Musings on the Death Penalty

This page contains thoughts related to the death penalty, and a Christian's responsibility. These thoughts were penned by Dale Pace shortly before Thanksgiving 2000 and do not necessarily imply concurrence from any other person or organization.

Some Christians turn to Old Testament references prescribing the death penalty for various sins and crimes (such as spelled out in Leviticus and Deuteronomy), and to New Testament reference to the power of the state to execute (e.g., Romans 13:1-5) as Biblical evidence that the death penalty is an acceptable sanction in some cases. Other Christians note that most Western democracies no longer employ the death penalty, and point out that there is overwhelming evidence that some innocent people have been executed in America. The death penalty issue has attracted the passions of both Christians and politicians. Perhaps we should look at this issue carefully, and, if possible, with a fresh perspective.

Debate about the death penalty can be a distraction from more pressing and more significant (at least numerically) issues. For example, there are fewer than 3,500 people on death row in the US, and fewer than 100 were executed this year (2000). By comparison, 10 kids under 18 die a day from firearms (suicide, homicide, manslaughter, etc.) -- yet there are many more websites discussing the death penalty than the youngster death-firearm issue. Likewise, many authorities think that deaths of children from family abuse is far greater than reported, with at least ten times as many deaths from this cause as from executions. This subject also gets much less attention than the death penalty debate.

Why does the death penalty attracts so much attention, even though it is clear that many on death row are dangerous and nasty (even if there are also some there who are innocent of the crime for which they were sentenced)? I think this has happened because the death penalty is a "safe" topic to be passionate about. The topic is safe because it does not threaten a major segment of the community economically -- few people lose much if a few convicted people are executed (or not). How different the challenge of tackling the health risk from smoking has been -- we see how long that issue took to get to its present state of resolution. Likewise, the hazard that drinking brings to us all by intoxicated drivers is constantly minimized -- we all know how minor the real legal sanctions are in this arena in spite of years of publicity from Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) and others.

Death penalty debate is also safe because it does not require most of us to get our hands dirty with things that we can really do something about. For example, most jail and prison ministries are desperately short of funds and quality volunteers so that they are able to help far fewer prisoners turn away from their past and to wholesome living. This is certainly true of Christian Jail Ministry (CJM) serving the Howard County Detention Center in Maryland. We are unable to provide that critical mass of help for many which would enable very real differences in their lives. This is mainly because of financial limits, even though Howard County is a very affluent community, and because of the limited number of people willing to put forth the effort needed to help troubled people.

Does this mean that people should ignore the death penalty as an issue? Not at all, BUT I think that people should be clear that their priorities are right -- that they put the most effort forth in those areas where there is the greatest need and where they can really make an impact. We would not admire a person who gave abundantly to feed the hungry abroad while letting his own children go hungry, and I think a parallel applies to the death penalty issue. Are we putting the proper emphasis on it in light of other, numerically more significant needs that we can really do something about?

I will end these musings with a few random ideas that I think are pertinent for the death penalty debate. First, those nasty people who might have been executed for their crime but who were spared the death penalty sometimes harm others, occasionally even kill others. I'm not aware of what the statistics are in this area, but it would be interesting to compare the number of "innocents" executed to the number of "innocents" killed or harmed by those not executed. Second, we know that sometimes a limb (arm or leg) has to be amputated to preserve a person's life. And I am sure that there have been misdiagnoses so that limbs were in appropriately amputated, and I would suspect that sometimes such amputation has been pursued in an incompetent and possibly even in a corrupt manner. Yet, I have not heard a serious proposal that limb amputation be banned because of such mistakes and abuses. There are many other parallels that could be drawn, and I confessed to being puzzled as to why only in the death penalty arena do mistakes and abuse seem to be acceptable as justification for banning the practice. It disturbs me that the death penalty debate (at least the parts of it that I see) seems to ignore a number of fundamental principles, such as these. I would like to think that an important debate involving so many talented and well-informed people would thoroughly plum the issues related to it. Unfortunately, it has yet to happen with the death penalty debate.