Capital Punishment
A Statement of the Lutheran Church in America, 1966
Adopted by the Third Biennial Convention, Kansas City,
Missouri, June 21-29, 1966.
Within recent years, there has been throughout North America a
marked increase in the intensity of debate on the question of
abolishing the death penalty. This situation has been accompanied
by the actual abolition of capital punishment in ten states and two
dependencies of the United States, qualified abolition in three
states, and in six states a cessation in the use of the death
penalty since 1955. Although the issue of abolition has been widely
debated in Canada in recent years, a free vote in Parliament On
April 5, 1966, failed to end the legality of the death sentence.
However, during the last two years or more, death sentences in
Canada have been consistently commuted.
These developments have been accompanied by increased attention
to the social and psychological causes of crime, the search for
improved methods of crime prevention and law enforcement, efforts
at revising the penal code and judicial process, and pressure for
more adequate methods in the rehabilitation of convicted criminals.
There has been a concurrent concern for persons who, because of
ethnic or economic status, are seriously hampered in defending
themselves in criminal proceedings. It has been increasingly
recognized that the socially disadvantaged are forced to bear a
double burden: intolerable conditions of life which render them
especially vulnerable to forces that incite to crime, and the
denial of equal justice through adequate defense.
In seeking to make a responsible judgment on the question of
capital punishment, the following considerations must be taken into
account:
- The Right of the State to Take Life
The biblical and confessional witness asserts that the state
is responsible under God for the protection of its citizens and the
maintenance of justice and public order. For the exercise of its
mandate, the state has been entrusted by God with the power to take
human life when the failure to do so constitutes a clear danger to
the civil community. The possession of this power is not, however,
to be interpreted as a command from God that death shall
necessarily be employed in punishment for crime. On the other hand,
a decision on the part of civil government to abolish the death
penalty is not to be construed as a repudiation of the inherent
power of the state to take life in the exercise of its divine
mandate.
- Human Rights and Equality Before the Law
The state is commanded by God to wield its power for the sake of
freedom, order and justice. The employment of the death penalty at
present is a clear misuse of this mandate because
(a) it falls
disproportionately upon those least able to defend themselves,
(b)
it makes irrevocable any miscarriage of justice, and
(c) it ends
the possibility of restoring the convicted person to effective and
productive citizenship.
- The Invalidity of the Deterrence Theory
Insights from both criminal psychology and the social causes
of crime indicate the impossibility of demonstrating a deterrent
value in capital punishment. Contemporary studies show no
pronounced difference in the rate of murders and other crimes of
violence between states in the United States which impose capital
punishment and those bordering on them which do not.
In the light of the above considerations, the Lutheran Church in
America:
- urges the abolition of capital punishment;
- urges the members of its congregations in those places where
capital punishment is still a legal penalty to encourage their
legislatures to abolish it;
- urges citizens everywhere to work with persistence for the
improvement of the total system of criminal justice, concerning
themselves with adequate appropriations, the improved
administration of courts and sentencing practices, adequate
probation and parole resources, better penal and correctional
institutions, and intensified study of delinquency and crime;
- urges the continued development of a massive assault on those
social conditions which breed hostility toward society and
disrespect for the law.