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Social critic Ernest van den Haag argues that any attempt to establish the moral wrongness of the death penalty must show that no crime ever deserves capital punishment; that is, he says, opponents of capital punishment must disprove the contention that there at least some convicted criminals who morally deserve execution. I disagree. In fact, …
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In 1810 a bill introduced in the British Parliament sought to abolish capital punishment for the offense of stealing five shillings or more from a shop. Judges and magistrates unanimously opposed the measure. In the House of Lords, the chief justice of the Kings Bench, Lord Ellenborough, predicted that the next step would be abolition …
Continue reading “Capital Punishment: The Question of Justification”
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At the festival season the Governor used to release one prisoner at the people’s request. . . . “What shall I do with the man you call the King of the Jews?” They shouted back, “Crucify him!” “Why, what harm hits he done?” Pilate asked; but they shouted all the louder, “Crucify him!” So Pilate, …
Continue reading “Dismantling the Cross: A Case Against Capital Punishment”
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In one of those neglected corners of scripture that must scare those brave enough to think about it, Jesus promises an unpleasant future for those who would not visit him in prison: “Just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me (Matt. 25:45). …
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Recent political events have compelled us to ask how we may know our way when it comes to law, morality and the tests of loyalty demanded by complex political and social lives. Easy partisanship seems gone. Partisanship itself is perhaps permanently embarrassed by the recent excesses of partisanship. The demise of partisanship and the demise …
Continue reading “Lincoln and Watergate: The American Past Speaks to the American Future”
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The return of capital punishment, the use of sterner sentencing procedures, the provision of more weaponry and technology for the police, and a multi-billion-dollar prison and jail construction effort are all indicators of the current mood of the country in regard to crime and criminals. Public frustration with existing criminal-justice procedures has encouraged a what-else-can-we-do …
Continue reading “Myths and Realities About Prisons and Jails”
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Americans are locked in an intense conflict over the role of federal courts. Conservatives are deeply aggrieved by Supreme Court decisions in the past 30 years that have struck down laws against abortion, laws on homosexuality and certain laws and policies promoting religion in the public square. In a 1996 symposium, "The End of Democracy?," …
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Some things just aren’t right. Something incompatible with common sense and basic values is happening in America. It has to do with crime and punishment: the way greed and inhumanity have made a gross industry out of locking people up in cages. We’ve heard it all before; more money spent on prisons then education, health …
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Book Review: A Dream of the Tattered Man: Stories from Georgia’s Death Row By Randolph Loney. Eerdmans, 235 pp. When the State Kills: Capital Punishment and the American Condition. By Austin Sarat. Princeton University Press, 324 pp. The Executed God: The Way of the Cross in Lockdown America By Mark Lewis Taylor. Fortress, 208 pp. …
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Once upon a time there was the frank and fearless liar — but sooner or later the facts would out, and make an end of him. Now we have the bureaucrat, mumbling and amnesiac; the master of plausible denials and institutionalized cover-up; the limited investigation and the interpretive memo; the document-shredders, the secrecy-stampers, the propaganda …
Continue reading “The Intelligence ‘Flap’: Lies My Uncle Told Me”
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One of Langston Hughes’s memorable literary characters, Jesse B. Semple — nicknamed “Simple” in the three books written about him — invariably speaks his mind with wry understatement on a variety of issues. I was not disappointed when I looked to see if Simple had said anything about the law in the perspective of ethics: …
Continue reading “The Law: Sacred Writ or Institutionalized Injustice?”
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Fear is abroad in the land: fear of oneself, fear of the other. A creeping cynicism concerning standards of excellence brings on a numbing terror about the future. West Virginia’s citizens burn books and indict school officials. In South Dakota, Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five is labeled obscene. In Kalamazoo, Michigan, Go Ask Alice, a heart-rending exposure …
Continue reading “The Police, the Social Order, and the Christian: Apologia and Apologies”
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The charge was murder. The defendant was a handsome black man looking considerably younger than his 29 years. He sat impassively at a table with his court-appointed lawyers while a prosecutor from the district attorney’s office questioned the panel of prospective jurors sitting in the spectators’ section of the courtroom. Like the rest of the …
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This has been a good century for tyrants. Stalin killed millions but was never even charged with a crime. Pol Pot slaughtered well over 1 million but never saw the inside of a prison cell. Idi Amin and Raoul Cedras are comfortably retired. Despite recent legal complications, Chile’s General Augusto Pinochet, too, will probably escape …
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Book Review: The Death Penalty on Trial: Crisis in American Justice. By Bill Kurtis. Public Affairs, 192 pp. Bloodsworth: The True Story of the First Death Row Inmate Exonerated by DNA. By Tim Junkin. Algonquin Books, 304 pp Religion and the Death Penalty: A Call for Reckoning. Edited by Erik C. Owens, John D. Carlson …
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One can read a good many books about the moral and political implications of Christian faith without finding much discussion of prisons. Even when Americans worry (as we should) about capital punishment, those worries rarely spread to concern about the penal system in general. Jails and prisons are an ever more important topic in American …
