Part 1

 

A full court press is under way in the South Dakota media to either save convicted murderer Elijah Page, or make Governor Mike Rounds look bad, or both (I haven’t decided which of these possibilities is the right one, yet).

The Rapid City Journal featured a 1,900-word piece on Sunday entitled “Portrait of Elijah” which had a headline big enough to read from 30-feet away. It also came with no less than 11 pictures of Page, nine of them of him when he was a child; this certainly must have been a sympathy ploy.

The next day, the Journal had two more stories on Page and how sad and depressed he is, and how he has “one chance to live,” if he’ll just change his mind about going willingly to his execution.

On the other end of the state, the Sioux Falls Argus Leader ran an interview with Governor Rounds in which the paper tried to paint a supposed inconsistency between the governor’s pro-life views and his decision so far not to grant clemency to Page. They also ran several other articles about how young Page is to be facing execution, articles about how Page could stop the execution if he would only ask for an appeal (you could almost hear the longing sighs in these articles) and similar fare.

There is very little in any of these articles about the life of Chester Allan Poage, which was brutally stolen from the victim, or about the heart-wrenching agony the murder of her son has caused Dottie Poage.

Let me say up front that I don’t have a dog in this fight. I didn’t know Page’s victim, Chester Allan Poage, and I don’t know his family. I also don’t know any of Poage’s murderers or their families. But as any responsible member of society should, I have an interest in seeing that justice be carried out.

At the risk of being painted as bloodthirsty (I am already painted that way in the blogosphere), I’m writing this piece in the defense of justice, because the voices for justice are all too scarce at the moment.

In any discussion about capital punishment, the deterrent issue always comes up. It’s definitely a valid one, though deterrence should be a benefit of capital punishment rather than the primary reason for it.

The current deterrent value of the death penalty is dubious due to our poor record of actually utilizing the death penalty. Oh, sure, there are a number of people on death row, but when the average time from sentencing to execution is 12 years, the “cause and effect” are so greatly separated that it doesn’t send the message it should. We’ve haven’t even executed 100 people a year for the past 25 years (we’ve averaged 40 per year as a nation) while averaging 2,555 on death row each year during that same time, or executing 1.5% of those on death row each year. When you only stand a 1.5% chance of getting the punishment you deserve—if you’re even caught and convicted in the first place—then how much deterrent value can there be? But the answer to a misapplied procedure isn’t to abandon it altogether, but to START APPLYING IT CORRECTLY in the first place. In this case, that would be to apply it quickly and certainly.

Then there are the protests about the execution of innocent people. Despite the multitude of claims about innocent people on death row (ask any incarcerated person and you’ll find that a guilty person behind bars is as rare as hen’s teeth), there remains today no documented case of an innocent person being executed. We also go to sometimes ludicrous lengths to protect the accused (I was in law enforcement for several years, and so have some knowledge of the legal protection afforded to suspects), and with the advent of DNA testing (not always a factor in every case), the odds of an innocent person being executed are pretty low.

Remember that the threshold for a guilty verdict is “beyond a reasonable doubt,” which is a high threshold indeed. Many convicted murderers aren’t even sentenced to death, and since 1973, 37% of death row cases have been overturned or commuted (this doesn’t mean they were innocent, just that due to some factor which might include a due process technicality, the threshold for their death sentence and/or finding of guilty is not deemed to be met). We also live in an imperfect world; we should do everything possible to keep the innocent from being punished, but if we wait for perfect justice before administering justice, we’ll have no justice.

Another common argument is that the death penalty isn’t uniformly applied, that poor or minority convicts are sentenced to death more often than rich white ones. That might or might not be the case, but there is certainly no justification in claiming that because all do not receive their due punishment, that none should (again, waiting for perfect justice will get you no justice). Instead, we should be working harder as a society to make sure that no one who is guilty, regardless of ethnic background or economic status, escapes what they deserve.

Some also argue that a life sentence without parole leaves open the possibility of spiritual repentance and the personal redemption of the guilty. Repentance of the murderer is certainly a possibility, but how long should the guilty be given to repent? They have the weeks and months leading up to trial, they have the time during the trial, they have the time during sentencing, and, on average, have 12 years between sentencing and execution. Is this not enough?! Even God, as loving and longsuffering as He is, doesn’t allow unbelievers to live perpetually until they repent of their sins; when their time is up, if they haven’t repented by that time, it’s eternally too late.

(In this case, it's been over six years since Elijah Page murdered Chester Allan Poage and I have yet to read a single account which indicates Page has expressed remorse of any kind for his crime.  How much more time does he need to repent?)

And even if they did repent of their crime, that doesn’t erase the debt they owe for wrongfully taking a human life. Would that every murderer would not only repent of their crime, but would repent of all their sins so they could enter the kingdom of God. But even such repentance would not absolve them of their duty to restitution—the closest that a murderer can come to restitution.

Further, keeping a convicted murderer incarcerated for decades places guards and other inmates in danger, and if they escape, the public is yet again placed in danger.

Some religious people object to the death penalty on what they consider Biblical grounds. As well-intentioned as they may be, opposition to the death penalty can’t be supported through the Bible. We usually hear the incident of the woman caught in adultery in John 8 cited. However, this event says more about the Pharisees attempting to entrap Jesus than it does about capital punishment: Christ did not condemn the death penalty in this passage, and this woman was caught in adultery, not murder.

Christ, in fact, may have directly affirmed the validity of the death penalty in Matthew 26:52 when he said, “all who draw the sword will die by the sword.” Jesus’ apostle Paul certainly seemed to affirm it when he said of wrongdoers in Romans 13 that governmental authority “does not bear the sword for nothing.”

The grace brought to humanity by Jesus Christ also did nothing to reduce the righteous and holy nature of God. In fact, the grace which the Messiah purchased for humanity on the cross was necessary because God demands the appropriate punishment for wrongdoing. If that were not so, then Jesus wouldn’t have needed to take the punishment that we sinners deserve.

While the advent of the Messiah means the ceremonial laws of the Old Testament are no longer required, God’s moral laws were not changed a bit. He said in Matthew 5:17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.” Except for a few radical liberals, I don’t know of anyone who is arguing that the Ten Commandments are outdated.

Even if the Law had been abrogated, God issued the edict of capital punishment long before Moses ever delivered the Law. In Genesis 9, as Noah and his family came off the ark, God said he would demand an accounting from humans for the life of their fellow men: “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made man.” He may have issued this command in response to the violence God gave as a reason in Genesis 6 for destroying earth by flood. God doesn’t see the wrongful taking of human life as anything less than the highest of offenses and neither should we...

     Continued...