I have noticed that some people have been making comments on the death penalty on social media and I do not know why it suddenly this topic became very popular. It came to my attention that some pro-life people have come out in favor of capital punishment.
It is of concern that some people, in the XXI century, still think that the application of capital punishment is necessary. We must not mix the issue of legitimate defense, which I believe is not in dispute.
The death penalty is the maximum punishment for a criminal, in contrast to the fact that life is the most important right for a person (it is not the only one, but it is the most important since it opens the door to everything else).
The death penalty is very dangerous to apply, since like any human system it is imperfect and susceptible to many deficiencies and innumerable abuses (as has already happened). The justice system could be easily deceived or, in societies where corruption is a serious problem it would be very unfortunate to be applying the death penalty. Also, the positive law is not perfect and has many gray and dark areas.
The death penalty reduces and limits the ambit of possibilities for the criminal to repent and mend their ways. Thus, as its application does not necessarily bring peace to the victims or bring them back to life (in the case of a murder). Also, the death penalty shows that a justice system lacks creativity and ways to reintegrate criminals back into society as good citizens (if possible), which would be the ideal of any prison system.
The death penalty reduces and limits the ambit of possibilities …
I know very well the great harm and pain that one person can cause to another(s). I myself have been a victim of crime multiple times. But also, I am aware that all people enjoy a dignity that is in our own nature. Crimes hurt dignity but they do not erase it from our nature. In other words, it is inhuman to abort a baby, but the person who aborts does not lose dignity for committing that horrible crime. Therefore, crimes (or sins) do not take away the dignity of the human person.
If we, as a society, apply the death penalty, then I think we are not very different from the criminals who we say “deserve” death penalty. Only that we can justify ourselves with the law and the rules. But, remember that even if something is legal, it doesn’t make it a good thing. For example, abortion is legal, but it is not good. Same-sex “marriage” is legal, but not good. In some places, especially in the Middle East, converting from Islam to Christianity is illegal and carries the death penalty; and such thing prescribed by their laws does not make it good and correct. The death penalty was established at a time where in society it was practically impossible to keep citizens safe from a potential escape from the dangerous criminal (as in the old west). But today, the prison system is able to keep inmates in much safer and more appropriate jails.
“remember that even if something is legal, it doesn’t make it a good thing…”
The most unfortunate, and what we seriously have to consider as a society is the reason why a person becomes a criminal (be it serial killer, rapist, terrorist … you put the worst qualifying adjective you like). Ask yourself, a little innocent baby grows up and something happens in his formation process (or his mental or spiritual health), which leads him to make explosives and place them in a school. How did it come to that? I think that the problem started in his family (if he had one), perhaps an abusive father, family violence, physical or psychological abuse added to the series of violent, senseless, pornographic films (which converts people as “things” of pleasure, etc…). A society, a civilization and a culture should not manufacture serial killers (like Patrick Crusius). We are doing something wrong. The death penalty does not solve anything, to the contrary it only adds more discomfort to the social environment and is just one more characteristic of a decadent society.
Scribes and Pharisees: –“Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery… Now in the law, Moses commanded us to stone (to death) such women. So what do you say?” Jesus: -“Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” John 8, 1-11
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