DEATH PENALTY IS EVIL

“Love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:31).

”Anyone who kills you thinks he is offering service to God…because they have not known the Father”. (John 16:2)

We vehemently oppose the reimposition of death penalty in our country’s judicial system. “From a purely analytical perspective, the death penalty might be justifiable if it deterred crime and saved lives, or if it resulted in a reduction in government costs. Studies have shown that it does neither of these things. The death penalty, therefore, can only be viewed as an institutional expression of revenge and retribution. Rather than focusing on the offender, it must be asked what the death penalty says about us as a society. Our nation cannot afford the death penalty; the cost, both morally and financially, is too high”. (Amanda and Nick Wilcox)

The United Nations Secretary General emphasized the “harsh reality” that the death penalty discriminates. "Study after study proves that if you are poor, minority or mentally disabled, you are at higher risk regardless of guilt or innocence”.

“The right to life—broadly understood as a right to be free from deadly violence, maiming, torture, and starvation—is paramount. The special status of life is reflected in the Ten Commandments. The Koran teaches that “if anyone saves a life, it shall be as though he had saved the lives of all mankind” (5:32). In the Jewish tradition, “He who saves one soul, it’s as if he saved the entire world” (Talmud, Sanhedrin 4:8 [37a]). Jews are commanded to violate the Sabbath and even the holiest of Jewish holidays, Atonement Day, if this is required to save a life. The Catholic Church extends this right to the unborn. The primacy of the right to life is well recognized in the following comments on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: “The right to life, liberty and personal security, recognized in Article 3, sets the base for all following political rights and civil liberties, including freedom from slavery, torture and arbitrary arrest, as well as the rights to a fair trial, free speech and free movement and privacy” (United Nations 1998).

“Going deeper and beyond the Golden Rule that behooves us to ‘do unto others what we want others do unto us’, there are really no ‘others’, so whatever you seem to do to another you actually do to yourself. For in our fundamental oneness as humanity in the parenthood of one God, you and I are indeed one, identical with each other through our identity ultimately with the Ground of all being. Then how could I ever want to harm or do violence to myself? All beings desire their own well-being. I must therefore wish for you what I wish for myself, since we are one”. (John Algeo)

“THOU SHALL NOT KILL”. (Exodus 20:13)