Questions on death penalty raises several more

By Andre E. Johnson
Editor: Rhetoric Race and Religion

I am blessed to be a part of the “Faith in Memphis” clergy panel. Each week the editor David Waters sends out a question that he would like for us to address. One such question was, “Is imposition of the death penalty a political/partisan matter or a religious/moral matter? Why is the death penalty largely being carried out in the South? Should Tennessee abolish the death penalty?”

My response is below

I will address the questions in the order given. First, the death penalty is a religious/moral matter which gets tangled up in the political and partisan. Second, the death penalty is part and parcel of old arcane laws that many white supremacists aimed at blacks. It’s the legal form of lynching. Third, yes Tennessee and every other state should abolish the death penalty.

However, you could have asked several more questions as well. For instance, why are more black and brown people on death row? Why do juries sentence more people of color to death more so than whites? Why are the overwhelming majority of people–whether black or white are on death row poor? Why do these defendants have inadequate counsel?

According to Michelle Alexander’s book the New Jim Crow, why have the courts; including the Supreme Court, all but eliminate “race” even if racism or racial bias is proven, to be a viable defense? Why are many of the same people who are against a woman right to choose also for the implementation of the death penalty? Why haven’t “principled conservatives” come out against the death penalty because of its exuberant costs to states across the country? Why haven’t we believed the almost unanimous studies, statements, and scholarship which argue that the death penalty is not a deterrent to crime at all? And most of all, why do Christians believe that the death of anyone else outside of Jesus would bring closure, peace, and satisfaction?

Well, many Christians do believe that Jesus would support the death penalty because he submitted to his own execution. But a word of caution. Remember when the “leading men” of one town brought the “adulterous woman” to Jesus for condemnation and death? He told them, “Okay, the one without sin cast the first stone.” So in that regard, I guess Jesus did approve use of the death penalty—but in order to carry it out, one must not have any sin. And for Christians, the only one who could have imposed the “death penalty” on the woman that day or any day—the one we believe did not have any sin….. well, he did not.