Death Penalty

[MoonlessNight]

So you're using Japan as the bar of morality for the US?

"They did it too!" doesn't even work for schoolkids.

The discussion here isn't Japan, it's the morality of the US.

I think it would help your discussion to distinguish whether you are talking about jus ad bellum or jus in bello.

The criteria that Open Heart listed were criteria to determine whether it was justified for the US to go to war against Japan, i.e. criteria for jus ad bellum. You seem to be responding by criticizing the actions of the US in the war, i.e. saying that the US failed the test of jus in bello. But it is perfectly possible for a nation to go into war for justified reasons, and fail to live up to the demands of justice after the war began (and in my reading, that's exactly what happened with the US relative to WWII). However, both jus ad bellum and jus in bello are called criteria for a "just war" in colloquial English. Just War theory itself focuses more on the reasons for war, so in a philosophical discussion I would assume that's what is being talked about when someone asks for the conditions of a "just war" but it could very well be that that's not what you are looking for.

 

[Open Heart]

The entire code of Mosaic law was just. Indeed, as a code of law directly from God, it is perhaps the most just code of laws ever written. Yet Jesus was clear (such as when he saved the woman from being stoned) that even so it should not always be carried out to the full extent that it could be.

Really? Jesus said that not even a punctuation mark will pass away from the Law until heaven and earth shall pass away.

Jesus' only disagreement was with certain INTERPRETATIONS of Torah. The Pharisees were divided into two schools:

1. Bet Hillel: this school was more into the spirit of the law, was the more lenient of the two. This was the school that taught, i.e., that it was lawful for a person to heal via prayer on the Sabbath. This was the school of thought that Jesus followed and supported. I think we can supposed that Pharisees such as Nicodemus who followed Jesus were also of this school
2. Bet Shammai: This school was highly legalistic and strict. In every case where the Pharisees argue with Jesus in the gospels, the position represented by the Pharisees is the Bet Shammai position. This is because during the years of Jesus' ministry, the school of Shammai was in power in the Sanhedron.

If you read the Talmud, you will find LOTS of arguments between Rabbis, and certainly arguments between Hillel and Shammai, and their followers. This is because debate is the way that Jews learn. Such arguments are an integral part of Jewish culture. Jesus' arguments with the bet Shammai Pharisees should be seen in that light.

What is MORE TELLING is that you don't hear Jesus arguing with bet Hillel Pharisees.

In many cases, Christians who are unfamiliar with Jewish law simply don't understand what is going on in the gospels. For example, the woman caught in adultery is being chased by what is essentially a lynch mob. A mob does not have the Godly authority to convict and execute ANYONE. She had not gone before a beit din (Jewish court of Law), or she wouldn't have been being chased. A beit din would have rightly convicted and sentenced her, and Jesus would not have protested, since God himself gave them the authority to do so.

You ARE CORRECT however, that the proscribed penalties of the Torah are the maximum penalties, not the mandatory penalties.

For example, let's say a woman was abandoned by her husband, and is unable to afford to feed herself and her three children on what she can make by herself. Along comes Shmuel bar Abraham who falls for her. They can't marry since she can't get a divorce. So it's a secret relationship. Eventually it is found out and taken before the beit din. The rabbis understand that it is adultery, but they will also weigh in the fact that she has been abandoned, etc. etc. and will not have her executed.

And indeed, throughout Jewish history, if a beit din executes more than one person in 70 years, it is considered a bloody court.

 

[Open Heart]

Ending someone's life also ends their chance of getting saved.

If the intense self reflection of impending death doesn't bring a person to repentance, I don't think an extended lifetime will.

 

[Open Heart]

It's God's right to avenge.

We're not talking about revenge, we are talking about justice.

What's the difference? Justice is equality--an eye for an eye, a life for a life. Revenge is all out of proportion--an eye for an eye and your children's eyes too. Remember the rape of Dinah in Genesis 34? For that one rape, Jacob's sons slaughtered an entire city. That's not justice, that's revenge. Capital punishment, a life for a life, is obviously not this kind of overcompensation.

 

[Open Heart]

The person will experience eternal damnation if they don't have salvation.

If they live the next 25 years on death row, and finally go through the identical intense internal life overview as they approach death from old age, and don't repent, I don't see how this is any different.

 

[anna ~ grace]

This reminds me a bit of recent trends in the Church to discourage the evangelization of Jews....

 

[SolomonVII]

Justice must be tempered with mercy.

The entire code of Mosaic law was just. Indeed, as a code of law directly from God, it is perhaps the most just code of laws ever written. Yet Jesus was clear (such as when he saved the woman from being stoned) that even so it should not always be carried out to the full extent that it could be.

Thus there is nothing inconsistent in recognizing that the death penalty is deserved in some case or other while simultaneously arguing that it should not be used in that case. Mercy is precisely the decision to not carry out a just punishment, after all.

That being said, the care of the common good is important enough that I would say that it is an immoral act not to execute someone who would continue his crimes, provided he already deserves death and you are the proper authority to execute him. The argument now hinges around whether we actually have reached the point where we can protect society from the most violent criminals without killing them, in which case whether to be merciful or not becomes a pressing question. (Complicating the matter is the fact that I don't think that we really can in the most extreme cases. At best we can protect people outside of the prisons, but prisoners and guards should still be protected by the common good. Yet at the same time I recognize that it is possible to safely detain many more people today than it would have been, for example, in the eighteenth century.)

A real turning point for me was the release of the Lockerbie bomber on 'compassionate grounds' after eight years of time served for his killing of hundreds of people on a plane.
Catholic semi-official opinion on the death penalty as being no longer necessary in Western countries that have the means to keep people from killing again through effective containment systems does not take into account the complete absence of a moral compass on behalf of judges who who even consider letting such a man out of jail again, to the cheers and acclamation of adoring crowds and officials back in Libya for the "hero" who prevailed.
There is a breadth of thought based in the whole of Judeo-Christian ethic that may potentially make possible the idea that the death penalty is no longer necessary in civilized countries. But Western jurisprudence is no longer guided by the breadth of that thought, in all is necessary conflicts and clashes between the the opposing ideals of justice and mercy. Instead, the Bible has become something to be cherry-picked by judges who even bother with it any more.

 

[Open Heart]

A real turning point for me was the release of the Lockerbie bomber on 'compassionate grounds' after eight years of time served for his killing of hundreds of people on a plane.

Right. It's an insult to the lives of the hundreds of people that he killed -- it demeans their lives.

 

[Hamlet7768]

A real turning point for me was the release of the Lockerbie bomber on 'compassionate grounds' after eight years of time served for his killing of hundreds of people on a plane.
Catholic semi-official opinion on the death penalty as being no longer necessary in Western countries that have the means to keep people from killing again through effective containment systems does not take into account the complete absence of a moral compass on behalf of judges who who even consider letting such a man out of jail again, to the cheers and acclamation of adoring crowds and officials back in Libya for the "hero" who prevailed.
There is a breadth of thought based in the whole of Judeo-Christian ethic that may potentially make possible the idea that the death penalty is no longer necessary in civilized countries. But Western jurisprudence is no longer guided by the breadth of that thought, in all is necessary conflicts and clashes between the the opposing ideals of justice and mercy. Instead, the Bible has become something to be cherry-picked by judges who even bother with it any more.

There's a lot more to that, though. He had terminal cancer, and there was a lot of controversy over whether he was actually responsible, and whether he had a fair trial. But that's a separate debate.

The biggest issue with the justice system in the United States is that they are entirely concerned with punishment and not at all concerned with reform. Nobody should be treated as irreformable. If someone doesn't reform over their prison term, then they shouldn't be let out, because they're still a danger to other people. I see no other just basis for imprisoning someone.

There is a separate, but related, issue of the nature of the prison system itself. It takes in non-violent offenders (drug addicts, for instance) and dehumanizes them. By the time they emerge, they are officially Convicted Felons, unable to vote, unable to get many jobs, and unable to be trusted. Small wonder so many of them would turn to crime. I doubt the Mara Salvatrucha run background checks.

There are many things wrong with our justice system, and I guess I'm getting off-topic by not dealing with the Death Penalty directly. The reality is that real change won't come from eliminating the death penalty alone. You have to look at the whole system.

 

[Rhamiel]

There's a lot more to that, though. He had terminal cancer, and there was a lot of controversy over whether he was actually responsible, and whether he had a fair trial. But that's a separate debate.

The biggest issue with the justice system in the United States is that they are entirely concerned with punishment and not at all concerned with reform. Nobody should be treated as irreformable. If someone doesn't reform over their prison term, then they shouldn't be let out, because they're still a danger to other people. I see no other just basis for imprisoning someone.

There is a separate, but related, issue of the nature of the prison system itself. It takes in non-violent offenders (drug addicts, for instance) and dehumanizes them. By the time they emerge, they are officially Convicted Felons, unable to vote, unable to get many jobs, and unable to be trusted. Small wonder so many of them would turn to crime. I doubt the Mara Salvatrucha run background checks.

There are many things wrong with our justice system, and I guess I'm getting off-topic by not dealing with the Death Penalty directly. The reality is that real change won't come from eliminating the death penalty alone. You have to look at the whole system.

You make some really good points about how dehumanizing the prison system is

We need better jobs programs
Both training in prison and opportunities on the outside for convicts

Why so much focus on a few heinous murderers being put to death when thousands of lives are ruined by the prison system?
Why so much focus on the death penalty when it is used so infrequently? This should be the main concern

 

[Open Heart]

Nobody should be treated as irreformable.

Boy are you naive.

 

[Hamlet7768]

Boy are you naive.

Don't patronize me. I'm well aware of the world's Ted Bundys and Dennis Raders. They still should be treated like human beings. It wasn't right for Christopher Scarver to beat Jeffrey Dahmer to death with a metal bar, even if Dahmer was serving 16 consecutive life terms for crimes that curdle the blood. We are called to be better than that. We are called to be perfect as God is perfect.

 

[Open Heart]

I'm well aware of the world's Ted Bundys and Dennis Raders. They still should be treated like human beings.

You treat them like human beings by holding them responsible for their crimes, not by letting them off with life in prison.

 

[RDKirk]

ISIS is an organization. It is a group. The men in it are merely its parts. It has a life of its own. It does not reach out to radicals. Rather it reaches out to every sunni Muslim, and recruits and radicalizes simultaneously, making terrorists out of men who were not. With its websites and videos it inspire people far out of its reach to become other than they were.

Well, not exactly.

The outreach is through the Salafi doctrine in the Sunni sect. That is "innocently" preached to Sunnis through most of the Western world, financed by Saudi Arabia.

The Salafi doctrine, on its soft end, results in legal activity to force Islamic principles and then Sharia where Muslims do not have social dominance. On its hard end, the Salafi doctrine encourages violent action.

Those who are Salafi indoctinated, combined with other factors (such as being a socially disaffected young male, or a highly moralistic young male, or a young male who has suffered unusual misfortune) are the ones ripe for recruitment into an operational corps.

 

[RDKirk]

Don't patronize me. I'm well aware of the world's Ted Bundys and Dennis Raders. They still should be treated like human beings. It wasn't right for Christopher Scarver to beat Jeffrey Dahmer to death with a metal bar, even if Dahmer was serving 16 consecutive life terms for crimes that curdle the blood. We are called to be better than that. We are called to be perfect as God is perfect.

Fortunately, Dahmer lived long enough to accept Christ.

And that is a consideration as well.

 

[RDKirk]

I think it would help your discussion to distinguish whether you are talking about jus ad bellum or jus in bello.

The criteria that Open Heart listed were criteria to determine whether it was justified for the US to go to war against Japan, i.e. criteria for jus ad bellum. You seem to be responding by criticizing the actions of the US in the war, i.e. saying that the US failed the test of jus in bello. But it is perfectly possible for a nation to go into war for justified reasons, and fail to live up to the demands of justice after the war began (and in my reading, that's exactly what happened with the US relative to WWII). However, both jus ad bellum and jus in bello are called criteria for a "just war" in colloquial English. Just War theory itself focuses more on the reasons for war, so in a philosophical discussion I would assume that's what is being talked about when someone asks for the conditions of a "just war" but it could very well be that that's not what you are looking for.

Let's keep considering the WWII situation with Japan. Why, exactly, did the US enter the war?

Was it because Japan was an immoral power? Did the US enter the war to defend China or Korea from the Japanese?

We know not, even though the Chinese had pleaded for our assistance.
If a person claims self defense, it is reasonable to ask whether he had a part in goading the other man into an attack. If that is the case, the argument for jus ad bellum fails.

 

[MoonlessNight]

Let's keep considering the WWII situation with Japan. Why, exactly, did the US enter the war?

Was it because Japan was an immoral power? Did the US enter the war to defend China or Korea from the Japanese?

We know not, even though the Chinese had pleaded for our assistance.

Does the name "Pearl Harbor" ring any bells?

If a person claims self defense, it is reasonable to ask whether he had a part in goading the other man into an attack. If that is the case, the argument for jus ad bellum fails.

Are you trying to make a claim that the US's behavior pre-Pearl Harbor justified a Japanese sneak attack?

The most mystifying thing about your whole response is how you act like it's not known why the US would get drawn into a war with Japan, or that there is a common opinion that the US shouldn't have gotten involved. WWII is a case where it's blindingly obvious why the US got involved. Maybe you think that attacking a nation that performed a sneak attack on one of your military installations isn't justified, I don't know, but even in that case you'd think that you'd at least explicitly justify your position. Instead you act as though it's some huge mystery why the US would go to war with Japan. For what purpose do you do this?