Normally, there isn’t much disagreement from me concerning the articles of Bradley Gitz, who teaches politics at Lyons College, Batesville, Arkansas. However, his article of July 6, 2008, demonstrated that he is guilty of the very thing of which he accused the five justices who voted against the death penalty for rapists. But first, other things demand attention.

Mr. Gitz wrote that he believes that the death penalty has no place in a civilized society. Au contraire, a civilized society won’t refuse to sign the death warrant for those who execute the death penalty on their victims each and every day of each and every week of every month throughout the year. Why do we as a society try to keep killers alive when they thumb their noses at the rules of a civilized society by killing their fellow citizens?  That is as uncivilized as can be imagined. By the same token, we consent to the killing of the unborn because the mother doesn’t want the child for more reasons than can be presented here, and we call it civilized and compassionate.

As for the law in Louisiana, which called for the death penalty for child rapists, the legislature created the law with powers granted to the state through the Ninth and Tenth Amendments. Furthermore, as Gitz pointed out, it was in line with the Fifth Amendment that states that no one shall be deprived of life without due process of law. The rapist had his day in court with due a process proceeding, and was found guilty as charged, being subject to the lawful penalty prescribed by the Louisiana legislature.

Now let’s revisit the death penalty and Gitz’s aversion to it. Every society throughout the ages has prescribed the death penalty for certain types of crimes.  Those who object will say that the death penalty and executions won’t stop crime. Has an executed criminal ever killed anyone again? The answer is obvious. Justice Kennedy used the cruel and unusual statement of the Eighth Amendment to make his ruling in the rapist case. Since when is death cruel and unusual, given that Hebrews 9:27 says And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment: God doesn’t say how death will arrive nor does he say it is cruel or unusual. Atrocities performed on humans may bring death, but death in and of itself isn’t cruel and unusual.

Justice Kennedy wrote that he and his colleagues invoked an evolving standard of public opinion to strike down the law. (Is that what Gore meant when he said the Constitution was a living document that changed with times?) Gitz is a member of the public and his opinion on the death penalty falls quite in line with Kennedy and his reasoning. The five justices had an agenda to outlaw the death penalty, but in the process of so doing, the rights of the people and the states to conduct their own affairs in order to maintain a civilized society were destroyed. The only difference is that Gitz wants to destroy the rights with a constitutional amendment.

Where will such ill advised notions stop?  If the rights of the people and the states can be eroded in the matter of the death penalty, what other rights can be set aside in the name of a civilized society? Systematically destroying the rights that we don’t like, in the name of civilization, will ultimately lead to tyranny and a dictatorship. In fact, Kennedy and the four other justices stepped ever closer to exercising judicial dictatorship with the ruling.

Now a question is proposed for Bradley Gitz. If the mark of a civilized society is keeping killers alive, would the evidence of an uncivilized society be that of keeping humans locked up for life in a small enclosure much like wild animals? Which one is the most humane, the death penalty or being caged up for life?

Gitz obviously missed the point with his stand on the death penalty to the same degree that Justice Kennedy missed it. I rest my case.

© 07-06-2008 DEC