Capitol Punishment?

I have been thinking a lot the past few days about both capital and capitol punishment, especially in light of the botched execution of Saddam Hussein and the elaborate state funeral of President Gerald R. Ford. Both were men of great power in their respective sovereign nations for a period of time. I have concluded from these meditations that I do not believe in capital punishment, but I do believe in capitol punishment.

I agree with Tom Friedman's column in today's Arkansas Democrat Gazette that justice, and possible healing, might have been better served to have put Hussein in a prison with tight security for the rest of his life. To all the people of Iraq, it might have been seen as a gesture of reconciliation between the two warring factions.

Since I come from a strong background that is Southern Baptist, this view might be considered strange by some of my best friends and family members. After all, the Bible's Old Testament seems to be in strong support of capital punishment. I have yet, however, to find a verse in the New Testament that does so. So, what factors could possibly have contributed to such a view so different from the rest of my denomination? Perhaps it stems from the murder of my own father in 1976. While sitting in a bar in the Mississippi Delta, my father was shot three times in the abdomen. He walked out to the highway and told the people in the bar he was going to see his daughters (my sister Judy and me). The next morning the highway patrol discovered his body beside the highway. As usual, he was attempting to hitchhike. I have asked myself many times, if the "perp" had been located, whether or not we would have, as victims, asked for the death penalty. Would it be possible to reconcile the biblical statement, "Vengeance is mine," with our own natural desire to seek revenge? It is a question that has been asked numerous times in the classics from The Odyssey to King Lear to To Kill a Mockingbird. I am still considering the question.

The question of capitol punishment, however, is more clearcut to me. I was a young married woman in the early 1970's when I heard President Gerald R. Ford give a complete pardon to disgraced former President, Richard Nixon. How could it be so easy to erase wrongdoing and violation of law? Yes, as we have heard commentators tell us for the past few days, the gesture was to heal a broken country. Some thirty years or so later I still disagree with the decision. It seems to me that the fundamental difference, of course, between capital and capitol punishment is that the state takes a life in the former and gives life to an anxious nation in the latter. What I mean by that statement is that capitol punishment allows us all to see that no person is above the law, no matter how powerful. If just and fair punishment, and many would argue that a life in prison without parole is worse than a quick death, would come to those who commit murder and who commit political crimes, perhaps, just perhaps, the crime rate in America would decrease.