Justice is right: Capital punishment teaches the value of life

Attorney General, William Barr

Daniel Lee Lewis was involved in his first murder when he was 17 years old. It was July 24, 1990. Enraged by a teenage party prank, he beat Joseph Wavra unconscious. Then ran to get knife and helped the murderer hide the crime. This was only the beginning of Lewis' seven-year crime spree that included burglary, bombings, public shootouts and murder.

Daniel Lee Lewis

The crime that landed him on death row happened on January 11, 1996. He and his partner, Chevie Kehoe, kidnapped a Tilly, Arkansas gun dealer with his wife and stepdaughter. Lewis had burglarized William Mueller’s home a year earlier, and came back believing that that gold and other valuables were still hidden. He tortured and killed William, then his wife Nancy and, finally, her eight-year old daughter in an attempt to force them to reveal the location of hidden treasure.

He was convicted of all three murders by a jury of his peers on May 4, 1999. While Kehoe was sentenced to life without parole, prosecutors successfully argued that Lee’s lack of remorse and long history of violence--even while incarcerated and awaiting trial—demonstrated that he was a candidate for the death penalty.

On May 14, the jury returned a verdict of death. Then, Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder was asked to withdraw the death notice, but he declined. Nancy Mueller’s mother, Earlene Branch, said, “It’s hard to be a Christian and think of killing somebody. But I don’t see any other answer. I don’t want them out influencing anyone else.”

In the 20 years since, Lewis has exhausted every possible appeal to his death sentence. On Thursday, July 25, Attorney General William Barr announced that his execution is now scheduled for December 9, 2019. This announcement also noted the scheduling of four others, the first federal executions since 2003.

It is gut-wrenching to read about the crimes of Lewis, even though I have omitted some of the details too terrible for print. And his are the least heinous of the five men scheduled for execution last Friday. It is important that these histories be kept in mind when talking of capital punishment. Too often, debates about the death penalty remain in the realm of abstractions without confronting the actual reality of evil.


Murray Federal Building, April 19, 1995

Know, first, that capital punishment is an extremely rare sentence in the history of federal law. According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, there have been only 34 executions carried out between 1927 and 1963. The next three decades saw none. Then, there were three between 2001 and 2003, including Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber who killed 168 people on April 19, 1995.

The death penalty is typically reserved for extraordinary cases. The 62 people on death row in federal prisons today have been convicted, not only of murder, but of multiple murders, murder of children and the vulnerable, murder of law enforcement officers, or murder accompanied by torture.

For instance, Dylan Roof is on death row for killing nine members of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. So also is Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was convicted of killing three and injuring 260 by a bomb at the 2013 Boston Marathon. Any rational discussion of capital punishment must begin with facts such as these.

Victims of Dylan Roof in Emanuel AME Church

It is also important to accurately report the timing of Barr’s announcement. Mainstream media outlets reported it as though he were unilaterally lifting some federal “moratorium” on the death penalty. There was no such thing.

Calling it a “de facto moratorium” may leave the impression that federal law ended the death penalty. Nothing could be further from the truth. Rather, pharmaceutical corporations conspired to embargo the anesthetic that was administered before executions. This hampered both state and federal abilities to implement the law.

Later, under the eight years of President Obama, AG Holder simply failed to schedule any of the executions that were entrusted to him by the legislative and judicial branches. Then, in 2014, he instituted a review of all death penalty procedures and protocols.

This review was ongoing when the Trump administration took office and continued while Jeff Sessions served as Attorney General. Last Thursday’s announcement by AG William Barr accompanied word that the five-year review is now complete.

Presumably as a result of that review, the three-drug procedure used at the last execution in 2003 has been replaced by the single drug, Pentobarbital. This is the same drug that Big Pharma is selling in states that have legalized physician-assisted killing.

Having clarified the historical record, we can now turn to ethics. It should be noted at the outset that Western Civilization has always had a place for the just application of capital punishment.

The difference between pagan Roman civilization and the Christian ethos that held sway after Constantine is this: under paganism the government had authority to execute whomever it pleased, regardless of innocence. Under the Christian ethos, capital punishment is reserved for only the most heinous crimes.

This principle is founded on the teaching of the Apostle Paul that God Himself gives governments the “sword” to “execute wrath on him who practices evil” (Romans 13:4 NKJV). This, in turn, is based on the charge given after the Noah’s Flood, “whoever sheds man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed” (Genesis 9:6).

Note well that the death penalty rests upon the assertion that “evil” is not defined by the government, but by God. The government, as God’s “minister,” must recognize it as evil and punish it accordingly. Perhaps this explains why those who were first to oppose the death penalty were avowed atheists.

Robespierre, the henchman of the French Revolution, sought to repeal of the death penalty. He wrote a pamphlet against it in 1791 before guillotining 40,000 countrymen in 1793 and 1794.

Likewise, in February of 1917, the provisional government of the Bolshevik Revolution banned the death penalty. In the century prior to this, approximately 6 people had been executed by the Tsar. In the seven decades following the Revolution tens of millions of citizens were killed by hard labor, starvation, exposure and the firing squad.

Governments are established by God and chartered to discern between objective good and objective evil as His representative. When a nation forgets or denies this fact, it does not become more just. It fails in its primary task and colludes in evil.


C. S. Lewis

Modern arguments against the death penalty deny the very definition of penalty. In his classic essay, The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment, C. S. Lewis points out that progressive ideology replaces justice and penalty with criminal reform and effective deterrence. A jury of peers is perfectly suited to decide matters of justice. But the same jury is unqualified to act as experts on effective reform and deterrence.

Lacking straightforward penalties and a common sense of justice, the penal system relies on “experts” to prescribe open-ended sentences and psychological manipulation to effect re-education. In a government that has already discarded the idea that justice is objective and commonly known, re-education inevitably gets employed against anyone who resists the latest orthodoxy.

To abolish the death penalty is to make a statement. It teaches not that life is too valuable to take, but that the lives of the victims are not worthy of justice.

It is also a statement about the source and authority of government. Ultimately every law from jaywalking to grand larceny are enforced by officers with guns. If government does not have the legitimate, God-given authority to take life, it has no legitimate authority at all. It has no authority to wage just wars. It has no authority to enforce just laws.

Talk of government’s basis in “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” triggers progressive sensibilities. It raises fears of a theocracy dependent upon some private revelation. Such fear is unfounded. Precisely because godly governments are established to rule believer and unbeliever alike, just laws rest on the laws written into nature and not upon the revelation of the Gospel.

Nor should we ever forget that the very notion of a limited government derives from an understanding that government is “under God.” If a government is not limited by God, what else is capable of limiting it? Take God out of the equation and governments tend toward totalitarianism. We have seen this principle in both the French and Bolshevik Revolutions of the past and currently in communist China. How many more examples are needed to prove the point?

Capital punishment acknowledges both the existence of objective evil and human government’s responsibility to execute justice. To conflate it with the killing of the innocent is reprehensible. For this reason, every check and balance must be followed scrupulously to ensure that innocents are not mistakenly put to death. The Innocence Project deserves our support. But it is precisely for the protection of innocent life that some crimes require capital punishment.

The pending execution of five human beings is a terrible thing. The only thing more terrible would be if their heinous crimes were not punished justly.