Let's get political

I knew this time would come sooner or later.  I've tried to avoid publishing any blogs on the election or other particularly political topics, simply for fear that they'll come back to haunt me later on in life.  But I can't anymore.  So here's your warning — it's about to get political.

So what inspired my new "throw caution to the wind" attitude?  Well, honestly, there have been several things.  I've been mulling over some potential blog topics the last few days — most of which touch on politics — and today's news just pushed me over the edge.

Earlier today, the Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4 that sentencing someone to death for raping a child is unconstitutional, assuming that the child is not killed.  I agree with this ruling.  Not because I don't consider child rape an especially horrendous crime.  I do.  But because I don't agree with the death penalty, and I don't think it should be used as punishment for any crime.

Many of you are probably wondering why.  Well, I'm glad you asked!

There are the obvious issues that are normally raised by those opposing the death penalty — the constitutionality (if execution isn't cruel and unusual, what is?), the fact that the death penalty does not deter offenders from committing their crime, and the fact that innocent men really are convicted for crimes they haven't committed (and some are sentenced to the death penalty).  These are all obvious points, and they do factor into my position.  But they're not the only (or the most powerful) things that I have a problem with.

One of the major problems I have with the death penalty centers around the fact that the judicial process behind the death penalty is inherently flawed.  And again, I'm not just talking about the innocents that are sentenced to death row.  I'm talking about the very mentality that surrounds the death penalty.  I can think of no better example than the media and public frenzy that swirled around Tookie Williams before his impending execution in 2005.

For those of you that live under a rock, Tookie was a convicted murderer who also carried the shameful prestige of co-founding the Crips gang.  During his 20+ years on death row (he was sentenced in 1981), Tookie seemed to change.  He became an anti-gang activist and was even nominated for the Nobel Peace prize for his books, which were aimed at helping disenfranchised youth.  He apologized for the Crips' founding and participated in efforts to prevent kids from joining gangs.  As his execution date neared, many Americans began to say that Tookie should be spared because he could do more good alive.

This is the major flaw with America's death penalty.  When Tookie seemed to change his behavior, people flocked to stop his execution.  They proclaimed that he was a good guy now.  That authorities should think of all the good he could do if pardoned.  Never mind the four people he murdered during petty robberies — Tookie had changed!  

But we don't sentence people to death because they're bad people.  We execute them for the crime committed, so it should make no difference if the guilty become good.  At least that's the idea behind America's death penalty.  But Tookie's case showed that maybe that's not the case at all.

Tookie was denied clemency and was executed by lethal injection in 2005.  Many in the general public were outraged or saddened.  Why?  Because Tookie was good now!  A lot of them found solace when prison guards came forward and said that Tookie remained one of the meanest inmates in prison up until the time of his death.  He also refused to assist police in their gang investigations despite his apparent anti-gang turn.  So maybe he wasn't so nice after all!  Maybe he really did deserve the needle.

This is just one example of the problems judicial subjectivity brings to the death penalty.  There are many others.  Maybe I could bring myself to support capital punishment if there was a flat standard applied to every case, much like in Saudi Arabia or other Islamic nations.  If everyone that committed first degree murder was executed, then there would be some consistency in our system.  But as it stands now, the punishment given in a murder case depends on the prosecutor, the judge, and the jury.  It varies from case to case, and it all depends on the people involved.  It depends on how the jury views the defendant.

Until the majority of Americans understand and support the simple logic behind the death penalty — that a person committed a horrible crime and will be punished for it, not because a person is a bad person — then I don't see how anyone can support the system.  If we're executing people because they're bad, then all of us deserve to be executed.  It goes back to the Bible and original sin.  Believe it or not, Mother Teresa deserved to be executed just as much as Ted Bundy deserved to be executed.  No one can do enough good in their life to atone for the bad they're born with.

And this brings me to my final point, which has nothing to do with the flaws or subjectivity in America's court system.  It has to do with what I believe is right as a Christian.

As a Christian, I believe in original sin, the redemptive grace of God, and heaven and hell.  I believe that people who choose not to trust God will go to hell when they die, where they will be eternally separated from God.  And as a Christian, I don't know how I can support a system where we knowingly execute someone who hasn't accepted Christ, thereby sending that person to hell.  I can't reconcile it with my conscience or what I believe to be true.

When I take all of these factors and add them together — a flawed mentality, a system that sometimes convicts innocent people, the fact that a threat of execution does not deter offenders, the idea that execution may be cruel and unusual, and the knowledge that the death penalty may ensure that someone never gets saved — it's just too much.  In my mind, at least, the scales of justice tip decidedly against the death penalty.  

So when I say that I agree with the Supreme Court's decision, please don't think that I'm somehow overlooking the seriousness of child rape.  I think it's right up there with first degree murder in terms of atrocity.  But I don't think it warrants execution.  I think life in prison without the possibility of parole is sufficiently just.  After all, we all know what happens to child molesters in prison.