Sir, – Dr Sean Alexander Smith makes a rather strange choice as defender of the death penalty in Judge Antonin Scalia, a jurist noted as a dissenter in very many cases involving the rights of the vulnerable. His argument that support for this barbaric practice can be derived from its popularity with church-going Christians is equally doubtful. I prefer to take my guidance from Christianity’s founder, who, when confronted with synagogue-attenders intent on punishing the woman taken in adultery, reminded them of their own sins and set her free to “sin no more”.
Opposition to the death penalty does not mean believing that those who violate the rules of society should not be punished, but, apart from Christianity at all, how hypocritical is it to deliberately kill someone who has just done the same? Finally, it is no harm to point out that the death penalty has not proved to be a deterrent to those intent on carrying out serious crimes and, in fact, those states in the US which operate it have a greater crime rate than those who do not. Many innocent people have been put to death there and this danger is ever present, as I am personally aware of through correspondence with Tommy Zeigler in Florida, on death row for almost 40 years while the ‘justice system’ there thwarts his every appeal. Execution cannot ever be accepted in a civilised society. Yours, etc,
MARY STEWART,
Ardeskin,
Donegal
Sir, – Geoff Scargill (April 22nd) takes me to task for citing Antonin Scalia to buttress my personal opinion on the death penalty. In rejoinder, I’ll only say that, since his appointment in 1986, Scalia has presided over hundreds of cases, and authored many opinions in the most atrocious death penalty cases.
Only this week he authored the majority opinion in a capital case (White V Woodall). Given that he is an experienced jurist and a practising Catholic, I would say that, while Mr Scargill may find him unpersuasive, Scalia is eminently quotable in a letter to the editor under the heading “Christianity and the death penalty”. In any case, the merits or demerits of Scalia’s judicial decision-making are radically irrelevant to the point I was trying to make, which is that, despite modern trends (and the revisionism of recent Catholic moral theology) one can be a perfectly authentic Christian and support capital punishment. Yours, etc,
DR SEAN ALEXANDER
SMITH,
Aiken Village,
Sandyford,
Dublin 18