The Protest at the Brewer Execution

In my recent article about the executions of Troy Davis and Lawrence Russell Brewer in Georgia and Texas, I said that no one had protested at the prison in Huntsville, Texas. It turned out I was wrong, and I will explain more about that in this post.

David P. Atwood, who founded the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, emailed me to let me know that about 100 people, including Dick Gregory, protested the Texas execution and Atwood, Gregory, and one other person held an 18-hour fast in front of the prison. Interestingly, this was not covered at all by the AP (from where I got my story) and the New York Times. Instead, the media emphasized that Brewer was a “white supremacist,” and what he did.

To me, this is very interesting. The NYT rarely misses a chance to editorialize against capital punishment, yet it pointedly ignored something very important about the Brewer execution. Maybe this was just an accidental omission, but I cannot help but be suspicious that it was just more Political Correctness from the newspaper that turned PC into the standard of mainstream journalism. If ever there were a PC execution, it would have been the execution of Brewer.

Regarding the death penalty, a number of people have emailed me with complaints, pointing to Old Testament Law and Romans 13. However, under Mosaic Law, there had to be at least two witnesses, false accusers were to receive the same punishment as the accused. Furthermore, the whole community was to take part in the execution through stoning, so that everyone had “blood on his hands.”

In the USA, we permit circumstantial evidence, just one eyewitness, and, more important, prosecutors and judges are given complete immunity, even when it later is revealed that they engaged in lies, subornation of perjury, and other kinds of misconduct. Along those lines, witnesses who lie for the state also receive de facto protection. And when someone is executed, it is done in what amounts to a very private ceremony.

So, to say that what is being done in the USA is done in accordance with the Mosaic Law is a very sick joke, and Christians who support present State homicide should understand that our present system would have been condemned roundly by Old Testament prophets. As for Romans 13, if one is to take the view (as do some Christians) that whatever the State does is right, then those Christians would have to endorse the mass crucifixions, burnings, and other hideous forms of death meted out to Christians by the Roman government. After all, these killings all took place under “color of law.”

Share

8:49 am on September 24, 2011