Bob,
First off... please forgive my ignorance since I haven't been on "Ask God" for quite some time... You're Bob Sturgeon and you are distinct from Steve Meyer (Bob)... right?
Anyway... at the risk of repeating what John said in #reply-5443852, here's a few of my thoughts on the death penalty.
The context in which I am thinking about all this has an underlying idea of a "super-prison". This is a theoretical prison where inmates are kept in their cell for their entire sentence (except in emergency situations) and interact only on an audio level with each other. There's a lot of other details pertaining to implementation, but that's the fundamental idea. It is essentially solitary confinement modified to sufficiently (?) mitigate the cruelty.
Within this context, I consider arguments for the death penalty based on current judicial systems to be moot. If your system dumps waste upstream of your water source, don't import water, just change the system. OK... easier said than done... I know.
It's ironic that "an eye for an eye" is used so often to endorse the death penalty. In fact, that idea was originally an appeal to fair punishment - that the punishment should fit that crime and not exceed it, as was commonly done in the Old World. The fundamental problem with "an eye for an eye" is what measure do we use in determining what is fair punishment. Money? Is killing a rich man worse than killing a poor man? Is killing a good man worse than killing a bad man? Is killing a child worse than killing an head of an household? Is crippling a child worse than crippling an head of an household to the point where he or she can't support the household? Basically, if we can't determine a reasonable measure for applying "an eye for an eye", it is only rhetoric and can't be implemented.
The death penalty as deterrent is probably the strongest argument. Tough to find incontrovertible data supporting or refuting the claim. Interestingly, the argument can be turned around into a reasonably strong argument against: The death penalty is not a deterrent, so should not be implemented.
I think one of the strongest arguments against the death penalty is simply: The government should not have the right to kill it's own citizenry.
One of the slipperiest arguments involves the commandment about not killing or murdering. This simple statement suffers from more interpretation and translation problems than the 2nd amendment! (Ha ha... oh... no... don't start in on that one yet... please!)
My feeble interpretation of that commandment is simply that a society functions much better if we don't kill each other.
Sorry for the long post.
Greg |
