The Barbarity of Capital Punishment

 

                                                                             Christa Pike 

Then they came and laid hands on Jesus and arrested him. Suddenly one of those with Jesus put his hand on his sword, drew it, and struck the slave of the high priest, cutting off his ear.  Then Jesus said to him, “Put your sword back into its place, for all who take the sword will die by the sword.  Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels?

                  Matthew 26: 50b -53 NRSVue 

Some days it is difficult to sort through the barbarity of the United States, what with mass shootings, and wars where civilians die in "precision" bombing, not to mention the draconian extraditions of migrants deemed illegal and therefore less than human. 

This week our attention has been drawn to the botched attempt to enact the death penalty on a woman who committed a brutal murder in Tennessee more than thirty years ago. Christa Pike was a teenager when she was sentenced to death although her two accomplices escaped the same fate. We've heard that Pike, now 50, is  being treated in hospital after not one but two attempts to kill her by lethal injection. 

Shane Claiborne, an evangelical Christian who has been a theme speaker with United Church youth, grew up in Tennessee and has pointed out the irony that many Bible Belt states maintain the death penalty, strongly supported by conservative Christians. We've heard from many Christian organizations in the States, the United Nations, and Amnesty International condemning capital punishment in light of what has happened to Pike. 

Catholic bishops in the US have called for the commutation of Pike's death sentence and renewed their condemnation of capital punishment. You might recall that the late Pope Francis officially changed the teachings of the Catholic faith to officially oppose the death penalty in all circumstances, and I'm assuming that American-born Pope Leo supports this stance. 

Canada stopped executing people in 1962 although it didn't abolish the death penalty until 1976. Back in 1960 the General Council of the United Church received a report with the title  Alternatives to capital punishment. I would like to think that the United Church, robust and influential at that time, aided in the decision to stop killing people who killed people. Along the way there has been efforts to reintroduce the death penalty in Canada and the United Church has been vocal in its resistance. Somewhere I have a button that I wore for a time when the debate flared up.

Since capital punishment was abolished half a century ago the per capita murder rate in this country has declined steadily.

There are times when my visceral reaction is that murderers deserve to die. Yet nearly 50 years ago I spent several months working as a chaplain intern in a maximum security prison (Kingston Penitentiary) I spent time, often one on one, with those who had committed reprehensible crimes, including murder, and most of them acknowledged they were guilty and deserved to be punished for their crimes. 

With nearly all of these men who I got to know the death penalty still existed when they committed murder but that didn't serve as a deterrent. Some of them were essentially boys when they committed their crimes and the passage of time did make a difference in their outlook on life, including regardlng violence, and some of them had embraced faith of some kind.  

I concluded then that a society that kills killers undermines itself, even though we might be drawn to retribution and revenge. We risk becoming inhumane. A journalist who has been a witness at several executions says that capital punishment "erodes our souls."

I still feel this way as a Christian and as a member of a civil society. Maybe we should pay attention to what Jesus taught about violence and what he modelled the night before his public execution. 

Perhaps we should all watch the film Dead Man Walking again. 

                                                                            Sister Helen Prejean