The death penalty has been much in the news lately, and much on the nation’s mind. Timothy McViegh’s execution on June 11 for his bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people has brought a new attention to an issue our nation has been struggling with for many years.

McVeigh’s crime took the horror of murder to an unfathomable degree. We were shocked by the number of people McVeigh killed, the largest mass murder in US history. We were dumfounded by the indiscriminate nature of the bombing, targeted at Federal employees but killing no one directly responsible for the government actions in Waco he wished to protest. We were morally digusted when we learned that McVeigh knew his truck bomb would kill innocent children attending a day care center in the building, as well as employees in a social security office providing assistance to the poor, disabled and unemployed.

McVeigh’s execution raised a further element for national concern and discussion in that his execution was the first federal execution in nearly 40 years. We’ve come to expect and tolerate the numerous executions in states like Texas and Florida. But McVeigh was executed by our nation not by a state. Despite the fact that some of our states ban executions, McVeigh was executed on behalf of all the states, and all the citizens of the states. McVeigh was executed in my name, and yours, and that gives us all reason to pause and consider.

McVeigh’s execution is a nearly perfect test case for a discussion of the moral implications of the death penalty. McVeigh’s case is nearly pristinely uncluttered by the vagaries and ambiguities that make some people uncomfortable with the death penalty in some cases but undecided about the underlying moral question of whether state execution is ever acceptable in any case.

There is no question of McVeigh’s guilt, no yet to be discovered evidence will ever exonerate him. McVeigh was white, not a persecuted racial minority. McVeigh was in full mental health and capacity; he freely chose to do what he did. McVeigh expressed no remorse for the crime itself; he would do the same again, so he said. Even given the gross FBI incompetence in misplacing 4,000 pages of documentation, McVeigh was fairly tried, compotently defended, and his execution even postponed a month to allow his defense time to review the ultimately inconsequential paperwork. If state execution is ever appropriate it was appropriate in the case of Timothy McVeigh.

So much of the debate on the death penalty is about the unfair, arbitrary and tragically mistaken way in which it is carried out that the underlying moral question is seldom considered. But with Timothy McVeigh none of those criticisms apply. The question McVeigh brings us to, and the question I want to ask today, is the deeper question. Is it morally acceptable when all questions of guilt, discrimination, culpability, remorse and procedural justice are put aside, for the State to execute a murderer?

The author and radio commentator Dennis Prager asked just this question in an editorial he wrote for the Los Angeles Times on Friday, June 8th. His editorial titled, “There’s a Moral Reason That McVeigh Must Die” addresses exactly the questions that I want to ask from a pro-death penalty point of view. I’m going to read from and dialogue with his editorial throughout my sermon.

Dennis Prager writes:

“The likely execution of Timothy McVeigh has presented opponents of capital punishment with a serious dilemma. None of their usual arguments for keeping all murderers alive applies here….

Consequently, opponents have launched a particularly vigorous campaign against executing murderers. Given the fervor and ubiquity of editorial opposition to capital punishment and the belief of increasing numbers of religious people that it is always immoral, it is a good time to rebut these arguments.

First, we who support capital punishment for murder—and only for murder—ask opponents to acknowledge that allowing all murderers to keep their lives after deliberately taking others’ lives is, at the very least, unjust. If a man steals your bicycle, most of us would find that profoundly unjust. Why then is it just to allow everyone who steals a life to keep his own?”

Prager compares stealing a life to stealing a bicycle. I agree that stealing a bicycle or stealing a life is unjust. Prager then asks why then is it just to allow everyone who steals a life to keep his own? But that question doesn’t logically follow. The injustice of the original crime is no argument for the justice or injustice of any particular punishment.

And Prager’s analogy to bicycle theft is misleading. We don’t punish a bicycle thief by stealing the thief’s bicycle. Justice is created by returning the stolen bicycle to it’s owner, then punishing the thief with a warning, a fine, probation, or jail. Justice comes in two parts: restitution, returning the circumstances to the way they were before the crime; and punishment, making the criminal feel enough pain so that they won’t do it again.

The horror of murder is that the stolen life cannot be returned. Justice in both parts can not be done because what has been taken is irreplaceble. Executing the murderer doesn’t return the stolen life to the victim. The death penalty is not restitution, it’s punishment. It cannot return the circumstances to the way they were before the crime.

As punishment, the death penalty can only attempt to fill the second part of justice, to make the criminal feel enough pain so that they won’t do it again. And here is the real ethical question. Executed killers won’t kill again because they can’t kill again. Executing the murderer makes it impossible for them to kill again, but it also makes it impossible for them to choose not to kill again. By removing the opportunity for rehabilitation, the death penalty becomes a different punishment in kind, not just degree, from fines and prison time and so on. Our prisons have always maintained a tense balance designed in part to simply cause pain and discomfort to the inmates, but also to encourage rehabilitation. The finality of the death penalty removes even the pretense of rehabilitation. That difference makes moral assumptions about the human nature of murderers being irredeemable, or not worthy of redemption. And by implication the existence of the death penalty in the approved spectrum of punishments calls into question whether rehabilitation is ever an actual goal for criminals or if the rehabilitation goal exists only as a high-minded gloss over the true goal revenge.

A second aspect of punishment attempts to deter other folks from choosing to commit similar crimes in the future. This is a second purpose beyond the primary justice equation of making right what was wronged and punishing the criminal. If it could be proven that executing convicted murderers prevents future murders by others that might be reason enough to support the death penalty. But that’s an “if” that’s impossible to judge. How can we quantify the number of murders not committed? And how could we know the reasons for these murders not being committed? So many factors beside the death penalty affect the murder rate that any strong conclusions about its effectiveness or ineffectiveness as a deterrent are always self-serving and unjustified.

Mr. Prager goes on:

“…allowing all murderers to keep their lives diminishes the worth of human life. The way society communicates what it thinks about a crime is by the punishment it metes out. Yet opponents of capital punishment claim that taking a murderer’s life reduces the worth of human life. This defies logic: if taking away a murderer’s life reduces the worth of human life, taking away a rapist’s freedom presumably reduces the value of freedom. But of course, the opposite is true. Taking away criminals’ freedom is our only way of showing how much we value freedom.”

Mr. Prager’s point is that taking a murderer’s life proves the worth of life because the state takes away from the criminal the most valuable thing he possesses. This is a strong statement of worth. However the death penalty opponents make an even stronger statement of worth. They say life is so valuable that the state must strive to protect and preserve life in all circumstances, even the life of a murderer.

Prager’s viewpoint says that the murderer’s life is supremely valuable to the murderer but of no worth to the state. Death penalty opponents say that lives have worth both to the people living them, and to the larger society, represented by the state. The worth of a murderer’s life is not destroyed by the murderer’s actions, no matter how heinous. The worth of human life remains underneath the abhorent actions, and has the potential to rise again and redeem past actions. As we say in our first Unitarian Universalist principle the worth and dignity of persons is inherent in them. Worth and dignity are a birthright of being human independent of our actions.

Mr.Prager points out that taking away a rapist’s freedom shows how much we value freedom. This is true. We do value freedom. Taking away a murderer’s freedom, by putting them in prison for life would also make a strong statement about the value of freedom. But freedom is not the only quality that we value. We also value life, which is why murder is a crime. We also value the right of persons to govern the use of their own bodies, which is why rape is a crime. We don’t punish rapists by having them raped because we think this value of the right of persons to govern their bodies applies even to convicted rapists.

Prager says that “the way society communicates what it thinks about a crime is by the punishment it metes out.” This is true in the sense that crimes deemed more severe are punished more severely. But we don’t attempt to assign punishments that match the crime in some sort of Old Testament eye for an eye justice. Except for the death penalty, almost all serious crimes are punished by loss of freedom. The way we punish more severely is by increasing the length of the jail time. We don’t punish rapists by raping them, or kidnappers by kidnapping them, or embezzler’s by embezzling from them. All severe criminals lose their freedom in jail and then are there for a longer or shorter time depending on what society thinks about their crime. Given that this spectrum already exists from minimal time to life in prison, there is no justification for saying that we need another, even more severe kind of punishment. Society can communicate that it thinks murder is the most severe crime by meting out it’s most severe punishment, total loss of freedom for the remainder of the murderer’s life.

Mr. Prager next points out a link between higher education and opposition to the death penalty. He writes:

“The radical secularization of society … has led to greater opposition to capital punishment. There is a direct relationship between the amount of secular education a person receives and opposition to capital punishment. Thus it is rare to find a liberal arts professor who advocates it.”

His implication is that there is something suspect about the values one learns through secular education and the more education you receive the worse off you are. I think the opposite is true. It’s true our secular society supports some values I abhore, such as materialism, racism, and the use of violence, but most of the worst secular values are mitigated by education not enhanced. The chief values I was taught in higher secular education: the use of reason and the ability to sympathetically imagine oneself in the circumstances of other people, are great gifts to our culture and are also the foundational spiritual practices of my Unitarian Universalist religion.

Lastly, Mr. Prager discusses religion. After first blaming opposition to the death penalty on secular society, he then has to explain why religious voices are also joining and even leading the opposition. He asks:

"How are we to explain the increase in opposition to capital punishment among religious Americans? One major reason is that, thanks to the influence of the universities and the media, secular values now influence religious values more than vice versa. Mainstream Protestant and Catholic thought has always affirmed the right of a just government to take the life of murderers. As for Judaism, while many of the ancient rabbis opposed capital punishment (largely because they lived in the gladiator-loving, mass-crucifying Roman empire) Judaism’s primary source of values, the Torah, is emphatic about capital punishment for murder. Putting murderers to death is the only law repeated in all five books of the Torah.

Another reason is the mistranslation and subsequent misunderstanding of the Sixth Commandment. The original Hebrew reads not “thou shall not kill” but “thou shall not murder.”

Prager’s argument is that the religious voices in opposition to the death penalty aren’t really religious, because they’ve been co-opted by secular society. But by what authority does Prager speak for the religions of other people above the authority of the religion’s own leaders? Prager appeals to the historical perspective saying that the Christian religion in the past supported capital punishment so it should now too. But mainstream Christian denominations do not think fidelity to the past should be their primary guiding value. Mainstream Christian denominations meet annually to discuss new religious responses to changing circumstances and to revise old responses. They can change their religious minds and still be faithfully religious.

With Judaism, Prager argues the opposite. He notes that ancient rabbi’s argued against the death penalty, but, he says, they were unduly swayed by the circumstances of their time. But if authoritative religious opinion can be mistakenly influenced by circumstances of time and place then where do we turn for authority? Either the writer’s of the Torah were also influenced by their culture as I believe and thus we have no need to agree with their every statement. Or we can grant them some special, supernatural exception that makes them authoritative for all time. But Prager doesn’t consistently appeal to biblical authority. The Torah mandates the death penalty for all manner of transgressions short of murder, including homosexuality. The fact that Prager only advocates the death penalty for murder, ignoring other capital crimes as listed in the Torah shows that he has some other final authority than the Torah in mind.

Prager has a further explanation for the anti-death penalty statements of Catholic bishops and the pope. He writes:
“As for the current opposition of the American Catholic bishops and the pope, an additional reason is their opposition to abortion. They perceive that they will garner more respect for their opposition to abortion by unequivocally opposing killing anyone except in personal or national self-defense. Hence their constant reference to the “seamless” ethic of life. But Catholics who wish to retain their religion’s millennia-old support for capital punishment can cite the church’s greatest thinker, St. Augustine, who wrote in ‘The City of God’ that it “is no way contrary to the commandment “thou shalt not kill” to put criminals to death according to law or the rule of rational justice.’”

Catholics who wish to retain their religion’s millennia-old support for capital punishment can do so. Catholics who wish to follow the current teaching of their church will listen to the words of their Pope and Bishops. Whether the “seamless ethic of life” is a sham meant to bolster Catholic opposition to abortion or a well-reasoned, faithful, comprehensive ethical position is not for us to judge. In either case the church’s teaching on the death penalty is clear.

Mr. Prager concludes with a little homily and I will too. He writes:

“Allowing every murderer to keep his life is simply immoral. In their hearts, when confronted with McVeigh, even most opponents of capital punishment acknowledge this. It’s sad that it takes the murder of 168 people for many to acknowledge what their hearts know.”

Allowing every murderer to keep his life is neither simple nor immoral. Allowing a clearly guilty, un-remorseful, indiscriminate killer of 168 people to live out his life in prison is difficult and painful but it is the morally right thing to do.

When confronted with Timothy McVeigh we are forced to face the morality of the death penalty head on. None of the secondary arguments that make the death penalty so patently unjust in so many cases apply here. Here there is no question of guilt, no remorse, no racial bias, no inadequate defense, no question that MvVeigh acted with a sound mind and intellectual capacity. All those reasons might make some person generally in favor of the death penalty reconsider in certain cases, or support a moratorium on executions until those issues can be resolved. None of those reasons apply here. Here there is only the moral question of whether under any circumstances the State should exert its power to execute one of its citizens.

I say no. Because execution does not return life to the victim it satisfies only our desire for revenge not our urge to justice. Because all life is valuable we must uphold the worth of the murderer’s life even as we uphold the worth of the victim’s life. Because all life has inherent worth we must see that value of life is not destroyed by the murderer’s actions. Because we can express our abhorence of murder through taking away freedom there is no need for a death penalty. Because our secular society as well as, increasingly, our religions and our religious leaders teach that capital punishment is wrong. I say no. The death penalty is morally wrong, not because there are questions of how it is applied and to whom and under what circumstances, but because it simply is, always is, morally wrong.

life, and have it abundantly.” (John 10:10).  Does it sound circular to say that the purpose of life is living?  But that’s the truth.  God said at the beginning of creation, “Go out and live.  Then come back and tell me about it.”  God spoke to himself of course because there is no-one else.  We can say the same thing to ourselves and it’s still a good spiritual strategy, “Go out and live.  Then come back and tell me about it.”