Jewish and Protestant Tradition

In this section, David Novak and Gilbert Meilaender discuss the Jewish and Protestant tradition respectively in regards to its approach to the topic of the death penalty.
In "Can Capital Punishment Ever Be Justified in the Jewish Tradition?" David Novak uses the Torah and the Talmud to support his beliefs on the Jewish approach to capital punishment. One of the first points he made was a precaution to the reader before taking any sides of the debate, "In the process of becoming more normatively focused, such specific judgements only tentative and suggestive at present, should still have some direct relevance to a particular situation or case of deep moral concern" (32). Novak is advising the reader to make sure their position on capital punishment is not abstract but can make logical sense within the context in the world. He cites the examples of Osama Bin Laden and Adolf Eichmann as references. Novak goes on to make a distinction between private crimes and public crimes. In private crimes, in which one person murders another person, one can only be sentenced to death on the principle of hatra'ah, or forewarning. The murderer must have been warned before committing the crime of what he/she was doing and the consequences by witnesses to the murder. This makes capital punishment very rare. In public crimes, which is when someone orders another to kill, the principle of forewarning is addressed differently. The person who ordered the crime is thought to have already known the consequences and therefore is subject to capital punishment.
In "The Death Penality: A Protestant Perspective," Gilbert Meilaender attempts to lay out the Protestant perspective on capital punishment. Meilaender is quick to note that there is no uniquely Protestant position on every issue unlike Catholicism. In Protestant Christianity, certain concerns (i.e. death penalty) are not forbidden or required but rather permitted. Meilaender defends the death penalty as public retribution referencing Genesis 9:6. He says that murder is private and demeaning to God's image but capital punishment is not also demeaning to God's image because it is a public and state act. This state act is on behalf of us all according to Meilaender. The author also agrees with Reinhold Niebuhr who distinguished between the equality of sin under God versus the inequality of guilt in the world. Meilaender says the the only reason we can execute someone is because our public order has been wronged, and not as a deterrent. He does not believe that the execution should be made public as it is making the death of the person a means to an end. Meilaender concludes his essay by reiterating Albert Camus that capital punishment would be least problematic in a genuinely religious society. He explains thus, "We would know that our earthly verdict could be overturned at the ultimate tribunal. in such a society it would make good sense, having sentenced a convict to death, to add, 'may God have mercy on your soul'" (55). Meilaender is stating that not only does Protestantism permit the death penalty, but in fact capital punishment is most appropriate in such a society due to the possibility of the correcting power of God's perfect justice.
There are many problems with the logic of Meilaender and his argument. He spends much of his essay quoting Bible passages about punishment as a response to the great harm our sin can bring to others. The author seems to want to treat punishment and the death penalty as one in the same instead of seeing the death penalty as a particular type of punishment that warrants a specific treatment. He spends too much time justifying why punishment is a God-ordained act rather than addressing the serious nature of the death penalty. Meilaender also claims that since the government is acting in everyone's behalf when executing someone, it is not demeaning to the image of God. But is the state really acting on everyone's behalf? What about the ubiquitous outcry surrounding the execution of Troy Davis in the last month whose conviction was founded only on circumstantial evidence? What about the fact that only 61% of Americans support the use of the death penalty in the case of murder? There is no truth to the statement that the government is actin on our behalf. Even if it was, it is logically fallible to say that because a group (the government) murders a person, it is not demeaning to God's image. A person made in God's image (Genesis 9:6) is still killed. How that person was killed does not matter. I also believe that his belief in the appropriateness of capital punishment in a religious society is flawed. It seems that saying our decisions on Earth (such as unjustly executing someone) can be corrected in Heaven by God is trying to cop-out of taking responsibility for our earthly actions. This logic can be extrapolated to justify any mistake we may make out of careless disregard.