Death Penalty

Jonah on NRO asks one of his copundits (Rod Dreher) whether a story in CNN makes him re-think his opposition to the death penalty.

The criminal in question murdered his father, abducted two nuns, then murdered one of the nuns. He cut the head, hands, and feet from the body of the nun that was killed.

What a brutal, horrible murder. What a frighteningly evil man. Frankly, my first instinct with a person like this is that they need to face the death penalty. It does make me question my anti-death penalty stance. The questioning, though, leads me back to my original stance: the death penalty is wrong. Not just because of the potential for human error during trials, the potential that an innocent might be executed, but because it is not morally correct for a society to take a person's life when an effective alternative exists.

I support the war effort because you can't contain a regime indefinitely. To remove the regime, there often is no other option than to fight. There is such a thing as a just war.

The murderer, on the other hand, doesn't have to be killed to keep society safe. Incarceration can do that quite effectively.

For most of my life, I was very pro-death penalty, and the conversion to another view point is a recent event. I still won't argue too loudly against the death penalty and I certainly won't demonstrate during an execution. Those candle-light vigils disturb me; I wonder just how it must feel to the victim's families to see people out supporting the murderer who robbed them of their loved one. Yes, there are times when my gut wants to see the bad guy pay that ultimate cost.

And, yes, this is one of those times.

Read the story in CNN.