Web Urbinist Shocking History
Old Sparky from Pixabay
Web Urbinist Shocking History
Sermon preached at Christ Church
East Orange, New Jersey
Sunday, July 24, 1960
By Father John R. Green
Shown with John Green's blessing
Undoubtedly you have been reading in the newspapers and magazines arguments pro and con regarding Capital Punishment. Should or should it not be abolished? Many feel it should - many feel it should not, and many are perhaps undecided.
Speaking as a Christian, as a minister of the Gospel, and as one who feels illumined by the Holy Ghost in my study of Scriptures, I find myself strongly opposed to Capital Punishment. At the same time I find fellow Christians, also other ministers of the Gospel, who likewise feel illumined by the Holy Spirit in their study of the Scriptures, favoring Capital Punishment. At one time I favored Capital Punishment but am now convinced that it serves no useful or constructive purpose, and is contrary to the spirit and teachings of Christ. This I would like to discuss with you this morning.
Those outside of the Church have their reasons for favoring or opposing Capital Punishment, which they may contend have nothing to do with religion. In the Church we do or should have a Christian motivation for our attitudes and actions. Therefore, we find many quoting the Bible to prove their case for Capital Punishment and others (including myself) quoting the Bible to prove Capital Punishment should be abolished. To begin with, it is almost common knowledge that you can prove just about any and every thing you want to by making some quotation from the Bible. How many times has it been said that Satan can and does quote Scriptures to justify his existence and activities. During Hitler 's reign in Germany, the Nazis annihilated the entire Czecho-Slavakian community of Lidice. They could have quoted Scriptures to justify their monstrous actions. Did not the children of Israel butcher every living creature in Jericho (excepting one prostitute's family) after the capture of their city? Read Joshua 6:21.
The Bible has been quoted to justify the Salem Witchcraft Trials. It was quoted by practically every Christian denomination, including our own Episcopal Church in pro-Civil War days in the defense of slavery. There is also material in the Bible that has been used to justify polygamy, rape, incest, adultery and racial segregation.
But can you imagine Jesus supporting any of these things? He was told by the Pharisees that the Scriptures were opposed to his healing and gathering of food on the Sabbath, but did not He go ahead and heal and send his disciples into the fields to gather food on the Sabbath? He knew that there were literal statements in the Bible condemning his actions but He contended that the Bible is not to be taken literally and that the Scriptures are not to be quoted out of their context to support a proposition - but are to be interpreted intelligently under the inspiration and guidance of the Holy Spirit.
In the Ten Commandments, we read "Thou Shalt Not Kill". Actually, Moses intended this Commandment to read 'Thou Shalt Do No Murder", as our Prayer Book states it. To obey the Commandment "Thou Shalt Not Kill' would mean that we would all have to be pacifists and vegetarians. But to commit murder is another thing.
Now this Commandment applies to the State as well as to the individual. Capital Punishment is carried out by the State as a penalty for murder committed in the first degree which means that it was pre-meditated with malice aforethought. But I ask you, what is more pre-meditated than an execution? And certainly no other motive than malice can be implied. Society is angry and vindictive toward the offender and is gaining its revenge. An exception to this might be the Judge who sentenced an 18 year old boy (and I am quoting the Judge's words): "to hang by the neck until dead - and may this be a lesson to you".
The only difference between Capital Punishment by the State and murder committed by an individual is that the former is legalized and the latter is not.
A prominent clergyman of another denomination, who supports Capital Punishment by numerous quotations from the Bibles states that murder committed by an individual is more horrible than an execution. In contradiction to this, I would like to quote a former Prison Chaplain, an Episcopalian, who has not only witnessed many executions, but has studied the details of many murders. He states: "never have I heard of any murder which even approximated the extended, calculated and barbaric mental and physical torture as applied to those killed in cold blood by the State (in order to show how much it disapproves of killing in cold blood). I have never heard of any murderer whose crimes even approximated the evil ferocity of the following: the victim is confined to a 4' x 12' cell for 22 hours a day, 365 days per year for an average of 2 years in many States. In California one notable prisoner inhabited Condemned Row for 11 years. This technique in San Quentin Prison produced 5 suicides in 4 years." I end the quote here. The Chaplain goes on to describe what he calls "the slow and savage ceremonial reporting of Aztec Indian sacrifices which is seen in the last meal of the doomed man, the 13 steps from Condemned Row to the site of the execution, the placing of the mask over the condemned man's face - not to protect his dignity but to spare the witnesses the ghastly sights" - too ghastly for me to describe in this sermon - seen on the face of the one undergoing execution. Hanging, he describes as the worst type of execution where the head is sometimes severed from the body, but only slightly degrading is the electric chair used here in New Jersey. There is medical evidence in overwhelming abundance to the effect that the one who is electrocuted is in reality fried to death. The late Joseph Welsh in his excellent Television Show, Omnibus, supports this contention. Victims of gas chambers have been known to cough, gag or vomit before losing consciousness for an interdeterminable interval. This Chaplain concludes (and I am now quoting him again): "I never heard of any murderer from Jack the Ripper to Charles Starkweather being guilty of such methodical precision and ceremonially extended atrocity.
If Capital Punishment is either morally sound or a deterrent then we have no logical right to continue private executions. All executions should be televised - and during school hours. This would be far more effective than leaving our youths restricted to delayed reported accounts as how a doomed man goes about the difficult process of holding down his last meal and how a Prison Chaplain solves the problem by giving last rites as many as three times in one morning". (I end the quote ).
How well I remember in my early adolescence the Sacco-Vanzetta electrocution. I had nightmares for weeks afterwards following my reading of the newspaper accounts and scanning the photographs of the condemned men. In my wild imagination, Vanzetta resembled the local school truant officer and some of my playmates said that if he did they were not sorry for him.
Those of us who oppose Capital Punishment have been accused by laymen, even by fellow Christians: as being on the side of evil - on the side of the murderer. Far more edifying from a Christian standpoint is the attitude of the parents of 17 year old (their only child) Denna Bonn of Palo Alto, California, Mr. and Mrs. Bonn, confronting the parents of their daughter's murderer, said, "We cannot get our girl back, we want to help your boy". Their action and attitude represents the Christian injunction of forgiveness, mercy and love at its height. It also honored the reverence for life emphasized by Christianity.
Capital Punishment has been argued as a deterrent to murder. Yet, the nine States which have abolished Capital Punishment have a homicide rate which is about one fourth of the national homicide average, according to the F.B.I. National Crime Report. The State of Georgia, on the other hand, almost invariably leads all other States in the number of murders, despite the fact that it almost always stages the largest number of executions. The thirty three foreign countries which have abolished Capital Punishment report a declining rate in the number of murders committed. When, in the last century in England, they hanged pickpockets (pickpocketing being one of the more than 200 capital offenses) the executions were held in public and while the crowds were watching the hangings, other pickpockets had a field day while circulating among the viewers.
'While Christianity does not condone murder, it favors strongly forgiveness and rehabilitation. It emphasizes that no human being is beyond reclamation and redemption, And if Christ did not regard criminals as human beings made in the image of God, why was He so hard on those who failed to measure up to the principle of love: "I was in prison and ye visited me". As a matter of fact, murderers are among the best behaved of the prison population. Ohio Governor, Michael deSalle (who with California Governor, Patrick Brown, and Michigan's Mennen Williams) is strongly opposed to Capital Punishment, has nine first degree murderers staffing the Executive Mansion in Columbus. Among 374 paroled first degree murderers in California, only two committed felonies and not one repeated a crime of first degree murder. Many murderers are never pardoned - those who are serve 12 1/2 years average. They have unblemished prison records and seem to deserve some manifestation of the Christian doctrine of the forgiveness of sins. Queen Victoria knighted one murderer for his service to the Empire during his parole.
And what about those innocent people who have been executed? Perjured testimony has lead to so many innocent people being executed that the State of California imposes the gas chamber on those whose perjured testimony results in the execution of the innocent. But eye witnesses to a murder need not perjure to bring about a miscarriage of justice - they can be mistaken - devastatingly so. Without a last minute confession of a former Chicago police officer, James Fulton Foster, father of 7 children would have been executed as a result of sworn (but erroneous testimony of eye witnesses ). An eye witness named John Christy caused the 1950 hanging of Timothy Evans in England for murder of his wife. Failing even after Evans' death to produce the corpus delicti, Scotland Yard acted on a tip and examined the premises of chief witness Christy. Here they discovered the body of Mrs. Timothy Evans and seven other women. And the cases of those executed innocently are by no means a rarity. Arthur Koertler's book "Reflections on Hangings" has 19 pages on such cases. Professor Borchard of Yale has written "Convicting the Innocent" - a study of 146 cases. States have been known to pay a pension to the wife and children of a man executed by mistake. An 18th century Archdeacon in England maintained that the executed die for their country. And what about the execution of our innocent Lord on Calvary? Do we regard this as any less than murder? Even the incarceration of the innocent is a tragedy - yet after 30 or 40 years in prison ask any condemned man if a life sentence is more brutal than execution. Delayed evidence has brought about pardon and indemnity to men serving life sentences but the posthumous pardon to Sacco-Vansetta could not retrieve their corpses - the most ghastly type of irony.
Fortunately many of the national bodies of our denominational Churches, such as our own Episcopal Church, the Presbyterian Church, the American Baptist Church, the Unitarian Church, the Quakers and the central conference of Rabbis are on record as favoring the abolition of Capital Punishment. The Roman Catholic Church has been increasingly vocal in this direction since the ascendancy of Pope John XIII. All of these adhere to our Lord's denunciation of an "eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth' philosophy and for His emphasizing of "Blessed are the merciful," and "How many times shall I forgive my brother - 70 times 7".
There are other factors to be considered in discussing Capital Punishment. Public sympathy is often on the side of the murderer when he is facing execution. This would not be the case if he were to receive a life sentence. The public is aroused to sympathy for the man whom the newspapers say: "is fighting for his life". Some jurors refuse to convict a man who has actually committed a murder - permitting him to go Scot-free - rather than send him to the electric chair. This also would not be the case if he could receive a life sentence.
Most murderers executed are poor, friendless, mentally defective and sometimes insane men who have court-appointed lawyers. The well-to-do can hire a criminal lawyer. One lawyer in Texas who successfully obtained the acquittals for 199 out of 200 murderers he represented, said that the one who was executed was no more guilty than the other 199 - he just did not handle his case right. Rarely is a woman executed, although one out of every seven murders are committed by women. Many murderers are never apprehended - many murder cases are never solved.
A friend of mine, a former Chaplain at the Federal Detention House in New York, told me how the notorious criminal Liebowitz, who was a condemned murderer spent his last days in that Institution. Liebowitz would tell the prison authorities, at their request, whether an incoming prisoner was a 'phony' or not. This saved both the prison authorities and the prisoner much grief in the long run. Liebowitz also, at the request of prison authorities, would talk with young men starting out on their road to a crime, about the folly of engaging in such a career. He would only have to be with each young criminal about 5 minutes to convince him that he was on the wrong track. Penologists and others hoped that Liebowitz might be spared execution to serve society in this manner. Ironically, he was ultimately electrocuted.
Let us, as Christians, take the issue of Capital Punishment to heart and pray for guidance and illumination of the Holy Spirit. The time is coming when the State of New Jersey will make a decision on whether to abolish Capital Punishment and our views and influence will be most welcome and of considerable significance in this respect.