Capital Punishment

In a Judeo-Christian society there is a commandment from God: Thou shalt not kill. It seems downright sinful, then, to have capital punishment in such a society. But, our nation, under God, does have capital punishment.

Some crimes are so vicious, and some criminals are so cruel,remorseless, and incorrigible that capital punishment is the appropriate response. Some murderers are so ruthless and so cunning that they continue to commit murder, even from inside the prison walls. I have no desire to give these guys free room, board, tv, air conditioning, etc., at the public expense for the remainder of their natural lives.

Some people argue that, because of the appeal processes (which were established to minimize the flaws in the system), it is more costly to carry out an execution than to imprison a criminal for life. In fact, the appeal process as it stands is unnecessarily long, and should be shortened.

There are those who argue that our judicial system is flawed. They say that, because of that, one or more innocent persons may be executed. What about those innocent people? Indeed, their loss is immeasurably painful, especially to their kin.

I look at it this way: fighting murderers in society is similar to fighting cancer in the human body. Think about it--when one undergoes chemotherapy or radiation treatment, the object is to kill the cancer cells, which we know will never re-habilitate and become friendly cells. If they are not destroyed, they will only spawn more cancer. Those therapies, however, also kill a few thousand good cells. The patient is sick, and maybe his life is shortened from what it would have been had he not been sick in the first place. But, when he is cured--no more cancer!! He survives, and is healthy again.

Fortunately, there are many, many fewer innocent people on death rows than there are "good" cells killed by therapy in only one cancer patient.

Did you notice that many of the terrorists these days have decided to apply the capital punishment to themselves? If they succeed in their mission, we don't have a trial and execution. If they don't succeed, maybe we should give them the capital punishment anyway.

To most of us, human life is the most precious thing there is. If one person deprives another of that precious life, he forfeits his right to keep his own.