317. On Deaths and Penalties

Back on January 20th of this year, I wrote an entry which stated, inter alia, my opposition to the Death Penalty. With the 7-2 ruling yesterday of the United States Supreme Court upholding Kentucky's method of legal injection - but importantly, not addressing the legality of the Death Penalty - I wanted to restate that opposition.

My life has not gone untouched by those who I believe should be in jail for the balance of their lives without the possibility of parole. My grandmother was brutally murdered in the summer of 1976 when we did not have the Death Penalty in Kentucky, and the two men who killed her were sentenced to 64 years in prison - this after killing two people, not just one.

But I do not believe the state or the nation has an inherent right to take a life in my name or anyone else's. And I would much prefer having those who would be punished with the Death Penalty spend the rest of their natural lives in prison without the possibility of parole, as none of us here on this side of Jordan knows what lays over there on the other side after we've crossed over.

Since I am something of a Universalist, and of the belief we are all God's children, and in the end he will want us back at his side, this broad net of mercy includes those who might find their makers at the hands of a government executioner. There is a old protestant hymn which begins "When we all get to heaven, what a day of rejoicing that will be." Since I believe that literally, it is not my desire to send anyone of their way any earlier than their natural life would take them. Rather, keep them locked up, fed a sustenance diet, and allowed few if any visitors. This would be a far greater punishment that sending them on to their eternal reward.

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Today, by the way, is the one year anniversary of the Virginia Tech massacre. May the souls of all thirty-three of those who lost their lives on that day Rest In Peace.