As Robert Bork pointed out, Harris’s case alone received nine separate reviews.6, On the day before Harris’s scheduled execution, his lawyers filed one state habeas petition, one federal habeas petition, and one federal court action claiming that execution in the gas chamber was cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment. Walter Kaiser, Jr., Toward Old Testament Ethics (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1983), 167.

To the contrary, the New Testament affirms that the civil authorities play a crucial role in maintaining social order in a moral universe. If, on the other hand, capital punishment is abolished due to the mistaken belief that it does not deter, then innocent lives — indeed, many lives both within and without the prison system — are lost.

The Ethics of Capital Punishment- OUTRAGEOUS ATROCITY OR MORAL IMPERATIVE? Since the death penalty was not “unusual” in the late eighteenth century, the Eighth Amendment cannot have been intended to apply to capital punishment per se.) Statistics will not change any bias that is rooted in deep-seated convictions. These arguments take various forms — for example, purported Eighth Amendment immunity, the fallibility of the criminal justice system, “excessive” governmental power, the insufficiency of revenge as a motive, a purported lack of statistically verifiable deterrence, the possibility of executing an innocent person, a purported racial imbalance in executions, and among some Christians, the annulment of Mosaic Law. Does the fear of death deter? P. Duggan, “Witness Imprisoned by Fear; Man Goes to Jail Rather than Risk Testifying at Murder Trial,” The Washington Post, 18 December 1993, A1. Consequently, individuals cannot rule out that capital punishment is illegal while they are the ones being protected by this law against heinous acts. 21:24) maxim to which Jesus alluded (Matt. Asked if they would remain abolitionists even if homicides in this nation ballooned to a dizzying 1,000 percent, they responded in the affirmative.8, The truth is that an abolitionist will remain an abolitionist based on passionate ideological commitments. Stay tuned.18. Capital punishment is favourable according to one side of the mirror. Inasmuch as blood pollutes the land (cf. (Harris’s conviction was one of four that Bird let stand.)

Government, if it is performing a legitimate role in society, restrains by force those who are a violent and criminal threat to society. The ethical directive in Genesis 9 of a life-for-life policy exacted “by man” for premeditated murderers is validated in the New Testament by explicit statements from the apostle Paul with regard to the civil authorities. Mercifully, the Supreme Court put an end to the excruciating volley of last-minute attempts at stay of execution, noting that Harris had filed a total of four prior federal habeas petitions and five state petitions, yet was unable to explain why he never before raised the cruel-and-unusual-punishment claim. Harris appealed to the California Supreme Court, which under the guidance of Chief Justice Rose Bird overturned 68 death sentences before she was voted out of office in 1986.

However, it is the responsibility of citizens to comprehend the law so that they know what will happen to anyone who goes against it. While we may grant that the Christian community is divided over this issue and while we take no delight in its clarification, the church — in keeping with its earthly mandate — is to instruct the state in matters of justice. The Ethics of Capital Punishment- SYNOPSIS.

However, several things should be considered before judging whether a person is virtuous or not. This sanction, it should be repeated, transcends theocratic Israel. When in the defense of an innocent victim or preservation of moral order the authorities execute a premeditated murderer, no inalienable right is being violated. Absent of moral standards, the courts and the criminal justice system languish under the whims of activist judges and the psychotherapeutic elite, at the utter expense of bona fide social justice. 14. Contemporary Western culture is saturated with arguments that call for its abolition.

This is not to say, however, that the system is not workable. W. F. Buckley, Jr., “The War against Capital Punishment,” National Review, 25 June 1990, 62. Ethically speaking, when compassion supplants morality and truth as the highest value, the results are horrific. ©2000-2020 ITHAKA. option. Virtue ethics fosters moral actions and prohibits immoral activities in society. Even wholly secularized legal authorities in modern culture acknowledge the difference between involuntary manslaughter and premeditated murder. For those, both inside and outside of the criminal justice system, whose sense of compassion is not guided by universally normative notions of good and evil, innocence or guilt, it is often the murderer who — fully aside from corroborated evidence — is regarded as the “victim.”. Mosaic Law made very clear distinctions between premeditated murder and accidental manslaughter (for which the cities of refuge were mercifully provided).13 It should be noted that this proscription applied not only to native Israelites but to foreigners and sojourners as well. “Compassion” that is directed toward the violent criminal, at the expense of the truly oppressed victim, is a moral-legal miscarriage (Isa. The implication of the Romans 13 text is that by failing to apply the sword as punishment the authorities “praise” evil and negate what is good. 3. The reason for this was simple, as he wrote to T. S. Eliot out of frustration: he could get no hearing for it in England. If a man was killed, it was the duty of the nearest male relative to avenge that death. In one way or another, no social order can exist in society if the state allows individuals to behave the way they want. Above and beyond any statistical verification, abolitionists choose to ignore the obvious implication of the death penalty — namely, that it eliminates the possibility of the convict repeating his capital offense. Historically, this has meant that compassion has been (necessarily) directed toward the victims of crime.

A framework for criminal justice can in fact administer justice only to the extent that a consistent, unchanging canon of justice is adhered to and advanced. Contemporary culture, in contrast, is permeated with arguments against capital punishment. JSTOR is part of ITHAKA, a not-for-profit organization helping the academic community use digital technologies to preserve the scholarly record and to advance research and teaching in sustainable ways. In the case of premeditated murder, compensation is not available as an alternative; thus it should carry a mandatory death sentence, in recognition of the sacred character of human life. (Thus, any punishment is arbitrary.) (Rarely is this literary context taken into consideration.). A society unwilling to impose the penalty of death upon those who murder in cold blood is a society that has deserted its responsibility to uphold the unique value of human life. (Washington, D.C.: Ethics and Public Policy Center, 1978), 403. The paper focuses on how virtue ethics can support the death penalty despite the constitutional part that grants all people the right to live. What in fact has watered down the death penalty deterrent is the manner in which much-publicized cases such as those of Harris and Coleman have dragged on over the years, thereby reflecting a wholly inconsistent approach to criminal justice. Does the death penalty for premeditated murder constitute an “uncivilized” or “barbaric” response by society to crime, as many abolitionists fervently maintain?

In this case, the students are required to deal with their roommates, meal plans, personal finances and peer pressure. The following sample research paper helps researchers understand the intricacies of capital punishment, murder, and what society's definition of justice. Most notably, all are susceptible to excessive human manipulation. 1. According to Porter et al., college life is highly changing to almost all students. E. van den Haag, Is Capital Punishment Just? Accordingly, deliberately killing a human being created in the image of God is tantamount to killing God in effigy.12. By biblical standards, it is the one crime for which there exists no possible ransom or restitution (Num. AP News, “Dodd’s ‘Conversion’ Revives Eternal Tiff on Redemption,” The Washington Times, 9 January 1993, C4. The other ran, screamed for help, and tried to hide, but Harris pursued and killed him as well. To abandon the criteria of righteous and just punishment, as C. S. Lewis pointed out, is to abandon all criteria for punishment.15 Thus, punishing the innocent can be justified, since it has nothing at all to do with desert. Compassion, when it is anchored in objective morality, is redemptive and restorative in nature. The failings of the system lie not in the fallibility of the instruments who execute justice, but rather in our failure to acknowledge and implement an abiding moral standard. This article first appeared in the Christian Research Journal, volume 17, number 1 (1994).

Robert H. Bork, “An Outbreak of Judicial Civil Disobedience,” Wall Street Journal, 29 April 1992, A22. And whereas private vengeance is proscribed by the apostle in Romans 12, a legitimation of the state’s administration of the death penalty for a murderer follows in the immediate context. Fallible people work nevertheless for just results.

18.

Certainly “due process of law,” “equal protection under the law,” and “equal justice for all” are meant to avoid the morally repugnant effects of unequal justice. S. Lewis and the Humanitarian Theory of Punishment,” The Christian Lawyer, 4 (1973): 4-10. 19 and 21), its consequences are most serious. Post-enlightened culture has grown increasingly intolerant of meting out criminal punishment that smacks of being “cruel” or “barbaric.” (This was not the case, however, in 1791 when both the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments were enacted. 4. Sadly, this often occurs at the expense of time-tested wisdom and common sense. At times the students will find it difficult in making decisions. Opponents of the death penalty are quick to cite the potential for executing an innocent person. Zbigniew Brzezinski, “New World, New Disorder,” Crisis, May 1993, 40. Thus they demonstrate more discernment than some Christians who in their theological shallowness glibly observe that the Mosaic code has been “abolished,” without considering the abiding moral regulation. Most human beings, after all, are inclined to avoid situations or circumstances that are likely to produce unpleasant, painful, or fatal results. See also S. B. Babbage, “C. Request Permissions. The Talmud says repeatedly, “Eye for eye means pecuniary compensation,” and Jewish courts apparently never read physical punishment into the lex talion. For terms and use, please refer to our Terms and Conditions Social justice requires — indeed demands — uniform standards of sentencing. This study was based on 16 years of observing 255 criminal patients at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington, D.C. Yochelson, a respected neuropsychiatrist who died in 1976, started the Program for the Investigation of Criminal Behavior in 1961. Estimating about 265,000 murders in the U.S. from 1976 (the year of the Gregg v. Georgia decision) until 1990, William F. Buckley, Jr., calculated that within this 14-year period there was one execution for every 2,137 murders committed across the nation. In both cases the extent to which the American public was treated to a numbing display of sentimentality by media pundits was nothing short of breathtaking. This they do by means of the deterrent (“Would you fear..?”) of the magistrate’s “sword,” the jus gladii. In reality, one primary objective of the government is to safeguard its citizens against all sorts of oppression that might be initiated by criminals. A month later he abducted a four-year-old boy from a school playground, molested and tortured him, then hanged him. The Ethics of Capital Punishment- ETHICS FROM BELOW. This item is part of JSTOR collection While just punishment is scandalous to the secular mind, it is central to the biblical mindset.

9.