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My personal stance on the death penalty is that, it may be less expensive to execute a criminal instead of giving them 20+ years of public welfare in a penetentiary (3 meals a day, a warm dry bed, safety from death or bodily injury (relatively speaking, a new girlfriend named "Bubba" doesn't count), however as an optimist or humanist (whatever you want to call it) I believe that somewhere deep inside, people want to do what is right. Killing them doesn't give them the chance to change. Whatever the Old Testament says, Jesus taught that "he who is without sin..." and "love your enemies" and the rest that would indicate to me that capital punishment was a concession for the Hebrew people for that time in their history. Since Jesus came to fulfill the law, his teachings should hold more weight than what came before. I'm not going to go into the apparent inconsistencies here between Old Testament Law and New Testament teachings. Jesus taught that grace and mercy are better than judgement and vengence. Killing a convict, no matter how heinous the crime leaves little room for grace and mercy and no chance for that life to be redeemed. I'd rather leave that decision to God. I certainly don't want the responsibility for that choice. I think perhaps that more people would be against capital punishment if the alternative were more effective. There is not enough effort put into rehabilitating prison inmates. I like the line from Shawshank Redemption where he states that he wasn't a criminal until he spent time in prison. I think our prison system has failed us in that instead of turning criminals into productive citizens, it just removes the criminal from society for a time only to release a criminal back into society at a later date. In my time here on earth learning about God and humanity, I think that Jesus would be for rehabilitation and against capital punishment.
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