Aw Donkey, protection, reformation, and deterrence; the post reminds me of late nights, pizza, and flow charts in the good ol' days studying criminal law.
Instead of telling you why the death penalty protects society better than life in prison (no parol and no prison escapes from the death penalty; essentially, no chance of recidivism plaguing society again), why it reforms perpetrators better than life in prison (somebody facing death is forced to think long term--I mean, really long term), and why it deters murder more than life in prison (frankly, death scares most people more than blank prison walls), let me just say that the majority of your post fails to consider another equally important rationale for how we administer justice--proportionality.
In law, proportionality is what we refer to when we say, "Let the punishment fit the crime." So when you ask why immigrants shouldn't face the death penalty, my reply is that illegal immigration is not commensurate with the punishment of death. But death does fit the crime of death, especially since a murderer facing the death penalty often has killed many people or has committed the most egregious type of murder, like that of Baby Jane.
Returning to forgiveness, in my mind that argument just doesn't fly when we're talking about a justice system. As a society, we are not asked to forgive murderers. We are not asked to forget the grotesque circumstances surrounding a loved one's death at the hands of a murderer. We are not asked to turn the other cheek when our child washes ashore in a cardboard box in Galveston Bay. As I said in my last post, God intends that we as a society administer justice. And for many Americans, the proper combination of protectionism, reformation, deterrence, and proportionality only comes in the form of the death penalty when dealing with murder; that is, we "affirm the right to life by punishing those who violate it in the most strict form."
Perhaps we will have to agree to disagree on this one.
--Sir Elephant, the perhaps not-so-gifted Master of the Scientific Method
3 comments:
Isn't proportionality just getting at the idea of justice? Moreover where do you arrive at this idea that God expects us to to administer proportional justice as a society? Does he expect the same thing in our families? If your child (past the age of accountability of course) does something wrong, will you ever let mercy rob justice? God says mercy cannot rob justice, but he never says that we cannot let mercy rob justice. To the contrary he says forgive, turn the other cheek. And those teachings are applicable on a societal scale just as much as they are on an individual scale.
I too thought of those good old days studying criminal law. . . Maybe what our debate is missing is a flowchart?
I don't understand how you reconcile the higher law of forgiveness with our justice system. Are you suggesting that our justice system should turn the other cheek and forgive perpetrators immediately for their crimes? That means setting the perpetrator free, forgiving him, and forgetting, which is precisely what the higher law requires of us individually. That just can't be; the result would be chaotic. A strict interpretation of the higher law of which we speak is simply irreconcilable with society's manner for administering justice. They're really two contradicting concepts, for the higher law requires us to forgive and forget and the justice system tells us to imprison.
Returning to my comments earlier about how repentance can satisfy the demands of justice (hence, parole, maximum sentencing terms, etc.), in the case of repentance, the justice system does forgive, but that forgiveness is not based on the higher law. That forgiveness is based on a law similar to that which God himself forgives; in essence, he's at liberty to forgive he whom he shall forgive. The same is true of how our justice system forgives. It is not required, except that it chooses.
Having said that, we as a society must be reasonable in mandating how our justice system forgives or I do believe we will be held responsible; and perhaps this is the point you are getting at. But this seems quite distinct from the mandates of the higher law, which is a law of persons, not of governments.
--Elephant
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