Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, March 9, 1993 TAG: 9303090327
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BOB DELLAVALLE-RAUTH
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
VIOLENCE BREEDS VIOLENCE
MATTHEW 25:40 admonishes: "I tell you solemnly, insofar as you did this to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me."During this season of Lent, I believe that - along with most other Christians when we seriously reflect upon Scriptural passages such as the above and many others - we may have enough change of heart and compassion not to want to pull the switch March 18 to kill Syvasky Poyner in Virginia's electric chair.
I can fully understand the public's fear of crime. It is not comfortable to walk a street in our cities or towns at night, or sometimes even during the day, without the feeling of possibly being accosted, mugged, raped or murdered. Drugs and murder cry out for effective remedies.
The secular response is longer jail sentences, unbearable fines and state-sanctioned killing, called "capital punishment." Jail and prison construction is Virginia's fastest-growing industry. Most certainly, this has not been a good answer: Our collective fears regarding crime have increased exponentially, and crime is spreading.
As we sit in our comfortable churches during Lent, perhaps we can reflect upon a better way - the way of the Gospels and the call of the New Testament. It is the way of personal responsibility, basic moral values and a seamless-garment approach respecting all human life.
It is a call to each of us to become active in our communities and our society to remedy the circumstances that contribute to hopelessness, despair and a breakdown in respect for all human life - the life of the aborted fetus; the life of the innocent victims of war, including noncombatants and "enemy" soldiers; the life of the victims of state killings. It is a call for each of us to remedy the circumstances which cause crushing poverty and chronic unemployment that breed violence.
As we reflect during Lent on the passion and execution of Christ, let us make some comparisons of that period with the government and society of our own day. Think about Poyner and how many times he will pass from one tribunal to another and then be placed before the governor. Will the governor wash his hands as Pilate did? Will you?
Last year, prior to an execution, one letter to the editor said: "When the switch is thrown, he will get his own blood to drink and he will be in hell one millisecond after he is fried." Another Christian called for carrying out all executions of those on Death Row at once in order to save taxpayer money. Catholic bishops recently pointed out that approximately 75 percent of Catholic Christians believe in capital punishment, as did the Romans and the crowd that chose to kill Jesus.
Unless we remove the violence from our own hearts and the planks from our eyes, unless we recognize that capital punishment is an extreme act of vengeance and retribution by the state and reinforced every day by us Christians, we will continue to see a rise in crime.
Violence, unfortunately, is as American as apple pie. During the Civil War, thousands in the North and South were executed on the spot for desertion and conscientious objection. Currently, the United States is the only civilized Western country that allows capital punishment for murder, spying and desertion. Lynching of black slaves is also a part of our ugly heritage of racism which continued long after abolition. All of this violence is unfortunately often condoned and carried out by Christians.
Have we as Christians ever really recognized the hurt caused by our sin of racism and tried to find ways to reconcile with our black brothers and sisters? I don't believe we have yet done this as a country or individually. If we had, racism would not be the problem that it is today.
The majority of those executed are blacks. Genocide was the fate of the people native to our land and throughout the Americas and sadly continues today. Since colonial times, 15,000 people in the United States have been executed by the state. Virginia has executed more than 1,300 people - more than any other state.
We often label the "guilty" ones, but in fact we are the guilty ones. We are the crowd calling for the execution. We are the crowd dragging the adulterous woman before Jesus - demanding her death. We are the crowd poised with the stones in our clenched hands ready to throw and to kill.
But our killing has been sanitized. We kill with our taxes, with our consumerism, with our anger, our militarism, our votes; with electrical jolts, gas, rope, poisonous injections - but even more, perhaps, with our silence. Very often in our Christian churches we are overcome and pacified with a kind of static goodness, a kind of passive piety. I have come to call it a pietetic coma.
It is becoming more evident every day, with the ever-increasing level of violent crime, that the escalating imposition of the death penalty - state-authorized killing - is a misguided attempt to improve public safety. A new approach must be found.
The death penalty is morally objectionable, is essentially anti-Christian and anti-Gospel, and has proved to be ineffective.
It becomes more and more evident that:
The death penalty is not, nor ever was, a deterrent to crime. All serious studies prove this point; nations that have abandoned the death penalty have much lower crime rates than the United States. Violence, including state violence, breeds violence.
The death penalty in the United States is discriminatory. It is, overwhelmingly, poor and minority people who receive it.
The death penalty eliminates the possibility of rehabilitation, an ultimate act of unforgiveness, and is 10 times more costly than life in prison.
The death penalty has killed innocent people - 23 in this century alone.
Death-penalty victims are at the mercy of career-minded, goal-oriented, well-to-do prosecutors and are often assigned uninterested, lot-selected, sometimes incompetent and frequently inexperienced defense attorneys. In many cases, the defense attorney has never even previously been to a criminal trial-by-jury case.
All but a very few people killed were hideously abused, sexually molested, otherwise neglected or institutionalized as children or youths.
Many of those sentenced turned to drugs or alcohol to numb the pain of their own brutal lives.
Fifteen to 20 percent are mentally retarded or borderline, and most received little or inadequate education.
Most gave clear signals that they were in trouble long before they killed. In some cases their families sought help again and again. None received the help they sought and needed, because they were society's "throwaways" long before they murdered.
The death penalty undermines respect for human life. If the state can deliberately and legally kill an adult, it can also invade another country and kill innocents along the way. Society can also approve the invasion of a woman's body to remove a fetus. We become insensitive to the deliberate, arbitrary taking or ending of human life.
For Lent, I exhort all Christians to allow their prayer to bring them to action - to put an end to capital punishment. Put an end to state killing. Let us begin during Lent '93 to honestly and truthfully respect all human life. A modest proposal: Let the Christians of the world agree to stop killing each other!
Bob DellaValle-Rauth of Huddleston is vice chair of the Richmond Diocesan Justice and Peace Commission.