Justice, Mercy, and the Death Penalty

Texas executes almost as many people every year - 18 in 2008 – as all the other states combined. Since the Supreme Court re-constitutionalized capital punishmen in 1976, Texas has executed 423 people, out of 1136 nationwide. Texas is also home to numerous Christian ministries, several high-profile preachers, and at least 16 million people who would call themselves Christians, generally of the evangelical variety.

As of 2006, the United States ranked 6^th in the world for executions, ahead of Saudi Arabia and behind Sudan; the remainder of the top ten is rounded by Islamic and Communist dictatorships, with China in the lead (Amnesty International). The Roman Catholic Church has been opposed to capital punishment for some time now (although this is a recent development in light of the church’s history of burning Protestants at the stake). On the other hand, Charles Colson, founder and chairman of Prison Fellowship Ministries – the largest and most comprehensive ministry to prisoners in the world – remains cautiously supportive of capital punishment, albeit in limited circumstances.

How should Christians view the death penalty? I approach this topic as an evangelical, bound by Scripture and Reason, but not by any official teaching on the topic.

Before delving into the weightier issues, we ought to consider whether the death penalty actually deters crime. Regardless of whether a convict is executed or imprisoned for life, he or she is no longer an effective threat to society at large, although in the latter case he may be a threat to fellow inmates and prison guards. Studies attempting to measure the deterrence effect are generally inconclusive: no American state other than Texas applies the death penalty consistently enough for it be an effective deterrent, and while those states that lack the death penalty have lower crime rates on the whole, most of this can be attributed to other factors. The most rigorous studies to date have found that each execution deters anywhere from 3 to 18 murders; in their paper, "Is Capital Punishment Morally Necessary?", Sunstein and Vermeule of the University of Chicago Law School conclude that on this basis, government is morally obligated to impose capital punishment to protect innocent lives. However, these studies are based upon a paucity of data, and the fact that there are so many factors to be controlled-for suggests that there are more effective ways to reduce crime, given that the average capital case costs a state $2 million (The Economist, August 30^th 2007).

Perhaps the strongest Biblical passage to be cited in support of capital punishment is Genesis 9:6, which states, “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in His own image.” The context is very general, if not universal, and the justification is the fundamental truth of human dignity based upon the image of God in man. However, at this point in redemptive history – long past Creation and the Fall, yet before even the Abrahamic Covenant – neither the Law or the Gospel have been revealed. While this passage makes a strong case for the justice of capital punishment, we ought to read “the rest of the story” before coming to any firm conclusions.

The Mosaic Law in the Old Testament does demand capital punishment. However, it demands it in so many situations, and in many cases for actions which are not even crimes today, that we ought to be careful in attempting to apply it. There is a vast difference between the ancient Kindgom of Israel – a God-ordained theocracy which existed prior to the revelation of the Kingdom of God with the coming of Jesus Christ – and modern-day America, an officially secular (though strongly-Christian influenced) democracy. Although a marginal element of Christians (the Reconstructionists) would attempt to apply all of the Mosaic Law to modern life, most Christians would reject this on both Biblical and political grounds. And the entire New Testament, beginning with Jesus Himself, declares that the Mosaic Law is imperfect, a dimished reflection of the true peace and harmony which God desires.

The New Testament never explicitly commands or condemns capital punishment. The thief on the cross proclaims that “we are getting what we deserve,” but it is precarious to build a judicial philosophy on this statement alone. In his confrontation with the Pharisees over the woman caught in adultery, Jesus does not repudiate the Mosaic Law, rather He challenges their right to administer it justly in light of their own hyprocrisy. Paul’s admonition in Romans 13 that the government “does not bear the sword in vain,” implies an authority to administer death – but it could just as easily refer to government power in general, the use of force in emergency situations, or the provision of national defense. And it does not address the difference between possessing the authority to “bear the sword,” and the wise use of that authority.

Biblically, the fundamental role of government is promote peace and preserve order, and to administer justice. If capital punishment does produce enough deterrence (as opposed to life imprisonment) to protect innocent lives, then it would be consistent with this mission. Furthermore, there is a strong argument that fair, retributive justice requires that those who take a life – or, even more, those who take multiple lives – ought to forfeit their own lives. Is it just for a serial killer to live, after numerous innocents have been killed? On the contrary, “an eye for an eye” does not always seem applicable: we don’t forcibly amputate those who wound others, and we don’t sentence rapists to being raped. Nevertheless, those who argue for capital punishment for either deterrence or fundamental justice certainly have grounds for doing so.

However, this analysis glosses over a couple of real-world injustices, as well as a key Biblical text. First, since 1973 over 130 people who were sitting on death row in the United States of America have been proven innocent. While death-penalty proponents note that it has never been proven that an innocent person was executed, this still demonstrates that the possibility of executing an innocent person is real. While it may be slightly less just to give a murderer life in prison rather than death, it is grotesquely unjust to give death to an innocent man or woman. Furthermore, studies have found that the death penalty is applied more often when the victim is white, rather than a racial minority.

Second, the Mosaic Law in the Old Testament – which is still often cited to support capital punishment – explicity declares on 2 occassions that “no one shall put put to death, except on the testimony of two or three witnesses” (Deuteronomy 17:6, 19:15, Hebrews 10:28). Laws on the books in many states – including Texas – allow the death penalty to be delivered even on the basis of a single eyewitness. And in 2007, Texas actually executed 2 men for a murder in which the victim was killed by a single bullet, since both admitted to shooting at him. Many of the now-overturned wrongful convictions were based on a single witness, but later overturned by either DNA evidence or a confession from the real murderer. It is truly shocking, tragic, and sad that so many evangelical Christians would support the administration of the death penalty in its present form, when the Bible explicity demands otherwise!

Whenever this topic is discussed, there is a “killer question” that is inevitably asked. I will do my best to answer it here.

“What if someone you loved were murdered? Wouldn’t you want to murderer to die”

It is an excellent question, but we must remember that hard questions rarely have simple answers. And it would be arrogant and presumptuous for me, having never experienced such violence in my life, to proclaim confidently what I would do if placed in that situation. So I cannot answer the question directly, but I can offer a few certainties.

1) At some level, I would “want” the murderer to be put to death. One night after Bible study in India, we gave up on waving down a rikshaw and chose to walk home. We quickly realized this to be a mistake. In fact, that 1-mile walk from our friends’ apartment to our hotel was the only time we have truly felt unsafe overseas. At one point, a man walking past us quickly and harshly grabbed my wife. He was on his way down the street before I knew what he had done, and I was afraid that if I confronted him on the street I would wind up dead. By the time we reached our hotel, I was still enraged at the way she had been assaulted and frustrated at my inability to defend her. I tried to obey Jesus in praying for my enemy – that nameless punk – but the only words that came out were “Dear God, I pray that he gets run over by a bus.” Literally.

2) If the victim were my wife, I ultimately do not think I could demand the death penalty, for a very simple reason – she wouldn’t want me to. As evil as it would be for anyone to take her life, how much worse would it be to dishonor her in her death? An execution does not resurrect a life already taken.

3) God declares clearly that “vengeance is mine, I will repay.” It is our responsibility to forgive, to reconcile, to demonstrate the reality of costly grace to a world which finds it unbelievable.

Considering the second reason, it is important to distinguish between justice and mercy. Justice demands a life for a life, assuming that the accused is truly proved guilty. But Jesus calls us to go beyond justice, and to love mercy as well. If capital punishment were fundamentally unjust, it ought to never be applied – not even to Saddam Hussein. But if the real question is, “How are we to show mercy?,” then I cannot demand that non-Christians show mercy to those who have wronged them, or that the government show mercy in a case which does not involve me. Mercy and forgiveness are individual decisions. If the legislature abolishes all traffic laws, that is an abandonment of the government’s responsibility to uphold order. But if an individual police officer chooses to let me off with a warning even though I was going 60 in a 45, that is mercy.

So here is my conclusion. The death penalty is not inherently unjust. But in its present form – with wrongful convictions, inconsistent application, lack of multiple witnesses, and a possible bias against minorities – it is unjust. And we Christians are called to a higher law than the law of the land – we are to show mercy and offer forgiveness even to those whom our government punishes, just as Jesus did to the thief next to Him.