Capital Punishment

People are alarmed by the increase in crime, especially violent crime. Some candidates for election at every level of government — and from both major political parties — have continued to inject the issue of capital punishment into their campaigns as if it were a solution to the crime problem. It is repugnant to us that public officials would exploit our people's worst fears by pursuing state-sanctioned killing.

The Board of Directors of the Queens Federation of Churches affirms the sanctity of human life created by God and opposes all efforts to restore the death penalty. We share with you our reasons:

First: Advocates of the death penalty are in danger of capitalizing on the widespread and understandable disaffection of the citizenry with our criminal justice system by perpetuating an illusion: that the death penalty will serve to deter crime. We find no evidence for this belief either from past or recent history. In fact, the death penalty would serve to retard the wheels of justice by adding to the law's delay and by diverting attention away from the basic need for a strengthened police force and reformed judicial system.

Second: The spectacle of a people pulling the lever or pressing the button of execution adds credibility to the threatening conviction that human life itself has only derivative value. Legal killing attacks our sense of the sacred worth of human life. Those who advocate execution as a means of saving money are putting a dollar value on everyone's life.

Third: Advocates of the death penalty overlook the historical reality that it has been an extension of a long tradition of racism. The melancholy roll call of legal executions indicates that a Black man has a much greater likelihood of death than a White man accused of the same offense.

Fourth: Advocates of the death penalty also overlook the parallel reality that it is class legislation. Execution and poverty go together.

Fifth: Advocates of the death penalty have no adequate answer to the awful possibility of human error. The question of the guilt of Sacco and Vanzetti still smarts the eyes of justice in America. Given the same evidence or lack of it would they have been convicted had they been White, Anglo-Saxon, and Protestant? Would they have been executed if convicted?

Sixth: The death penalty denies the redemptive possibility. There is simply no limit to what God can do with a human life, no matter how great the alienation. The death penalty would say 'no' to God's grace revealed in Jesus Christ, as it would say 'no' to humanity.