accounts to imprison a person for life than it does to fund extended court
proceedings and the execution itself.
Though Scripture allows capital punishment, it is unclear how often it was
administered in the Old Testament, and we no longer employ it, as Israelites
were permitted to do, for offenses like adultery and rebellion against parents,
Crosby said. Additionally, God's decision to spare Cain's life demonstrates
that murder does not require the death penalty, he said.
Crosby cited the unjust executions of Jesus and Stephen in the New Testament as
illustrations that systems of government can fail in the process of
administering capital punishment.
The Gospel on death row
Regardless of their stances on the death penalty, Southern Baptists agree on
the necessity of sharing the Gospel with death row inmates -- an emphasis
highlighted by the 2000 resolution. New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary's
program in the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola and Southwestern Baptist
Theological Seminary's extension program in the Texas Department of Criminal
Justice's Darrington Unit carry out such a ministry.
Ben Phillips, director of Southwestern's Darrington extension, told BP 2 recent
graduates with bachelor's degrees in biblical studies were on death row before
having their sentences reduced to life in prison. Though Phillips believes the
death penalty is a just punishment for willfully taking an innocent,
defenseless life, he says Christians should love mercy and take the Gospel to
prisoners sentenced to death.
One Southwestern graduate who used to be on death row hopes to return to
minister to inmates there, Phillips said.
"Rather than celebrate the application of the death penalty in general or any
particular case," Phillips said, "we need to love mercy and not only in a
general sense hope that 'those people' will come to Christ, but actively work
to share the Gospel with them in a way that speaks to them."
(source: David Roach is chief national correspondent for Baptist Press, the
Southern Baptist Convention's news service----The Baptist Press)
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