Texas; No more last meal choices for death-row inmates

Would you support hiring more appeals judges since our appellate courts are overloaded?

 

Two points:

1. How much does this cost, actually cost before an execution? I'm guessing less than $150 per inmate. That cost is actually lower than regular daily care for them.

2. Something should epbe said about the dramatic over representation of both minority and low income individuals awaiting execution. When was the last time a wealthier, white person was executed? Doesn't happen, they get good lawyers and get good deals.

Probably two different points but the first is key...this isn't costing the state a lot of money given what they spend daily on routine prisoner costs.

 

Taking what you said as true, it doesn't mean that those who are sentenced to death don't deserve it.

 

Do you have a Scripture citation that says that the execution must take place within one year?

 

I don't think a death-row inmate should be given anything at all. But I think they should be offered a reasonably requested special last meal. Something better than their everyday meal, but not something extravagant, like six Main lobsters and a case of caviar.

I think Whitmire might be using this to get his name in the headlines, and he's a fellow democrat.

 

Ironically when Christ was confronted with death penalty cases He always offered grace instead of the sword...go and do likewise is my credo...

 

Christ said:

The Old Testament calls for capital punishment for the following:

We must always remember that in the Old Testament God had not revealed himself fully. We have the greatest revelation of God and what God is like in the life and actions of Christ. I follow Christ, not the Old Testament laws. I fully believe that he who uses the Old Testament laws to judge others will himself be judged by God by those same laws. Those who judge by the standards Christ used will be judged by the standards Christ showed in his lie and actions.

 

An Old Fashioned Boxing Match going on right now:

Old Testament Moralist -vs- Red Letter Liberal

Both extremes are wrong and all they will end up doing is knocking each other out.

 

Yeah, I don't get the "God invented horrible unjust laws and instituted them for a time, so now we need to rip the Old Testament out of our Bibles" interpretation of scripture. Almost Gnostic (as in "Wow that Old Testament god was mean and cruel...not like Jesus).

Jesus was not advocating a lawless society. He was enforcing the fact that the Old Testament laws were not for vengeance, but for justice in the carrying out of governmental justice.

So I guess you believe murder is not wrong? You would rather let thousands of people starve and die (innocent, in a worldly sense...children, women, and the underprivileged), spending hundreds of thousands of dollars per inmate, to support these violent criminals for the rest of their life? That is completely insane. God made it clear, before the Mosaic law was even written, that the death penalty was the appropriate punishment for violent.

On a different note, though, the death penalty is only to be carried out on the eye witness testimony of 2 or more witnesses. This should be the standard. The idea that we put to death innocent (in a worldly sense) individuals, is frightening and wrong. There should be no appeal, because only the most rock solid, proven of cases should receive the death penalty in the first place.

 

You do know that eyewitness testimony is sometimes very unreliable. Forensic evidence is much more trustworthy.

Oh, and it cost more to execute an inmate that to house him for the rest of his life. I'm not saying that this should be the only factor, but to use expense as a justification for the death penalty is not valid.

 

Robert your idea that it costs more to execute an inmate now days than it used to is a half truth. The truth is that it would not cost more to execute a death row inmate if the sentence were carried out more swiftly rather than allowing years and years of appeals. The problem is that we are too worried about the rights of a convicted murderer than in the rights of society, the rights of the victims and their families, and the chance that we might execute an innocent person. Certainly we should dig a little deeper in death row cases but to stretch it out for years on end is a farce.

 

Trial lawyers make up a big lobbyist block. Sag38 is exactly right. The idea that it costs more to execute than life in prison is a liberal lie, designed to go against God's word.

"...yea, hath God said ?"......

Did he REALLY mean it ?

 

Crabby, you are making the classic liberal distortion of these texts for political/philosophical purposes. There is a clear distinction in God's Word between the workings of the legal system and personal actions. 'An eye for and eye' was a sentencing guideline for judges hearing personal injury cases. Pharisees had perverted this into an excuse for revenge on the PERSONAL level. It was this that Jesus was addressing. We are to be slow to judge other people on the personal level, but that principle in no way overturns the need for official judgment by society through its legal system of those who break laws. The two are not in conflict. We should forgive people like Troy Davis on the personal level, but this does not mean they are suddenly exempt from punishment on the legal level.
The OT legal system was meant for the nation of Israel, which was directly chosen by God and given those laws. Many of the laws were based in worship of God. It is not appropriate for all such laws to be used in modern secular societies which are founded on freedom, including freedom of religion. This is why many of the OT laws are properly not used in a country like America, not because Christ in some way abolished all the OT law. In fact, in the Sermon on the Mount (which you quoted from), Jesus specifically said that He had NOT come to abolish the Law. His death and resurrection and Israel's rejection of Him changed the focus of God's relationship with humanity from the nation of Israel to individual hearts, fulfilling the OT law. However, this does NOT change the underlying principles of the OT law, as you imply. There is simply no longer a nation to which that full body of laws applies.

 

This is usually where C.T.Boy disappears. He will not address your excellent point, he will just wait for another death penalty thread, and then again try to bash true God-fearing Christians with his secular humanism.