Death Penalty Revisited

I have had much to say about the death penalty, but this was too much to pass up commenting on. It was almost as if I was able to write my own case study regarding the realtionship between Christianity and our legal system. Read about what happened here. It seems that a Colorado court overturned a death penalty sentence because a juror consulted the book of Leviticus.

How about that? Maybe I was not being too crazy when I suggested that the legal system was overstepping its grounds by dealing out life and death. What resources are jurors expected to draw from when dispensing capital punishment? The latest episode of Oprah? Sports Illustrated's swimsuit edition? What could be more relevant to life and death than the Bible? If the jury is not allowed to draw from such texts, what is it that they are doing in the first place? My hunch is that they fall back to garden variety fears, common bias, or emotional response. The end result is little more than a more civilized, but just as angry, lynch mob.

If reason and rational discourse could lead us to believe that taking a human life is necessary, then I doubt we could prosecute anyone for murder. The penalty phase, therefore, is a discussion of "how bad" a crime was. What could be more subjective? I once heard a wise(?) man say that we should always error on the side of life. I still can't believe he said it, either.