NOTE: The following reflections are not representative of my employer.
If you live in Knoxville, the face of the young man above is probably familiar to you.
Forgive the irreverent brevity, but here's the story in a nutshell:
Early Jan. 7, 2007, Chris Newsom and his girlfriend Channon Christian were carjacked, held captive and raped in Knoxville. Newsom's body was found that afternoon burning by the railroad tracks. Christian's body was found stuffed in a trashcan inside the house a couple of days later.
Letalvis Cobbins (pictured above) was tried during the last two weeks for his part in the torture slaying of Christian and Newsom (picture below).
To the disappointment of the families and friends of the murdered youth, Cobbins was not given the death penalty.
An Eye for an EyeI, along with many other Christians, have struggled with the death penalty. God instructed his people:
17 Whoever takes a human life shall surely be put to death. 18 Whoever takes an animal's life shall make it good, life for life. 19 If anyone injures his neighbor, as he has done it shall be done to him, 20 fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth; whatever injury he has given a person shall be given to him. 21 Whoever kills an animal shall make it good, and whoever kills a person shall be put to death. 22 You shall have the same rule for the sojourner and for the native, for I am the Lord your God (Leviticus 24:17-22).
But Jesus said,
38 “You have heard that it was said, 'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ 39 But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also (Matthew 5:38-39).
It sounds like Jesus is changing the rules. But he is not. He is instructing individuals not to seek personal revenge, not to take the law into their own hands. The original instruction from God still stood to be carried out by civil authorities. Jesus was correcting misunderstandings when he said, "You have heard it said...", he wasn't necessarily quoting Old Testament law.
Capital Punishment
Years ago I read something that helped me on this sensitive issue. It was a book dealing with the death of Jesus by John Stott called The Cross of Christ.
In section II, ch.4 ("The Heart of the Cross: The Problem of Forgiveness"), Stott writes:
A full acknowledgment of human responsibility and therefore guilt, far from diminishing the dignity of human beings, actually enhances it. It presupposes that men and women, unlike the animals, are morally responsible beings, who know what they are, could be and should be, and do not make excuses for their poor performance.
Later, he states,
....decision-making belongs to the essence of our humanness. Sin is not only the attempt to be God; it is also the refusal to be man, by shuffling off responsibility for our actions. ... The commonest defence [sic.] of the Nazi war criminals was that they were merely following orders. But the court held them responsible all the same.
(In other words, are we to hold only Hitler responsible for the atrocities at Auschwitz? Were not the soldiers just as culpable? Or in Channon Christian's case, is Cobbins not just as responsible?)
The Bible takes sin seriously because it takes man (male and female) seriously. ... To say that somebody 'is not responsible for his actions' is to demean him or her as a human being. It is part of the glory of being human that we are held responsible for our actions. Then, when we also acknowledge our sin and our guilt, we receive God's forgiveness, enter into the joy of his salvation, and so become yet more completely human and healthy.
Is Cobbins being treated as fully human?
Stott continues,
In his justly famous essay 'The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment', C.S. Lewis bemoans the modern tendency to abandon the notion of just retribution and replace it with humanitarian concerns both for the criminal (reform) and for society as a whole (deterrence). For this means, he [Lewis] argues, that every lawbreaker 'is deprived of the rights of being a human being. The reason is this. The Humanitarian theory removes from punishment the concept of just desert. But the concept of desert is the only connecting link between punishment and justice. It is only as deserved or undeserved that a sentence can be just or unjust.' Again, 'when we cease to consider what the criminal deserves and consider only what will cure him or deter others, we have tacitly removed him from the sphere of justice altogether; instead of a person, a subject of rights, we now have a mere object, a patient, a "case".' By what right may we use force to impose treatment on a criminal, either to cure him or to protect him or to protect society, unless he deserves it?
Finally, Stott quotes Lewis:
To be 'cured' against one's will, and cured of states which we may not regard as disease, is to be put on a level with those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals. But to be punished, however severely, because we have deserved it, because we 'ought to have known better', is to be treated as a human person made in God's image.
Note: Lewis, in his essay The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment was not out to prove that Capital Punishment was right. In fact, he begins his essay saying,
I do not know whether a murderer is more likely to repent and make good on the gallows a few weeks after his trial or in the prison infirmary thirty years later. I do not know whether the fear of death is an indispensable deterrent. I need not, for the purpose of this article, decide whether it is a morally permissible deterrent. Those are questions which I propose to leave untouched. My subject is not Capital Punishment in particular, but that theory of punishment in general which the controversy showed to be called the Humanitarian theory. Those who hold it think that it is mild and merciful. In this I believe that they are seriously mistaken. I believe that the “Humanity” which it claims is a dangerous illusion and disguises the possibility of cruelty and injustice without end. I urge a return to the traditional or Retributive theory not solely, not even primarily, in the interests of society, but in the interests of the criminal.
That said, I have found the principles derived from the Lewis' essay as used in Stott's book helpful in developing my own view of Capital Punishment, namely, that it is a difficult and heart-breaking, but necessary and proper way of acknowledging that we are humans, not animals, bearing in our being the very image of God.
I'm grateful that I was not on the jury. It would be difficult to be any man's judge. However, I believe we failed Letalvis Cobbins, our brother in the human race. We did not acknowledge his humanity or dignity by giving him life in prison. We demeaned him. His actions and misdeeds deserve punishment. Capital punishment. He is not a dog to be tied up in some cage for the rest of his life. He is a man.
