CAPITAL PUNISHMENT:

THEN AND NOW

In an article in the current issue of Tikkun magazine, Sunil Dutta, a sergeant in the Louisiana Police Department, tells of his great-uncle who joined a roving gang of Hindu vigilantes exacting revenge for the murders of his mother and his sisters. Sunil's relatives killed many Muslim refugees who were defenselessly seeking to begin a new life in Pakistan. Years later, Sunil had an opportunity to meet this relative of his face to face and to ask him if he felt remorse for what he had done during this time when the entire Indian subcontinent had been submerged into a bloodbath in which almost one million people died.

Do you ever think that people you killed were also innocent refugees, just like you and the family members we lost?

The old man looked down and defiantly said, "I may have killed some innocent people, but there must have been some sinners in there, too!"

Our Torah portion for today speaks of manslaughter, those who have no intention of killing as opposed to those who wantonly take a life. For the manslaughter, our Torah prescribes six cities of refuge in which these unintentional killers are able to find security and sanctuary from the relatives of those who were killed who are now intent on seeking revenge for their deaths. The Torah prescribes capital punishment for many instances of human wrongdoing. Some of these are relatively insignificant crimes, or not crimes at all, in our society. Some, like first degree murder, remain among the most heinous and loathsome of human actions. Nevertheless, we sense within Torah, and all succeeding Jewish legal argumentation, an abiding and fierce wrestling with this punishment for the killer.

In Sunil's article in Tikkun magazine, this police sergeant who holds a doctorate in biology from the University of California at Davis, steps forward and presents his case against the death penalty. He says:

When I find myself faced with murder, I think about my great-uncle, who used senseless murder to justify senseless murder. The practice of capital punishment, particularly by our "justice system," reveals a serious failure in our humanity. We no longer burn witches or keep slaves or have monarchs dictate our lives. Capital punishment is similarly anachronistic.

I must confess to you, dear friends, that I am in entire agreement with Sunil Dutta. Ever since junior high school when I read a book titled 88 Men and 2 Women written by former Governor Pat Brown, the father of Jerry Brown of California, I have been unalterably opposed to capital punishment. You may well feel differently, and that is your right, after all. I have heard many arguments in favor of capital punishment. For example, none more compelling than that if I kill someone, it is only just that I give up my right to live. That principal would qualify as a moral argument only if it were applied equally in our society. You and I both know that we do not sentence every murderer to death. And when mistake-prone and highly fallible and emotional human beings send this criminal to the death chamber and that criminal off to prison, we are appropriating God's authority.

Shortly after arriving at my congregation in Macon Georgia, two of our most lovely and sweet Sisterhood members failed to appear at the Temple to help decorate the congregation Succah. Hours passed and a city-wide search was initiated to find these two women who lived side by side. Their names were Ann and Selma, and they had gone to school together, married two men who were lifelong friends, and both proceeded to convert to Judaism in preparation for their marriages. They saw one another every day and on this one day, their friendship and love for one another led both women to a tragic death.

It began as a common robbery, but when Ann heard her friend Selma calling in desperation, she left dinner cooking on the stove and ran to the assistance of her friend. Both women were found three days later, beaten to death, their bodies left in an isolated outskirt of Macon. The killers were sentenced to death and, as much as I love those women and respected their families, I have never made peace with the idea of a life for a life. The only practical justification for the death penalty, it seems to me, is revenge and punishment-a natural and understandable desire on the part of dear ones who have lost a beloved love to brutal death. I am not one to defend the actions of murderers. Nor do I necessarily find merit in the argument that criminals can be understood because of childhood abuse or hardship experienced along their way in life. My nature reasons, moving me to oppose the death penalty as my compelling belief that as human beings, another human's life is beyond our taking.

Moreover, were we to accept the arguments in favor of capital punishment, the clearest reason to forego killing criminals comes from the inevitable miscarriage of the punishment itself. How many times have we discovered the courts have wrongfully condemned to death individuals who did not commit crimes? Some of these were only minutes away from execution. How many innocent people have we executed? It has been shown over and over again that capital punishment is not a deterrent to those intent on murder. I don't think that capital punishment would have made Timothy McVeigh or the evil mass murderers of this past September rethink their goals and ambitions. Life in prison without parole is the alternative to the death penalty.

Revenge may bring momentary satisfaction, writes Sunil Duttu. But only the potential to reach into someone's callous heart can ever bring healing to the tragic loss that murder has wrought.