This is so well put and yet I am ethically torn to shreds over the death penalty. There are three reasons for this:
1. The historic use of the death penalty against ethnic and political minorities. I do not think capital punishment is the same as genocide, nor am I conflating the two. However, you do not need a genocidal regime to use jurisprudence against the disadvantaged of society, whether that’s the poor unable to gain an equitable defense or the minorities I mentioned previously. There are countless degrees between going to jail for 20 years for pot and judicial homicide, but a society that condones the death penalty, to my conscience, is closer to one that condones lynchings and mob violence.
2. The unpardonable moral sin of executing an innocent person. Simply by the law of averages we have executed a not insignificant number of innocent men and women. We will never know the number, how could we, and that sends a cold shiver up my neck. While the ability to prove beyond any reasonable doubt is ever increasing, uncertainty will still mean that so long as there are judicial homicides there will be innocent lives taken. Now, each conviction and imprisonment carries with itself the possibility of error, but with the death penalty there is no recompense for the aggrieved and wrongly convicted. In fact, I believe it disincentives further work to correct the mistaken conviction, because justice can no longer take place, aside from “correcting the record.”
3. I am a follower of Christ, a scripture-is-the-inerrant-word-of-God Christian. As such, I am accustomed to tension within what I believe and what I witness in the rest of the world. I am used to wrestling with what I see, what I read, what I feel, what I think, and what the Word says of it all. When I look at scripture, I take Christ at his word that living by the sword means dying by it. I believe that final judgement cannot be carried out on Earth, ie in this life, and intentionally ending a person’s opportunity for repentance, no matter their crimes, is a fearful role to play. Terrifying, really. Yet I am aware they’ve most often made the choices that brought them to this place, they have irreparably harmed others, in the case of these two men they have stolen a life. In the case of pedophiles and rapists, they have stolen innocence and murdered the spirit inside a person, at least for a time. I would also add that despite the love of Christ, my flesh wants these men dead. I want the abuser of my sibling dead. I want the leaders of dictatorial regimes in Yeman and Syria burned alive, I want violence to satisfy the debt of justice delayed, I want the orphaned and the starving to believe that God hears their cries echoing in the tortured screams of their oppressors.
Yet I do not think I am right in any of this. I am fearful that condoning the death penalty, seeing it as a just end for an evil life, pulls at the worst parts of my flesh. It feels like a perversion of justice, because I am not just enough to kill anyone.
I really don’t know that I disagree with the facts of what you’ve said. You make excellent and factual points about the future for these young men, if they are granted the reprieve of life in prison. And most everything I said is philosophical, thus the wrestling in my heart and mind over the issue. Really, I hope — perhaps naively — that there is another solution somewhere. A deeper wisdom on the matter.