Capital Punishment: Justice or Revenge?
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The issue of the death penalty--struck down in 1972 and
reinstated by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976--never goes away. It
has been reinvigorated by several recent events, among them the
execution of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and President
Bush's trip to Europe the same week, where protesters and groups
like Amnesty International added the death penalty to their list
of complaints about U.S. policy. The sentencing of Texas drug
trafficker Juan Garza has served as a case in point for
politicians and others calling (again) for reassessment of
seeming racial disparities among death row criminals.

Some general facts on recent U.S. executions, from the *Bureau of
Justice Statistics Capital Punishment 1999 Bulletin (preliminary
figures for their 2000 report):

 * At year-end 1999, 37 States and the Federal Prison system
   held 3,527 prisoners under sentence of death, 2% more than in
   1998
   
 * During 2000, 14 States executed 85 prisoners, a 13% decrease
   from the 98 executed in 1999
   
 * Texas had carried out 40, 47% of the executions in 2000
   
 * Forty-eight of those executed were white, 36 black, and 1
   American Indian. Two women were executed.
   
Our Special Focus seeks to cut through the circus atmosphere
surrounding the execution of McVeigh (e.g., execution tee shirts)
and the shallow news-of-the-hour coverage of the European
protests to the more transcendent issues: Is the death penalty
just or not? Is it biblical or not? If so, in what cases? What is
the history of capital punishment? Is it a deterrent to crime? We
even briefly look at death, grieving and the afterlife in our
Special Focus. Please let us know what you think of it and tell
others, too.

*Web address: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/cp99.pdf

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If we execute murderers and there is in fact no deterrent effect,
we have killed a bunch of murderers. If we fail to execute
murderers, and doing so would in fact have deterred other
murders, we have allowed the killing of a bunch of innocent
victims. I would much rather risk the former. This, to me, is not
a tough call."

--John McAdams - Marquette University, Department of Political
Science, on deterrence, quoted at http://www.prodeathpenalty.com
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"Be it resolved that because social science research has
demonstrated the death penalty to be racist in application and
social science research has found no consistent evidence of crime
deterrence through execution, the ASC publicly condemns this form
of punishment and urges its members to use their professional
skills in legislatures and the courts to seek a speedy abolition
of this form of punishment."

--American Society of Criminologists Annual Meeting, Montreal,
1987
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o FEATURE ARTICLES

The Death Penalty: God's Wisdom, or Man's Folly?
Robert Paul Martin
http://www.leaderu.com/theology/death_penalty.html
"Where should Christians stand on the issue of the death penalty?
Among those who regard themselves as Christians, there is not a
consensus as to the proper answer to this question. Some argue
vigorously for the death penalty; others argue just as vigorously
against it.... The approach usually taken in dealing with the
question of the rightness or wrongness of capital punishment,
even in many Christian circles, is to treat the subject
philosophically and pragmatically. From this perspective, the
attitudes and opinions of men are given.... My approach will be
to view the question of capital punishment exegetically, that is,
my sole concern is what the Bible has to say about the subject."

Catholicism & Capital Punishment
Avery Cardinal Dulles
http://www.leaderu.com/ftissues/ft0104/articles/dulles.html
Cardinal Dulles presents a brief compass which touches on
numerous and complex problems. He concludes with ten theses that
encapsulate his understanding of the Catholic church's doctrine.

Preserving the Dignity of Man: The Case for Capital Punishment
Chuck Colson
http://www.leaderu.com/socialsciences/colson-dignity.html
There's no more difficult issue for many Americans than capital
punishment. For most of my life, I opposed it. I thought the
death penalty was wrong because it was too easy to make a mistake
and execute an innocent person. As a lawyer, I knew the system
was fallible.

Capital Punishment
Kerby Anderson
http://www.leaderu.com/orgs/probe/docs/cap-pun.html
Looks at Old Testament Law, New Testament principles regarding
capital punishment. Also, answers the question of whether capital
punishment is just and whether it is a deterrence.

An Unwonted Uncertainty
James Nuechterlein
http://www.leaderu.com/ftissues/ft9804/opinion/nuechterlein.html
Nuechterlein confronts his own ambivalence on the subject of the
death penalty and lands on the side of favoring it. See the
author's column written two years hence, below.

Forgiveness & the Death Penalty
James Nuechterlein
http://www.leaderu.com/ftissues/ft0004/opinion/thistime.html
Exactly two years after he wrote in First Things of his
ambivalence on capital punishment, Nuechterlein clarifies some of
the issues at stake in the overheated rhetoric surrounding the
death penalty.

Capital Punishment
Issues Tearing Our Nation's Fabric
http://www.leaderu.com/issues/fabric/chap04.html
Chapter 4 of "Issues Tearing Our Nation's Fabric", exploring 25
key issues dividing the nation of America.


o RELATED ARTICLES

What Happens After Death?
Pat Zukeran
http://www.leaderu.com/orgs/probe/docs/afterdeath.html
Zukeran examines what lies beyond death for both the Christian
and the non-Christian, clarifying misconceptions and developing a
biblical view of what heaven will be like.

All That Lives Must Die
J. Bottum
http://www.leaderu.com/ftissues/ft9605/articles/bottum.html
If death is inevitable, then grief is unavoidable. In this
sweeping essay, the author considers various philosophical bents
behind different approaches to consolation for the grieving.


o RELATED LINKS

The Death Penalty links page
http://www.clarkprosecutor.org/html/links/dplinks.htm#best
Compiled by the Clark County, Indiana prosecuting attorney, this
compendium of more than 1,000 death penalty links from pro, con
and informational perspectives provides a huge array of
information.

History of the Death Penalty
Frontline, PBS
Michael H. Reggio
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/execution/readings/
history.html
Provides a sweeping history of capital punishment, centering on
its history in the United States. Presents a long list of case
history on the death penalty handed down by the U.S. Supreme
Court.

Death Penalty Information Center
Houston MacIntosh, M.D.
http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/dpic.r05.html
Against Death Penalty
Racial Disparities in Federal Death Penalty Prosecutions 1988-
1994 Compelling statistical overview of minority representation
of death penalty sentencing and executions.