Leave punishment to God

Regarding Tuesday’s editorial advocating the Legislature reinstate capital punishment for convicted murderers.

While capital punishment may assuage an atavistic desire for revenge and an Old Testament sense of justice, most of the modern world takes a more practical and moral stance.

Not having capital punishment is cheaper than having it. Not having it avoids the disparities of minorities, with poor lawyers, on death row. It avoids the embarrassment of such cases as waiting for a teenager to become an adult before execution or giving medications to schizophrenics to make them sane enough to execute, or executing persons with very low IQs or finding DNA that exonerates someone who has been executed.

While we may feel someone deserves to die, that doesn’t mean we as a society should kill him. With all the Christian religious posturing in an election year it is good to remember that Christ came to fulfill the Old Testament, to change the old “eye for an eye” for a new law of love and forgiveness.

A life sentence protects the public, gives the prisoner an opportunity to repent and lets God decide who should live and who should die. While 68 percent of the Jerusalem crowd may have said “crucify him,” that didn’t justify crucifixion. Leave capital punishment to God.

Dan Elliott

Wasilla