Sir, – Dr Sean Alexander Smith may have satisfied himself that he is sane, but I am not satisfied that he is civilised. Surely it is not necessary for religious believers to have recourse to their respective traditions to decide whether the state has the right to kill its citizens? Here we need only look to our recent history. A number of Irish people were wrongly convicted of capital crimes in the 1980s in England. Will Dr Smith argue that these people should have been hanged? Christians may believe in resurrection, but can they resurrect a hanged man so that he can appeal his sentence?
Guilt or innocence is not the issue however, but the question of certainty. Is any justice system infallible? There is a strange contradiction it seems to me in the attitudes of the demented tricorne-hat-wearing reactionaries of the United States who decry what they call “big government” while at the same time advocating the death penalty. Excessive interference by government in the lives of its citizens has surely no more perfect manifestation than that it should be able to kill them as a normal part of its business.
None of the Christian scriptures cited in the previous letters on this subject mentioned that Jesus himself was asked to be judge in one capital case where guilt was, apparently, certain. His judgement? “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.” [John 8:7] Is this not enough? What more do you want? Any further argument would seem to be pharisaical casuistry. Yours, etc,
GARETH COLGAN,
Hazel Villas,
Kilmacud,
Co Dublin
Sir, – As an agnostic, I approach the death penalty debate with a different perspective from that of most of your contributors. To my mind the arguments of all those theists, whatever their religious persuasion, who claim to respect the “sanctity” of human life and yet approve of judicial murder, are both perplexing and abhorrent, and I assess them accordingly. As a wise man is reputed to have said long ago: “Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves ... By their fruits ye shall know them.” Yours, etc,
VICTOR DIXON,
Charleville Road,
Dublin 6