Opponents of the Death Penalty Have Blood on their Hands

By Dudley Sharp

To:  COMMISSION TO STUDY THE DEATH PENALTY IN NEW HAMPSHIRE

 

bcc: The New Hampshire General Court, Police Chiefs and media throughout New Hampshire

 

From: Dudley Sharp

 

Opponents of the Death Penalty Have Blood on their Hands
Dennis Prager, November 29, 2005

Those of us who believe in the death penalty for some murders are told by opponents of the death penalty that if the state executes an innocent man, we have blood on our hands.

 

They are right. I, for one, readily acknowledge that as a proponent of the death penalty, my advocacy could result in the killing of an innocent person.

 

I have never, however, encountered any opponents of the death penalty who acknowledge that they have the blood of innocent men and women on their hands.

 

Yet they certainly do. Whereas the shedding of innocent blood that proponents of capital punishment are responsible for is thus far, thankfully, only theoretical, the shedding of innocent blood for which opponents of capital punishment are responsible is not theoretical at all. Thanks to their opposition to the death penalty, innocent men and women have been murdered by killers who would otherwise have been put to death.

 

Opponents of capital punishment give us names of innocents who would have been killed by the state had their convictions stood and they been actually executed, and a few executed convicts whom they believe might have been innocent. But proponents can name men and women who really were -- not might have been -- murdered by convicted murderers while in prison. The murdered include prison guards, fellow inmates, and innocent men and women outside of prison.

 

In 1974, Clarence Ray Allen ordered a 17-year-old young woman, Mary Sue Kitts, murdered because she knew of Allen's involvement in a Fresno, California, store burglary.

 

After his 1977 trial and conviction, Allen was sentenced to life without parole.

 

According to San Francisco Chronicle columnist Debra Saunders, "In Folsom State Prison, Allen cooked up a scheme to kill the witnesses who testified against him so that he could appeal his conviction and then be freed because any witnesses were dead -- or scared into silence." As a result, three more innocent people were murdered -- Bryon Schletewitz, 27, Josephine Rocha, 17, and Douglas White, 18.

 

This time, a jury sentenced Allen to death, the only death sentence ever handed down by a Glenn County (California) jury. That was in 1982.

 

For 23 years, opponents of the death penalty have played with the legal system -- not to mention played with the lives of the murdered individuals' loved ones -- to keep Allen alive.

 

Had Clarence Allen been executed for the 1974 murder of Mary Sue Kitts, three innocent people under the age of 30 would not have been killed. But because moral clarity among anti-death penalty activists is as rare as their self-righteousness is ubiquitous, finding an abolitionist who will acknowledge moral responsibility for innocents murdered by convicted murderers is an exercise in futility.

 

Perhaps the most infamous case of a death penalty opponent directly causing the murder of an innocent is that of novelist Norman Mailer. In 1981, Mailer utilized his influence to obtain parole for a bank robber and murderer named Jack Abbott on the grounds that Abbott was a talented writer. Six weeks after being paroled, Abbott murdered Richard Adan, a 22-year-old newlywed, aspiring actor and playwright who was waiting tables at his father's restaurant.

 

Mailer's reaction? "Culture is worth a little risk," he told the press. "I'm willing to gamble with a portion of society to save this man's talent."

 

That in a nutshell is the attitude of the abolitionists. They are "willing to gamble with a portion of society" -- such as the lives of additional innocent victims -- in order to save the life of every murderer.

 

Abolitionists are certain that they are morally superior to the rest of us. In their view, we who recoil at the thought that every murderer be allowed to keep his life are moral inferiors, barbarians essentially. But just as pacifists' views ensure that far more innocents will be killed, so do abolitionists' views ensure that more innocents will die.

 

There may be moral reasons to oppose taking the life of any murderer (though I cannot think of one), but saving the lives of innocents cannot be regarded as one of them.

 

Nevertheless, abolitionists will be happy to learn that Amnesty International has taken up the cause of ensuring that Clarence Ray Allen be spared execution. That is what the international community now regards as fighting for human rights.

 

FrontPageMagazine.com

 

Dennis Prager hosts a nationally syndicated radio talk show based in Los Angeles. He is the author of four books, most recently "Happiness is a Serious Problem" (HarperCollins). His website is www.dennisprager.com. To find out more about Dennis Prager, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

 

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The Innocent and the Death Penalty

Dudley Sharp

1)  "The Death Penalty: More Protection for Innocents"
http://homicidesurvivors.com/2009/07/05/the-death-penalty-more-protection-for-innocents.aspx

 

 The false innocence claims by anti death penalty activists are legendary. Some examples:

 

 

2)  "The Innocent Executed: Deception & Death Penalty Opponents"
 http://homicidesurvivors.com/2009/10/08/the-innocent-executed-deception--death-penalty-opponents--draft.aspx

 

3)  The 130 (now 139) death row "innocents" scam
http://homicidesurvivors.com/2009/03/04/fact-checking-issues-on-innocence-and-the-death-penalty.aspx

 

4)  Sister Helen Prejean & the death penalty: A Critical Review"
http://homicidesurvivors.com/2009/05/04/sister-helen-prejean--the-death-penalty-a-critical-review.aspx

 

5)  "At the Death House Door" Can Rev. Carroll Pickett be trusted?"
http://homicidesurvivors.com/2009/01/30/fact-checking-is-very-welcome.aspx

 

6)  "Cameron Todd Willingham: Another Media Meltdown",  A Collection of Articles
http://homicidesurvivors.com/categories/Cameron%20Todd%20Willingham.aspx

 

7)  "A Death Penalty Red Herring: The Inanity and Hypocrisy of Perfection", Lester Jackson Ph.D.,
http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=102909A

Mercy & the Death Penalty

To:  COMMISSION TO STUDY THE DEATH PENALTY IN NEW HAMPSHIRE

 

bcc: The New Hampshire General Court, Police Chiefs and media throughout New Hampshire

 

From: Dudley Sharp

 

Mercy & the Death Penalty
compiled by Dudley Sharp
 
1)  Saint Augustine: " . . . inflicting capital punishment . . . protects those who are undergoing capital punishment from the harm they may suffer . . . through increased sinning which might continue if their life went on." (On the Lord's Sermon, 1.20.63-64.)
 
2)  Mercy, detached from Justice, grows unmerciful.-- CS Lewis

 

3)  Saint Thomas Aquinas: . . . the death inflicted by the judge profits the sinner, if he be converted, unto the expiation of his crime; and, if he be not converted, it profits so as to put an end to the sin, because the sinner is thus deprived of the power to sin anymore." (Summa Theologica, II-II, 25, 6, 2
 
4)   “. . . a secondary measure of the love of God may be said to appear. For capital punishment provides the murderer with incentive to repentance which the ordinary man does not have, that is a definite date on which he is to meet his God. It is as if God thus providentially granted him a special inducement to repentance out of consideration of the enormity of his crime . . . the law grants to the condemned an opportunity which he did not grant to his victim, the opportunity to prepare to meet his God. Even divine justice here may be said to be tempered with mercy.” Quaker biblical scholar Dr. Gervas A. Carey (1) (p. 116).
 
5)  Romano Amerio, a faithful Catholic Vatican insider, scholar, professor at the Academy of Lugano, consultant to the Preparatory Commission of Vatican II, and a peritus (expert theologian) at the Council.
 
“The most irreligious aspect of this argument against capital punishment is that it denies its expiatory value which, from a religious point of view, is of the highest importance because it can include a final consent to give up the greatest of all worldly goods."
 
"This fits exactly with St. Thomas’s opinion that as well as canceling out any debt that the criminal owes to civil society, capital punishment can cancel all punishment due in the life to come. His thought is . . . Summa, ‘Even death inflicted as a punishment for crimes takes away the whole punishment due for those crimes in the next life, or a least part of that punishment, according to the quantities of guilt, resignation and contrition; but a natural death does not.’  "
 
"The moral importance of wanting to make expiation also explains the indefatigable efforts of the Confraternity of St. John the Baptist Beheaded, the members of which used to accompany men to their deaths, all the while suggesting, begging and providing help to get them to repent and accept their deaths, so ensuring that they would die in the grace of God, as the saying went.” (2)
 
Some opposing capital punishment ". . . go on to assert that a life should not be ended because that would remove the possibility of making expiation, is to ignore the great truth that capital punishment is itself expiatory. In a humanistic religion expiation would of course be primarily the converting of a man to other men. On that view, time is needed to effect a reformation, and the time available should not be shortened. In God’s religion, on the other hand, expiation is primarily a recognition of the divine majesty and lordship, which can be and should be recognized at every moment, in accordance with the principle of the concentration of one’s moral life.” (2)
 
Some death penalty opponents “deny the expiatory value of death; death which has the highest expiatory value possible among natural things, precisely because life is the highest good among the relative goods of this world; and it is by consenting to sacrifice that life, that the fullest expiation can be made. And again, the expiation that the innocent Christ made for the sins of mankind was itself effected through his being condemned to death.” (2)
 
6)  William Law : "To say, therefore, as some have said, if God is all love toward fallen man, how can he threaten or chastise sinners is no better that saying, if God is all goodness in Himself and toward man, how can He do that in and to man which is for his good? As absurd is to say, if the able physician is all love, goodness and good will toward his patients, how can he blister, purge, or scarify them, how can he order one to be trepanned and another to have a limb cut off? Nay, so absurd is this reasoning that if it could be proved that God had no chastisement for sinners, the very want of their chastisement would be the greatest of all proofs that God was not all love and goodness toward man."
 
"And, therefore, the pure, mere love of God is that alone from which sinners are justly to expect that no sin will pass unpunished, but that His love will visit them with every calamity and distress that can help to break and purify the bestial heart of man and awaken in him true repentance and conversion to God. It is love alone in the holy Deity that will allow no peace to the wicked, nor ever cease its judgments till ever sinner is forced to confess that it is good for him that he has been in trouble, and thankfully own that not the wrath but the love of God has plucked out that right eye, cut off that right band, which he ought to have done but would not do for himself and his own salvation."   A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life,  http://www.answers.com/topic/william-law
 
7)  George MacDonald: God will give absolute justice, which is the only good thing. He will spare nothing to bring his children back to himself, their sole well-being, whether he achieve it here—or there.  http://www.george-macdonald.com/
 
8)  The Catechism of The Roman Catholic Church (2005) states: “The primary scope of the penalty is to redress the disorder caused by the offense.” "When his punishment is voluntarily accepted by the offender, it takes on the value of expiation." 2266
 
This is a specific reference to justice, just retribution, just deserts and the like, all of which redress the disorder.
 
We must first recognize the guilt/sin/crime/disorder of the aggressor and hold them accountable for it by way of penalty, meaning the penalty should be just and appropriate for the guilt/sin/crime/disorder  and should represent justice/just retribution/just deserts and their like which “redress the disorder caused by the offence” or to correct an imbalance, as defined within the example of 2260:
 
"For your lifeblood I will surely require a reckoning.... Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for God made man in his own image." "This teaching remains necessary for all time."

 

9)  Jesus: Now one of the criminals hanging there reviled Jesus, saying, "Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us." The other, however, rebuking him, said in reply, "Have you no fear of God, for you are subject to the same condemnation? And indeed, we have been condemned justly, for the sentence we received corresponds to our crimes, but this man has done nothing criminal." Then he said, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom." (Jesus) replied to him, "Amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise." Luke 23: 39-43
 
Mercy, salvation and redemption will not be measured by the method of our earthly death , but by our state of grace in the context of the eternal.
 
10)  C. S. Lewis:  "According to the Humanitarian theory, to punish a man because he deserves it, and as much as he deserves, is mere revenge, and, therefore, barbarous and immoral. It is maintained that the only legitimate motives for punishing are the desire to deter others by example or to mend the criminal. "
 
"I believe that the “Humanity” which it claims is a dangerous illusion and disguises the possibility of cruelty and injustice without end. I urge a return to the traditional or Retributive theory not solely, not even primarily, in the interests of society, but in the interests of the criminal."
 
"The reason is this. The Humanitarian theory removes from Punishment the concept of Desert. But the concept of Desert is the only connecting link between punishment and justice. It is only as deserved or undeserved that a sentence can be just or unjust."
 
"My contention is that this (Humanitarian) doctrine, merciful though it appears, really means that each one of us, from the moment he breaks the law, is deprived of the rights of a human being."
 
"Thus when we cease to consider what the criminal deserves and consider only what will cure him or deter others, we have tacitly removed him from the sphere of justice altogether . . .".
 
" . . . in the process of giving him what he deserved you set an example to others. But take away desert and the whole morality of the punishment disappears. Why, in Heaven’s name, am I to be sacrificed to the good of society in this way?—unless, of course, I deserve it. "
 
"The punishment of an innocent, that is , an undeserving, man is wicked only if we grant the traditional view that righteous punishment means deserved punishment."
 
"But to be punished, however severely, because we have deserved it, because we ‘ought to have known better’, is to be treated as a human person made in God’s image."
 
"This is why I think it essential to oppose the Humanitarian theory of punishment, root and branch, wherever we encounter it. It carries on its front a semblance of mercy which is wholly false. "
 
" . . . the Humanitarian theory wants simply to abolish Justice and substitute Mercy for it. Mercy, detached from Justice, grows unmerciful. " The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment
 
11)  C. S. Lewis:  "Some enlightened people would like to banish all conceptions of retribution or desert from their theory of punishment and place its value wholly in the deterrence of others or the reform of the criminal himself.  They do not see that by so doing they render all punishment unjust. What can be more immoral than to inflict suffering on me for the sake of deterring others if I do not deserve it? And if I do deserve it, you are admitting the claims of retribution. "  "The Complete C.S. Lewis", Signature Classics, The Problem of Pain, P407, Harper Collins, 2002
 
12)  Why do parents punish their children for transgressions? I think it easy to understand sanction of a child, by a parent, is a reflection in love.
 
They want the child to understand the level of transgression, which is reflected in the degree of sanction (retribution),  that the expected and hoped for result of that sanction is teaching, to encourage sorrow and apology that will be reflected in improved behavior,  that such rehabilitation will result in a better person that will improve the total moral good (rehabilitation and redemption).
 
Few are so naive as to believe that any or all of these can or will take place in many or most circumstances with criminals within a criminal justice system. It  does, however, recognizes that sanction/retribution is an essential requirement, which has a hoped for restorative and rehabilitative effect.
 
13)  "Executing a murderer is the only way to adequately express our horror at the taking of an innocent life. Nothing else suffices...A murderer sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole can still laugh, learn and love, listen to music and read, form friendships, and do the thousand-and-one things (mundane and sublime) forever foreclosed to his victims."  Don Feder, Boston Herald Columnist. "McVeigh Makes the Case for Capital Punishment". 21 May 2001
 
14)   Reconciliation has to be built with full recognition and accountability for the wrong. –Martha Kilpatrick

 

15)  G. K. Chesterton : Children are innocent and love justice, while most adults are wicked and prefer mercy.”  http://www.online-literature.com/chesterton/
 
16)  William Shakespeare: Nothing emboldens sin so much as mercy.
 
17)  Never Forget Mercy for the Innocent   -    "The Death Penalty: More Protection for Innocents"
http://homicidesurvivors.com/2009/07/05/the-death-penalty-more-protection-for-innocents.aspx
 
18)   “I have been asked on hundreds of times in my life why God allows tragedy and suffering. I have to confess that I really do not know the answer totally, even to my own satisfaction. I have to accept, by faith, that God is sovereign, and He is a God of love and mercy and compassion in the midst of suffering.” Billy Graham
 
19)  Nothing is to be preferred before justice.” Socrates
 
20)  Justice in the life and conduct of the State is possible only as first it resides in the hearts and souls of the citizens : Plato
---------------------------------
 
1) synopsis of “A Bible Study”, from Essays on the Death Penalty, T. Robert Ingram, ed., St. Thomas Press, Houston, 1963, 1992. Dr. Carey was a Professor of Bible and past President of George Fox College.
 
2) “Amerio on capital punishment “, Chapter XXVI, 187. The death penalty, from the book Iota Unum, May 25, 2007 ,
www.domid.blogspot.com/2007/05/amerio-on-capital-punishment.html



The Death Penalty - More Protection for Innocents

To:  COMMISSION TO STUDY THE DEATH PENALTY IN NEW HAMPSHIRE

  

bcc: The New Hampshire General Court, Police Chiefs and media throughout New Hampshire

  

From: Dudley Sharp

  

The Death Penalty - More Protection for Innocents

  

Of all human endeavors that may result in innocent deaths, the US death penalty may be the least likely to produce that result.

 

In fact, innocents are more protected with the death penalty.

 

1)  "The Death Penalty: More Protection for Innocents"
http://homicidesurvivors.com/2009/07/05/the-death-penalty-more-protection-for-innocents.aspx
 
The false innocence claims by anti death penalty activists are legendary. Some examples:

 

2)  "The Innocent Executed: Deception & Death Penalty Opponents"
 http://homicidesurvivors.com/2009/10/08/the-innocent-executed-deception--death-penalty-opponents--draft.aspx 

3)  The 130 (now 140) death row "innocents" scam
http://homicidesurvivors.com/2009/03/04/fact-checking-issues-on-innocence-and-the-death-penalty.aspx

 

4)  "Cameron Todd Willingham: Another Media Meltdown",  A Collection of Articles
http://homicidesurvivors.com/categories/Cameron%20Todd%20Willingham.aspx

 

5)  "A Death Penalty Red Herring: The Inanity and Hypocrisy of Perfection", Lester Jackson Ph.D.,
http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=102909A

 

6)  Sister Helen Prejean & the death penalty: A Critical Review"
http://homicidesurvivors.com/2009/05/04/sister-helen-prejean--the-death-penalty-a-critical-review.aspx

 

7)  "At the Death House Door" Can Rev. Carroll Pickett be trusted?"
http://homicidesurvivors.com/2009/01/30/fact-checking-is-very-welcome.aspx

Duty to Kill vs. Right to Life

Today the NH Death Penalty Study Commission heard testimony whether continuation of the death penalty should be affected by “evolving standards of decency”. In a letter to the Commission, NH religious leaders called the death penalty “a gravely unjust method of protecting society” that is “unnecessary and unwarranted”. They urged the Commission to recommend repeal of capital punishment.

These 185 religious leaders started from various points of origin in their thinking but these men and women reached the same prudential decision, the death penalty serves no just purpose in our society. The letter along with the presence of faith traditions at the hearing offering testimony underscored the concern of religious leaders for the work being done by the Study Commission.

Is there increasing evidence that the death penalty is inconsistent with evolving standards of decency? We see being played out before us the conflict between the right of the state to take life and the necessity to exercise that right in capital murder cases, versus belief in the sanctity of human life, the right to life, and the equal dignity of all persons that argues for repeal of the death penalty.

Both Jews and Christians share a spiritual heritage that preaches constantly evolving standards of human decency. Thus, for example, when the Bible speaks in the imagery of “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” etc. it does so to teach the concept of distributive rather than retributive justice, seeing equal justice as critical and thereby opposing the spirit of unbridled vengeance, seeing it as something to be transcended rather than endorsed as was true in the past.

 “Our respect for human life and our opposition to violence in our society prompts us to join with other death penalty opponents in New Hampshire to advocate for repeal of New Hampshire’s death penalty,” the religious leaders assert in their statement.

The message of these views is that we live in a time of continually evolving moral and ethical standards. We no longer tolerate the torture of people in the name of the law. We do not mutilate criminals or hang the bodies of the condemned in the public square. We are beyond such cruelties, and we believe that capital punishment is also a standard of societal behavior whose time has come and gone, noting that it persists mostly in societies with which we hesitate to identify ourselves.

Those are those who with personal integrity argue that, if it could be applied absolutely without possibility of error, then capital punishment should remain the law of the state. We humbly and respectfully disagree. We would argue that legalistic and legislative overhauling is an insufficient response to what we see as a fundamental moral question: Are we, God’s people, at liberty to take the life of one of our own, really one of God’s own? The teachings of our faiths, applied to our time and place, tell us that when other punishment options exist (life imprisonment without the possibility of parole) then the death penalty is unnecessary, unwarranted and unjust.

For the last 30 years individual states have modified their death penalties to attempt to make capital punishment fair, accurate and effective. After three decades of changes the system continues to fail as evidenced by wrongful convictions, political pressure, bias of geography, bias of race, and human error.

Even in a pluralistic society such as America, the majority of mainstream religious denominations share a common opposition to the death penalty. That should not be surprising since these groups share a common source of spiritual guidance, namely, the Bible, with its profound insistence on the sanctity of human life. That belief leads many to a simple conclusion, namely, that a society that cherishes such an ideal cannot respond to an act of murder by committing a second act of homicide, albeit in the name of justice.

The evolution from the state’s right to kill to the state’s obligation to protect life has been slow. A majority of American religious leaders and moral theologians along with the international human rights community now has joined together in a shared conviction that

Every human being is a person

Every person has universal, inviolable, inalienable rights

Basic to all other rights is the right to life

This right cannot be forfeited by misconduct

Thus everyone has a right not to be killed

Therefore the state has no right to kill.

Individual and organizational membership in NH Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty (www.nodeathpenaltynh.org) itself has been growing throughout this past year.  This Coalition, which includes the NH Council of Churches, has actively engaged in public education and support of the work of the Commission in addition to its legislative advocacy to repeal the death penalty.

The monthly meetings of the state’s Death Penalty Study Commission take place at the Legislative Office Building in Concord.   Members of the public are welcome to attend and offer prepared testimony. The Commission’s progress can be followed at  www.gencourt.state.nh.us/statstudcomm/committees/2009/

David Lamarre-Vincent

Executive Director

N H Council of Churches

NB: Per the request of the submitter, we have replaced the original version with this 'corrected' version.

/Bob DeMaura Owner/Operator NHInsider.com