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Entries for January 2023

31
The question of whether the death penalty was moral and just, even cruel and inhuman punishment, first came to my attention when I was a kid over fifty years ago and continues to this day. The first death penalty began in 6400 BC. As a kid, I had little experience with life. I believed that if someone took, they deserved to have theirs taken in return. This opinion reversed evolved as a child, so I believed in the possibility of reform, but then I began to experience life, like being shot at and having a gun held to my head by a Mexican policeman. I realized that life and men could be cruel, and my earlier perception was naïve. Maybe murders can't be reformed. And what about justice for the victim's family? Don't they deserve an eye for an eye?

I hadn't thought of the death penalty for years until I heard that Oregon's mayor, Kate Brown, had commuted/deferred seventeen death sentences on death row to life imprisonment without parole, saying the death penalty was immoral.

The first thing I thought of was justice for the victim's families. The second thing I thought of was the cost of imprisonment the taxpayers would bear. At the same time, they have already incurred the price of a trial to convict a guilty murderer. A jury of this murderer's peers convicted this man. What right does this Governor have to reverse the people's legal wishes on seventeen counts, and what does this say to the people of Oregon considering murder?

Whether the death penalty deters murders is too confusing to answer. Some believe that a society that condemns murderers is so brutal that it causes murder. I am not of that belief. Although my faith in Jesus tells me, He forgives all sins. We'll be judged when we go before God. Taking the life of another would be hard to explain, and God has a special place reserved for sinners I wouldn't care to visit.

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