Killing

A single case dictates my opinion about the death penalty.

The victim was a devout Christian, a faithful church leader. He was killed for preaching.

One of the murderers did not directly participate in the killing. But he had a role in the killing, and he approved of it. That’s the very definition of aiding and abetting. As an aider and abettor, he was as guilty in the killing as the men who crushed the victim’s skull.

The victim’s name was Stephen. He was the first Christian martyr. You can read about him in the Book of Acts. The man who was keeping the coats of the men who killed Stephen and approved of the killing was named Saul. Now he is better known as the Apostle Paul.

After the killing of Stephen, Paul was on the road to Damascus to imprison Christians. Jesus appeared to him as a voice and as a literally-blinding light. Paul spent the rest of his life spreading Christianity.

God could have destroyed Paul. Instead, he changed his heart.

1. Barabbas freed.

The murderer Barabbas was a notorious renegade who was released instead of Jesus by Pontius Pilate. Pilate had given the crowd the choice to release Jesus instead.

Barabbas’s name means "son of the father". He is the subject of a short novel by Swedish writer Par Lagerkvist. In that novel, Barabbas is curious about Jesus. He seeks out Jesus’s disciples. But though he wants to, he cannot understand, and he cannot believe. He is crucified in Rome.

I have heard that Barabbas is a moving novel. Maybe its story is true. We cannot know because history has swallowed up Barabbas, and his real fate is known only to God.

It offends no Christian notion to see the hand of God in the release of Barabbas in the place of Jesus. His release is a metaphor for Jesus suffering judgment in our place. But that metaphor exists only because Barabbas was released in a living act of clemency brought about by the death of Jesus. And clemency is what this essay is about.

2. Paul killed.

The fate of Paul is better known. After spending his life after his conversion planting and nurturing churches and writing much of the New Testament, he was falsely accused, he appealed to the emperor, and he was sent to Rome in chains. Tradition has it that he was beheaded there. His Christian walk in this world began and ended with killings: the killing of Stephen at the beginning and his own death by the Romans as a supposed lawbreaker at the end.

3. The death penalty abused.

The accounts of Stephen and Paul are the stories of innocent men killed. Innocent me are killed by the state today. For all of the procedural safeguard, for all of the due process, innocent people still are sent to death row. DNA testing has proved hundreds of men on death row were innocent.

And those are just the cases in which there were DNA samples to examine. There were and are cases where the DNA was destroyed, or where there never was DNA to examine. I assume that innocense occurs in non-DNA cases at the same rate as in DNA cases. Among the innocent in non-DNA cases, the criminal justice system has buried its mistakes, or it will likely do so.

4. The killing of Jesus.

Nor are the wrongful executions of Paul and Stephen the only accounts of wrongful executions in the Christian tradition. The epicenter of Christianity is the execution of the one truly innocent man, the one perfect person. As he died on the cross, he did not judge his executioners; he said "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do."

5. Meaning in this.

It is our fortune that the Father favors mercy over justice.

And mercy makes demands on us. Like many Christians, I believe that we are called to struggle, with God’s help, to walk as Jesus did. That means that, like him, our bias must be towards mercy.

The stories of Paul and Barabbas show God’s mercy toward those who commit grave crimes; our God is the God who delights in the death of no sinner. He has often been called the God of second chances. One of the harsher laws in California is known as "Three strikes and you’re out". That is not the motto of our God. And those of us who are not perfect can be relieved at that.

As a lawyer, I have represented prisoners under life sentences for murder who are trying to win release on parole. Some of them, for now, seem to belong in prison. Many, many of them have turned themselves around after decades in prison. Many I would be confident to have as next door neighbors. If the law scrupulously demanded eye-for-an-eye justice, these reformed men might not today have turned around.

Do we need to put murderers in prison? Absolutely. No inclination to mercy should put the innocent, or the relatively innocent, in danger. We cannot have unrepentant murderers free among us.

Do we need to hope in the redemption of those who do wrong? Do we need to make prisons places where souls can be reformed? If Jesus from the cross can plead for this enemies to be forgiven, how can we be like him unless we hold open to prisoners, even murderers, the chance to turn around?

It takes decades to execute a prisoner in California. That gives time for a prisoner to turn around. But this period of potential reformation is not a deliberate part of the system; it is the by-product of a broken system. In November, California voters can vote to repeal the death penalty by voting for Proposition 34. Proposition 34 makes deliberate that which now is accidental.