Capital punishment

Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, refers to the custom of executing prisoners who are convicted of certain crimes.

Capital Punishment in the world today

Of the developed countries, only the United States and Japan have capital punishment. Western Europe and Canada no longer allow its use. It is also practiced in most Shari'a states (those whose legal systems are based on the Muslim legal philosophy), as well as many other countries which are not yet considered to be developed.

Though the United States suspended the death penalty in 1973, it was reinstated in 1977. 65% of Americans believe putting someone to death for a crime is acceptable, according to a recent poll. But respondents were close to evenly split on whether they would prefer the death penalty (50%) to mandatory life in prison (46%). The death penalty is most favored by older, white, Republican males.

Singapore has the highest execution rate in the world, at 13.65 hangings per 1,000,000 residents. Saudi Arabia has the second-highest rate, at 4.65 per 1,000,000.

Catechism of the Catholic Church on Capital Punishment

While not specifically saying it should be banned in all cases, the Catholic Church favors life over capital punishment as it gives the chance for redemption.

2266 The State's effort to contain the spread of behaviors injurious to human rights and the fundamental rules of civil coexistence corresponds to the requirement of watching over the common good. Legitimate public authority has the right and duty to inflict penalties commensurate with the gravity of the crime. 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. Moreover, punishment, in addition to preserving public order and the safety of persons, has a medicinal scope: as far as possible it should contribute to the correction of the offender.67

2267 The traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude, presupposing full ascertainment of the identity and responsibility of the offender, recourse to the death penalty, when this is the only practicable way to defend the lives of human beings effectively against the aggressor. "If, instead, bloodless means are sufficient to defend against the aggressor and to protect the safety of persons, public authority should limit itself to such means, because they better correspond to the concrete conditions of the common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the human person. "Today, in fact, given the means at the State's disposal to effectively repress crime by rendering inoffensive the one who has committed it, without depriving him definitively of the possibility of redeeming himself, cases of absolute necessity for suppression of the offender 'today ... are very rare, if not practically non-existent.'[John Paul II, Evangelium vitae 56.]

Biblical View

The Old Testament of the Bible has several passages that recommend the death penalty for different offenses.

According to the Bible, these are the offenses which merit the death penalty:

1. Murder (Exodus 21:12, 21:15)
2. Kidnapping to sell into slavery (Exodus 21:16)
3. Cursing Parents (Exodus 21:17)
4. Bestiality (Leviticus 20:15)
5. Desecrating the Sabbath (Exodus 31:15)
6. Adultery (Leviticus 20:10, Leviticus 19:20)
7. Sacrificing children to Molech (Leviticus 20:2)
8. Blasphemy (Leviticus 24:16)
9. Incest (Leviticus 20:11)
10. Homosexual intercourse (Leviticus 18:22, 20:13)
11. Witchcraft (Exodus 22:18, Leviticus 20:27)
12. False Prophecy (Deuteronomy 13:5)
13. Worshiping a false god (Deuteronomy 13:6-10)
14. Sex with a woman betrothed to another (Deuteronomy 22:25)
15. False witness in a capital crime (Deuteronomy 19:16-20)
16. Daughter of a priest becoming a prostitute (Leviticus 21:9)
17. Juvenile delinquency (Deuteronomy 21:18-21)
18. Sacrificing to false gods (Exodus 22:20)
19. Unchastity (Deuteronomy 22:21-24)

Few people support capital punishment for non-murder offenses, and a number of Christians oppose the death penalty in all cases. Apologist JP Holding argues that the Bible including the New Testament nowhere repudiates the use of capital punishment, but that it does not necessarily mandate its use, either.

Capital punishment in the United States

Capital punishment in the United States is handled on a state-by-state basis, and several states' laws do not allow for executions. The practice appears to be on the wane, as appeals and stays of execution create a backlog on death row. Pennsylvania has hundreds of people on death row, though only three inmates have been executed since the reinstatement of capital punishment laws. One man has been on death row in Texas for 31 years.

Methods in the United States

Lethal injection is the official method of capital punishment in almost all of the 38 states that have the death penalty. A few states allow for other methods in some circumstances. Nebraska is the only state of these that does not have lethal injection. Electrocution is the official method of execution there. Several botched electrocutions in Florida in the 1990s have effectively put an end to the era of the electric chair, which was the most common means of execution in the United States before 1972. In addition to these two methods of execution, lethal gas, hanging, and shooting have all been used at least twice since 1977. Both firing squads were conducted in Utah, most recently in 1996. The three hangings took place in Washington and Delaware, most recently Billy Bailey's 1996 hanging in Delaware. The gas chamber, which has been abandoned because it has been found to normally lead to slow, gruesome deaths, has been used in California, Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina since 1977. Walter LeGrand's 1999 execution in Arizona's gas chamber will almost certainly be the last of this type. The United States has never used the guillotine, which was very popular in France. The last use of the guillotine in France was in 1977. Thereafter, capital punishment in France was abolished.

Deterrent

Studies conducted since the start of the new millennium have consistently shown a deterence factor in the United States based on use of the death penalty. It has been calculated that each person executed saves the lives of anywhere from 3 to 18 innocent people.

See also

• Guillotine

Further reading

• Christian sentenced to death for blasphemy, By Michael Ireland, WorldNetDaily,com, June 2, 2007.