102 Sermon Illustrations on Murder

Sermon in Joshua series. Cities of Refuge. Joshua 20:2-9

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A PLACE TO HIDE

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I. Hiding from dad.

A. The dilemma of blood vengeance.

B. God demands justice, but he also provides for mercy.

II. Cities of refuge.

A. God provided a safe place for unintentional killers.

B. The beginnings of due process. 20:4

III. Spiritual insights.

A. Cities are chosen by God himself. Exod 21:13

B. Protection is only for accidental murder. Deut 19:11-12

C. Refugee had to remain in city.

D. Available to Gentiles as well as Jews. 20:9

E. The death of the high priest secures final deliverance. 20:6

IV. Jesus is the ultimate city of refuge.

V. Ledgewood Baptist as a refuge.

A. Churches should be places we can run to for refuge.

B. We should be like the "Smiles" Go-Go bar.

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Related passages: Exod 21:12-14; Num 35:6-34; Deut 19:1-13

The death penalty is nothing to exult in.

No other issue in criminal justice is as loaded with meaning and emotion as the death penalty. Even at Prison Fellowship Ministries, which is closely associated with the issues of prisoners, victims, and the criminal justice system, there is split opinion on capital punishment, reflecting the division of opinion elsewhere among evangelicals.

Most death penalty debate among Christians centers on the biblical ideas of justice and mercy. One side argues that the wanton disregard for life exhibited by some murderers can be properly punished only by death. There is certain biblical support for this argument. When God gave the law to the children of Israel at Mount Sinai, he included capital punishment, not only for the intentional taking of a life, but for several other offenses as well.

Others ask how can a society that takes life claim to be upholding its sanctity? Taking the life of the offender only removes the possibility of remorse, repentance, and penance. All we do is exact our pound of flesh. Jesus, speaking to the Pharisees who had brought the adulterous woman before him under the penalty of death, said, "If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone." Rather than demanding vengeful punishment, we are to show forgiveness, compassion, and the opportunity for repentance. Part of the reason for this ethical impasse is not only that both arguments have merit, but that they are also consistent with a Christian world-view. Justice and mercy are integral parts of the gospel.

This issue cannot be decided on the basis of Scripture or theology alone. We have to put capital punishment in its legal and socioeconomic context. Courts carry out the death penalty in accord with legal strictures. Moving beyond abstractions, we must consider how the death penalty is applied.

Capital punishment is carried out in this country according to the mandates of the Supreme Court, an inescapable fact in this discussion. The Court determines nearly every aspect of the application of the death penalty. It requires that the jury first decide the defendant's guilt and then start again and decide whether the crime merits death, as was recently evidenced in the Susan Smith case. From the age of the defendant to what evidence may be introduced at the penalty phase, the entire process must meet with the Court's approval.

Putting the issue in its legal context helps us to place the arguments for and against the death penalty in perspective. For instance, as law professor Daniel Polsby of Northwestern University has pointed out, there is no way that the courts will clear the way for enough executions to deter potential offenders. Likewise, even an expedited appeal process will still take the "swift" out of "swift and certain," which is the fundamental requirement of deterrence.

We must also note that the quality of representation can and does make the difference between whether a convicted defendant lives or dies. And the quality of representation is too often contingent on the wealth of the defendant. A common saying has been: "If you have the capital, you don't get the punishment." I find no comfort with the role that accidents of geography and class play in the process.

One of the more articulate views on the death penalty can be found in John Grisham's novel "The Chamber."

Lucas Mann, the attorney for the prison, says, "I go through stages. Every time we kill someone here I think the whole world's gone crazy. Then, invariably, I'll review one of these cases and remember how brutal and horrible some of these crimes were."

Capital punishment is, at best, a barely tolerable punishment. It is not something that we should exult in. The crimes committed by those on death row were often brutal and deserving of the ultimate sanction. At the same time, we must never forget the power of grace and mercy.

Furthermore, the role of class makes it difficult for reasonable people to believe that the administration of the death penalty meets all the requirements of justice. While we should not demand perfection from our criminal justice system -- or any other human institution-the knowledge of its many shortcomings should give us all pause.

Copyright (c) 1995 Christianity Today, Inc./CHRISTIANITY TODAY Magazine ctcurrmrw5TA019595y

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Ray Stedman, in one of his books, writes about seeing a famous picture that appeared in a news magazine during the Vietnamese war. Perhaps you remember it. It showed a South Vietnamese officer executing a Viet Cong. Someone wrote in to the magazine and said: "What a terrible thing! There stands that turtle-headed little man pointing a pistol at this man's head and shooting him in cold blood. How could a man do a thing like that!" In the next issue this perceptive reply appeared : "The reader asks, `What causes a man to act like that?' The answer is: the same thing that causes someone to call another person `a turtle-headed little man.'" (Ray Stedman, THE BEGINNINGS, Waco, TX: Word Books, 1978, p. 22)

Dear Dr. Laura:

One of the most poignant incidents of my life came from teaching fourth grade Sunday School. The fourth grade curriculum covers morality and beliefs relating to appropriate code of conduct and the moral dilemmas that emerge in making decisions. Of course, an integral part of this is learning the Ten Commandments. After we had gone through each of the Commandments over a ten week period, I handed our drawing paper and crayons, asking my students to create a visual picture of one Commandment of their choice. What I wanted to come out of this was discussion concerning why each student drew what they drew and what meaning was depicted. About three quarters of the class created some kind of violent picture -- guns, knives, people being strangled. “Ah ha.” I though, “We’ll have a discussion on why it is so easy to draw violence; we’ll talk about the exposure to violence and what our responsibilities are toward ensuring a less violent community.

So, I gathered my group in a circle and went around, asking each in turn about why so many drew the violent pictures and what the significance was. About half way around the circle, one of students me with the wisdom of her reply She said, “Maybe the reason everyone drew pictures of people dying by someone else’s hand is because it is the only Commandment where you can say you are sorry, but can’t take it back, no matter what.” You can dishonor your parents and apologize, feel remorse for lying, covet another person’s property and have regrets. Although these things do damage to others and hurt us spiritually, none have indelible impact of taking another’s life

12/1//97 *WEST PADUCAH, Ky: 14-year-old Michael Carneal shot eight students just after an informal student prayer circle in the school lobby. Three were killed and five were wounded. He got the idea for the shootings from the 1995 movie "The Basketball Diaries," in which a student kills several people at a New York school. A possible motive is that he said he had had "been picked on at school." 10/22/97 *NORWALK, Calif.: 21-year-old Khoa Truc "Robert" Dang fatally shot his 16-year-old ex-girlfriend on her high school campus. 10/1/97 *PEARL, Mich.: Luke Woodham, 16, opened fire on his classmates, killing two and wounded seven more in the school cafeteria. 3/30/97 *SANA, YEMEN: A father opened fire at two high schools in the Yemeni capital, killing seven people, including three children, and wounding others. 2/19/97 *BETHEL, Ark.: After making multiple threats, 16-year-old Evan Ramsey fatally gunned down his high school principal and one of his classmates. 1/27/97 *WEST PALM BEACH, Fla.: Tronneal Mangum, 13, shot and killed another student on the sidewalk in front of his middle school. 10/31/96 *LOS ANGELES: High school junior Yohao Albert Rivas, 18, shot and wounded two classmates in a stairwell on campus. 10/31/96 *ST. LOUIS: A student with a gun critically wounded another student in a second-floor school hallway. 3/13/96 *DUNBLANE, SCOTLAND: Thomas Hamilton, 43, entered the local elmentary school, fatally shot 16 youngsters and their teacher and wounded 12 others. 2/29/96 *ST. LOUIS: Mark Boyd, 30, fired into a school bus after its doors swung open, killing a pregnant 15-year-old and wounding the driver. 2/2/96 *ATLANTA: David Dubose Jr., 16, shot and killed a teacher in a school hallway. 2/2/96 *MOSES LAKE, Wash.: 14-year-old Barry Loukaitas killed his teacher, fatally wounded two teenage boys and wounded a girl. 10/30/95 *RICHMOND, Va.: Edward Earl Spellman, 18, shot and wounded four students outside their high school.

David Berkowitz fatally shot six New Yorkers, wounded seven others and set more than 1,400 fires throughout New York City in 1976 and 1977. Today, as one of 266 convicted murderers in the Sullivan Correctional Facility in Fallsburg, N.Y., two hours from Manhattan, Berkowitz studies the Bible in his cell.

"I feel more free now in prison than I ever felt in my life because I know Christ," Berkowitz told "Charisma" in a special report released in the magazine's June issue.

Berkowitz said he felt connected to evil as a child. "I used to feel that the devil was all around me, that somehow he wanted me as a child," he told reporter Peter K. Johnson.

Berkowitz was uncontrollable in school, skipped classes, smoked marijuana, didn't fit in and was haunted by suicidal thoughts. His personality deteriorated after his mother died in 1967.

In 1974, after a three-year hitch in the U.S. Army infantry, Berkowitz returned to New York, hooked up with a group of satanists at a party and became fascinated with the occult. He participated in satanic rituals and animal sacrifices and continued to set fires throughout the city until the idea for a sacrificial shooting spree was hatched. One night in a park, Berkowitz made a final pact with evil, inviting Satan and his demons to take control.

"I surrendered myself to the powers of darkness. I became a soldier for the devil," he said. Berkowitz justified the killings and believed they were part of the battle of Armageddon. His "Son of Sam" nickname originated from the name of a druid demon, he said.

Berkowitz served hard time in Attica and Clinton prisons, once surviving a murderous attack by another inmate. He was stalked by despair and anger and considered suicide.

[...] Berkowitz in the yard at the Sullivan penitentiary and told him God loved him. The two soon began working out and walking together. Rick continued sharing his faith and gave Berkowitz a Gideon's pocket New Testament that also contained Psalms and Proverbs.

Berkowitz cried when he read his first Psalm. Several weeks later, after reading Psalm 34:6, Berkowitz broke down weeping. "Suddenly God just started to melt my heart," he recalled. Sensing God was speaking directly to him, he fell to his knees sobbing and poured out his heart in a lengthy confession. After he got up he said he felt as if something had lifted. "It was a heaviness that I had for so many years. A yoke seemed to lift," he recalled.

Rick was thrilled about Berkowitz's commitment to Christ and invited him to chapel services. Berkowitz said, "I enjoyed the fellowship and have been with the Lord ever since." Corrections officers and inmates doubted his conversion, but Berkowitz grew in faith and gradually won their respect. Today he is considered a model prisoner.

Berkowitz knows and accepts that he deserves to spend the rest of his life in prison. "But God has given me peace," he said. "He's reassured me that He's forgiven me, although it took time for me to understand that. I stand on Paul's words that if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come. I survive on that verse."

_____________________

Visit the "Charisma" Web site at www.charismamag.com for the full version of the article on David Berkowitz.

Copyright 1999 Gibson Productions

*

In February 2001, prosecutors in Orleans County, Vermont, finally got around to filing a murder charge against Jamie Ovitt for killing his ex-stepfather Duane Perry in April 2000. Allegedly, Ovitt shot Perry because he was mad that Perry was spreading the word around town (truthfully) that Jamie and his mother were fathered by the same man (a fellow named "Hebe" Ovitt).

According to the prosecutor, the murder was not smooth: Ovitt's fatal bullet went right through Duane Perry and hit the ex-Mrs. Perry (who was helping Jamie), bloodying her knee, and after they buried Duane in a deep grave, they jumped into Duane's truck to get away, only to realize that the keys were still in the victim's pocket.

[Valley News (Lebanon, N.H.)]

A woman who says she and her husband killed a German friend with 66 knife wounds on orders from the devil has claimed that she became a satanist in Britain.

German police say any evidence pointing to possible crimes or an illegal satanic ring in Britain will be sent to the relevant authorities.

Manuela Ruda and her husband, Daniel, have admitted killing their friend, Frank Haagen, "for Satan". She said she got a taste for vampirism and the occult while in London and Scotland.

She appeared at the regional court in Bochum in full gothic garb, her head partly shaved to reveal an upside down crucifix and a target tattooed on her skull.

Mrs Ruda, 23, gave a chilling account of drinking blood from volunteers contacted on the internet. She said: "I was in England and Scotland, met people and vampires in London. We went out at night, to cemeteries, in ruins and in the woods.

"We drank blood together, from willing donors. You can't drink from the arteries, no-one is allowed that. I had implanted pegs put in the teeth which were pulled out and were replaced with fangs.

"I also slept on graves and even allowed myself to be buried in a grave to test the feeling. I signed over my soul to Satan two and a half years ago."

The couple have denied responsibility for killing Mr Haagen, 33, although both have admitted committing the crime.

Mrs Ruda told the court: "It was not murder. We are not murderers. It was the execution of an order. Satan ordered us to. We had to comply. It was not something bad. It simply had to be. We wanted to make sure that the victim suffered well."

Her husband compared himself and his wife to a vehicle involved in a fatal accident. "The car would not be charged," he said. "The driver is the bad guy. I have nothing to regret because I haven't done anything."

Mrs Ruda said she and her 26-year-old husband lured their victim to their flat. When they arrived a "strange force" and "other beings" were present.

"We were sitting on the couch the whole time, then my husband stood up," she said. "He had terrible, glowing eyes and hit out with the hammer.

"Frank stood up and said something, or wanted to say something. The knife was glowing and a voice told me: `Stab him in the heart.'

"He then sank down. I saw a light flickering around him. That was the sign that his soul was going down. We said a satanic prayer.

"We were then exhausted, and alone, wanted to die ourselves. But the visitation was too short. We could no longer kill ourselves."

After killing Mr Haagen the couple cut an occult star on his stomach, drank his blood from a bowl and had sex in an oak coffin in which Mrs Ruda usually slept.

The couple were arrested in their flat, the walls of which were covered in satanic slogans and hung with an array of knives, axes and machetes.

Mr Haagen's mutilated and partially-decomposed body was found next to the coffin in the living room.

Dieter Justinsky, the public prosecutor, said: "I have never, ever seen such a picture of cruelty and depravity before. They simply had a lust for murder.

"Both believed in Satan, they worshipped him. A death list found in the flat contained the names of future victims. They drank his blood, slept in coffins and believed they would achieve immortality as vampires."

Several witnesses have testified that the couple suffered from personality disorders. They could both face long terms at secure psychiatric institutions.

The Rudas told police that they went to Britain twice, spending five months in Scotland in 1996 and visiting London in February 1997. The gothic phenomenon, an off-shoot of the punk scene, emerged in the late 1970s.

A spokesman for Bochum police said last night that any information relating to crimes in Britain would be passed to the relevant authorities.

The case continues.

The execution of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh was a just penalty that underscores the value of human life, R. Albert Mohler Jr. said on CNN's "Larry King Live" June 11, 2001.

Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and a supporter of capital punishment, debated Phil Donahue about the merits of the death penalty during a live broadcast of the nationally televised program. Donahue, who once hosted his own television talk show, is an outspoken opponent of capital punishment.

"The Scripture clearly calls for the death penalty, and civilized nations throughout history have understood that the ultimate crime demands the ultimate punishment," Mohler said. "Any society that calls itself civilized [and] that refuses to use capital punishment for the most extreme of crimes really makes clear that there is nothing for which it would execute anyone. Human life is therefore not valued; it is undervalued."

But Mohler said that McVeigh's execution -- which took place by lethal injection the morning of the broadcast -- should not be celebrated. It happened, he said, for the "satisfaction of justice."

"We look back on that with no glee, with no gladness, but also with no sorrow for him, for this was exactly what he deserved, given the gravity of his awful crime," Mohler said.

McVeigh bombed the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995, killing 168 people and injuring hundreds of others.

The Larry King program featured a host of people -- including family member of victims and McVeigh's attorneys -- who witnessed the execution. Former United States Attorney General Janet Reno also made an appearance.

Donahue took exception to Mohler's argument that the Bible supports capital punishment.

"Your faith -- the faith to which your have devoted your life -- was founded by a man who was wrongly executed," Donahue said to Mohler. "A man who incidentally on the cross looked heavenward and said, 'Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.'

"To use the Prince of Peace as a vehicle to justify the premeditated killing by the state of one of its citizens takes irony to a new level," Donahue said. "I don't think Jesus would approve of this barbaric behavior, and I think there are millions of Americans who are coming to recognize that this is a meaningful exercise which does not make us safer."

Mohler, though, pointed out that Jesus never condemned capital punishment.

"Mr. Donahue made a serious statement, and it deserves a serious response," Mohler said. "The fact is that the Lord Jesus Christ, who was sinless, did indeed die innocently by execution. He died, the Scripture tells us, in our place, and thus satisfied the just requirements of God's justice. He literally died where we should have died [in order] to pay the penalty for our sins, so that all who believe in him might have life everlasting.

"But it's very important to note that Jesus Christ said that every single jot and tittle -- every little spot of grammar in the Word of God -- would remain and would be unshaken. Jesus Christ never condemned capital punishment. The Scripture clearly -- in both the Old and the New Testaments -- stipulates that capital punishment is the appropriate penalty for those who take life and for those who commit the crime of murder."

Donahue argued that capital punishment is inherently wrong because it rewards one act of vengeance with another act of vengeance. He said life in prison is a more fitting punishment.

"I think we have become the thing we hate, Larry," Donahue said. "We've actually somehow convinced ourselves that it's OK to kill somebody because they killed somebody. It doesn't work. It's arbitrary. It happens with pro bono lawyers who sometimes fall asleep at the trial. ... Attorneys available for this work are substandard -- sometimes to the point of malpractice."

King noted that the Catholic Church opposes the death penalty and that European nations have banned the practice.

"It's interesting to note," Mohler responded, "that even though the European union outlaws capital punishment, polls continue to show that a majority of Europeans support it. When it comes down to it, I think there's something very basic in the human psyche that is actually put there by God that demands justice."

McVeigh's case is unique in that his guilt has not been an issue, Mohler said. Instead, the argument has been over the death penalty itself.

"It's very interesting to look at the case of Timothy McVeigh, and [to] understand that this really gets down to the core issues," Mohler said. "There is no doubt about his guilt. There is no doubt about the awfulness and the extent of his crime. I think virtually everyone understands that the ultimate penalty is here called for, and the vast majority of Americans -- not because of blood lust and not because of vengeance -- but for the satisfaction of justice support the death penalty in this case and in others."

Donahue said that politicians such as former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo and current Illinois Gov. George Ryan have set examples that should be followed. Cuomo opposes the death penalty; Ryan has ordered a moratorium on executions in his state.

King gave Mohler the final seconds of the show to respond to Donahue.

"There has never been demonstrated a case where an innocent person was executed in the American criminal justice system," Mohler said. "Everyone who is on death row and in jail says that they are innocent. But the guilt of these persons is almost always without doubt beyond question. The death penalty needs to be administered with equity and with justice. If the American death penalty needs to be fixed, let's fix it. But we must affirm the dignity and inherent integrity of every human life."

*

A Teenager's Voice from Inside the Culture of Death

by Sarah Roney

April 21, 1999

An 18-year-old Essayist's insight into the Colorado shooting

On April 20, 1999, there was yet another gruesome shooting in Littleton, Colorado. Kids killing kids. And again, the entire nation in its uproar is trying to figure out why. I am eighteen years old. I live in a small town near Madison, Wisconsin. A small town just like the ones where these horrifying shootings always seem to take place. Every time those stories come on the television, I can't help but notice how easily it could be my small town next. And I want to know why this is happening just as badly as any parent or police chief or anchorman.

The thing is, I am right in the middle of it. I am in the same age group as all of these high school kids. So I may have some insight for the world that has been otherwise unattainable since these shootings started some years ago.

The night of the Littleton shooting, as I was flipping through the various news channels that were covering the story in Littleton, Colorado, I heard something that struck a chord in me. An anchorman was interviewing the mother of a victim in the Jonesboro shooting. His question was: "If you look at America in the 1950's, you will find that this kind of thing never happened; whereas if you look at America today, this kind of thing is becoming more and more frequent. Why do you think this is happening?"

The woman, of course, could not answer the question. In fact, she didn't really even try. But I did. I thought about it for a long time that night. And again the next morning, when my favorite morning radio talk show asked its listeners why they thought this has been happening. Many people said it's the parents of the kids. Many people suggested television and video games. Many people even turned to popular musicians, looking to put the blame somewhere.

But I will tell you what I think it is. What I, a regular teenager riding on the coattails of Generation X, blame it on. It is not the parents or the movies or the rock stars. It is AMERICA. It is this culture of death, this culture in which liberals and feminists and activists are so anxious to let anything be "OK" that the once tightened, knotted rope of society is unraveling right beneath us.

Don't you see? There can be no order without discipline. All of those things people think are causing children to run into a school and shoot their teachers and peers and even kids they don't know-the movies, the video games, the parents, the rap artists - they are only REFLECTIONS of our society. Society breaks down, from one big metaphoric "family" into 50 metaphoric "families" and so on and so on, until you have the actual FAMILY, the one with the parents and the kids and the dog. It is not one thing or two things; it is the attitude of an entire "familiar" nation being reflected back at us in the kids.

Just as that anchorman suggested, something was different about the 1950's. WE WERE CONSERVATIVE. We had boundaries; we had a definite knowledge of right and wrong throughout the entire nation. We didn't have feminists pushing women so hard to go get a job that a woman who didn't have a job was somehow "bad," thereby leaving kids at home with inadequate parental guidance and often times with parents who were truly unhappy. We didn't have liberals fighting so avidly to legalize everything that it was at the point of completely blurring the line between good and bad. We didn't have a nationwide media surge dedicated to sex and violence so intense that if you weren't playing killing video games at age 14, then you were trying to choose between contraceptives beforehand or abortion afterwards. We didn't have disputes over whether or not we should help someone who is dying die sooner-over whether or not we should ASSIST them in committing SUICIDE. And we certainly didn't have a President who was in favor of NATO bombing and killing children in Serbia come on the television to grieve the loss for the families of children killed in America.

We live in a loosely tied society, a culture dedicated to death. If you don't want the kid, kill it. If you don't want to live out the rest of your God-given days, kill yourself. Or better yet, have someone else come help you do it. I guess, no matter how horrible or gruesome or gut-wrenching it may be, it was just a matter of time before someone got that "killing-as-a-means-to-an-end" idea stuck in their head for the part between birth and death as well. Everything that happens in families and cities and states and countries is the mirror image of the big picture. We are falling apart as a society. Am I - some random normal teenager in Farmertown, U.S.A. - the only one who sees that? It's sad and it's hard to believe, but what's worse is that it's scary.

I think it's time for our -- America's -- Mom and Dad to ground us -- to say, "If you don't shape up by the time I count to three..." And then really count to three. Because we are running wild and pretty soon we're going to be too far from home to ever get back.

There was once a great saying by a famous man that has rung true throughout the history of mankind-in every family and in every society and in every social group and in every religion-it was a frighteningly true statement that cannot be disputed. I am reminded of it now, in the wake of yet another indescribably tormenting result of a nation gone haywire...

"By their fruits you shall know them."

A Special Place is honored to have been given permission

by Miss Roney to post her essay. Thank you, Sarah!

A Special Place

Created and Maintained by Marie and Greg Glossop

Copyright c 1996-2001 All Rights Reserved

Last Update: 01/09/2001

06:40 PM ET 12/09/97

Legal threat after O.J. Simpson thrown out of inn

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - O.J. Simpson's lawyer has threatened to sue the owner of an inn who threw the ex-football star out of his bar because other patrons complained about his presence, the inn-keeper said Tuesday.

"Yes, we threw him out," Robert Nulty told Reuters. "And we have had contact with his lawyer."

Nulty, who owns the Brentwood Inn with his wife Gloria, declined to give any more details of the incident and subsequent developments but the story will be the subject of a segment airing Wednesday on the tabloid TV show "Hard Copy."

There was no immediate comment from Simpson or his attorneys.

According to the show, the Nultys ejected Simpson, who was there with his lawyer Ronald Slates a few months ago. The landlord took the action because patrons complained of the presence of a man acquitted of a double murder nearby.

"The people in Brentwood and our customers ... got very uneasy," Gloria Nulty told "Hard Copy", according to an advance transcript of the show. "They said if he (Simpson) was going to stay, they were going to leave."

She said Simpson had been a regular at the restaurant in the upscale Los Angeles neighborhood of Brentwood before the June 1994 slaying of Simpson's ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman.

But since his acquittal on murder charges and subsequent civil trial in which he was found responsible for the killings, Simpson has been persona non grata in Brentwood.

In fact, this summer he moved to Pacific Palisades after defaulting on the mortgage for his Brentwood mansion.

Gloria Nulty told "Hard Copy" that after her husband threw Simpson out -- which she said he had the right to do under California law -- Slates returned to the restaurant. "He said that I was a bigot and he called me all kinds of names."

After the incident, Slates wrote demanding an apology. The couple did apologize, since they did not want any trouble, but Simpson's lawyer later wrote again saying it was not sufficient and demanding $500 to eat elsewhere.

The Nultys' lawyer Christopher Nance was quoted by the TV program as saying they will pay up to avoid a legal battle.

But Nance said Simpson may not see the money since it might have to be handed over to the families of the murder victims in accordance with the civil trial verdict.

Mrs. Nulty was unrepentant. "If it keeps O.J. out of the place, it's worth it," she said.

^REUTERS

As the number of executions surges, Christians remain divided on the death penalty's morality and purpose.

_________________

One might think Sue Norton would be among the most ardent supporters of the death penalty in light of the 1990 double murder of her parents. Yet today, as the man convicted of killing her parents sits on Oklahoma's death row, she is among those working hardest to have his death sentence commuted.

"If our world is going to change," she says, "we have to move past hate and learn to love with the unconditional love displayed by Jesus." Norton, a member of an American Baptist church in Arkansas City, Missouri, says the man who killed her parents has converted to Christianity through her witness. She regularly visits and writes to him in prison and talks to him weekly by telephone.

Norton is among the nearly 3,000 members of the Atlantic, Virginia-based Murder Victims Families for Reconciliation (mvfr), which opposes the death penalty and advocates programs and policies aimed at crime prevention. "Our society places an expectation on families to seek vengeance," says mvfr executive director Pat Bane. "One parent told me that people made her feel like she was betraying her son because she did not want to kill the person who murdered him. Our goal is to break the cycle of violence rather than escalate it."

CAPITAL COMEBACK: Though not an mvfr member, Aldona DeVetsco opposed the May 2 lethal injection of Keith Zettlemoyer, the first person to be executed in Pennsylvania since 1962. Zettlemoyer shot and killed Charles DeVetsco, Aldona's son, in 1980. She signed a petition appealing for a stay of execution, calling capital punishment "senseless vengeance."

Pennsylvania is the latest in the growing list of states to administer the death penalty for the first time in decades. Last year, Idaho, Maryland, and Nebraska carried out their first executions in more than 30 years. Earlier this year, Montana did the same. Across the nation, during the first six months of the year, 33 people were executed, surpassing the total for all of last year.

The resurgence of the death penalty has given rise to a more fervent opposition. Challengers of capital punishment point out that most other countries that permit the death penalty-such as Iraq and China-are infamous for human-rights violations.

Nevertheless, those in the United States who oppose the death penalty are waging what appears to be an uphill battle. From the common citizen to the Supreme Court, sentiment runs solidly in favor of capital punishment both in principle and in practice. Among politicians, a tough-on-crime posture crosses party barriers. That posture almost always translates into support for the death penalty, even if it means flip-flopping on the issue, as has happened with many officeholders, including President Clinton.

Standing against this tide, all major Protestant denominations, with the exception of Southern Baptists, officially oppose the death penalty. And the pope, in his March encyclical, stated that conditions that would justify the death penalty "are practically non-existent." Observers note this is the closest the Roman Catholic Church has ever come to supporting an outright ban on capital punishment.

PUBLIC SUPPORT: Most surveys, however, indicate that, on this issue, church leaders are out of step not only with the general public, but also with those in their pews. According to a May Gallup Poll, 77 percent of Americans support the death penalty while only 13 percent oppose it, with the remaining 10 percent undecided or saying it depends on circumstances.

According to the survey, Republicans favor the death penalty by a margin of 89 percent to 7 percent, while Democrats support it 67 to 20 percent. Those in mainline denominations support it 81 to 9 percent. Eighty percent of those identifying themselves as "born again" favor the death penalty, while only 12 percent oppose it. And despite statistics establishing that the death penalty is administered with a racial bias, according to the survey, 55 percent of black Protestants support capital punishment, while 30 percent oppose it.

According to the Washington, D.C.-based Death Penalty Information Center (dpic), when people are asked for a yes or no response, most favor the death penalty because the "myth persists that even the most dangerous murderers will be released in seven years if they are not executed."

dpic executive director Richard Dieter cites a 1993 bipartisan study conducted by the Democratic polling firm of Greenberg/Lake and the Republican Tarrance Group as being more reflective of public opinion. In that survey, when asked for a yes-or-no response, 77 percent-identical to the Gallup survey-said they favored the death penalty.

However, when people were asked, "If it were possible to sentence a person convicted of murder to life in prison with no possibility of parole ever, and require their earnings from prison industries to go to the victim's family," 44 percent said they favored that option, while 41 percent favored the death penalty.

Dieter maintains that fewer Americans would favor the death penalty if they realized that "45 states and the federal government now employ sentences in which no parole is possible for at least 25 years for their most serious murder cases."

DETERRENCE DETERRED: The prevalence of violence in American society despite the legality of the death penalty in 38 states has in the minds of many diminished the argument that capital punishment is a deterrent, except insofar as it prevents convicted murderers from killing again. "There is no empirical evidence of any compelling nature to support [the death penalty] on the grounds of deterrence," says Joshua Dressler, a professor at McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento, California, and author of three books on criminal law and procedure.

Bryan Stevenson, a Christian attorney and executive director of the Montgomery, Alabama-based Equal Justice Initiative, notes that Texas, despite being the leading execution state since the Supreme Court's 7-to-2 Gregg V. Georgia decision affirming the death penalty in 1976, has seen its violent crime rate rise 46 percent. "I believe that people are increasingly realizing that the more we resort to killing as a legitimate response to our frustration and anger with violent crime, the more violent our society becomes," says Stevenson, who has represented more than 100 death row prisoners during the past decade. "We could execute all three thousand people on death row today, and most people would not feel any safer tomorrow."

CITING SCRIPTURE: As with many other issues, Christians on both sides of the capital punishment debate cite scriptural support for their contrasting positions.

Prison Fellowship Ministries (pfm), in which volunteers share the gospel with inmates, does not take an official stand because its own board is divided. pfm encourages Christians to weigh the biblical arguments for themselves.

pfm says there are three biblically based positions on capital punishment: One claims the Bible prohibits it; a second holds that the Bible mandates it; a third view is that Scripture permits but does not require capital punishment.

Those who oppose capital punishment maintain generally that the New Testament, especially the example set by Jesus, supersedes any such teaching in the Old Testament. "I believe that the meaning of Christ's death and resurrection is redemption for everyone," says Church of the Brethren member Bob Gross of Indianapolis, active for nearly a decade in the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. "To say that some people's sins are not covered is hypocritical. That's not an excuse to murder; but Jesus said if we are not willing to forgive, we place ourselves outside of God's forgiveness."

But renowned theologian Carl Henry says such an outlook "tends to subordinate the justice of God to the love of God." Henry favors the death penalty, citing Genesis 9:6, which states, "Whoever sheds the blood of a human, by a human shall that person's blood be shed" (nrsv). He also maintains that Peter, by cutting off Malchus's ear in an effort to prevent Christ's arrest (John 18:10), was most likely trying to kill the soldier. According to Henry, Christ's statement that those who kill by the sword are subject to die by the sword implicitly recognizes the government's right to exercise the death penalty.

Those who maintain that Scripture neither mandates nor prohibits capital punishment are most likely to focus on the question of whether the administration of the death penalty is consistent with biblical principles and practices. Among these concerns are the requirement that witnesses participate in the execution, that the intent of the offender be taken into consideration, and that justice be administered without regard to social or economic status.

Charles Colson, who founded pfm in 1976 after serving a seven-month Watergate-related prison term, says he has grave reservations about the way in which capital punishment is administered. "I remain convinced that it is not a general deterrent," Colson says. "But I must say that my views have changed, and I now favor capital punishment, at least in principle, but only in extreme cases when no other punishment can satisfy the demands of justice." Colson says a visit he had with Illinois mass murderer John Wayne Gacy, who was executed last year for killing 33 young men and boys during the 1970s, pushed him over the edge to a pro-death penalty view. From a theological perspective, Colson argues that "justice in God's eyes requires that the response to an offense ... be proportionate."

Although the thief on the cross alongside Christ was included in Christ's merciful action, this criminal did not have "the consequences of his crime" eliminated, Colson asserts. "Nowhere does Jesus set aside the requirements of civil law."

Likewise, Colson favors the death penalty for the perpetrators of April's Oklahoma City bombing. "No other punishment [is] sufficient for the deliberate savagery of the crime."

EQUAL JUSTICE ISSUES: Many hold anti-death penalty views primarily out of a concern for fairness. According to one frequently cited study by researchers Hugo Bedau and Michael Radelet, 23 people have been executed in the United States this century whose guilt was later either clearly disproven or cast in doubt. Others-48 according to the dpic-have been able to prove their innocence while still on death row, establishing the possibility of receiving the death penalty despite what many would consider reasonable doubt.

Rob Dunham, executive director of the Pennsylvania Post-Conviction Defender Organization in Philadelphia, says, "If we are going, as a matter of public policy, to have a death penalty, then we must, as a matter of public policy, ensure procedural fairness."

Dunham says that despite the clear conclusion five years ago of a joint federal and Pennsylvania court task force that the state does not provide adequate representation to indigent defendants, the legislature has enacted a law intended to hasten the rate at which death warrants are signed. "Legislators see the issue as a politically popular one," Dunham says, "and they are taking measures that enable them to claim they are tough on crime without regard for the actual legal or moral consequences."

McGeorge Law School professor Dressler adds, "The amount of money many states-especially in the South-give attorneys to take on postconviction appeals is laughable. Lawyers either have to work for $5 an hour or do a shoddy job." According to Dressler, not only do these conditions increase the risk that innocent people will be executed, but they also result in the failure to recognize mitigating circumstances under which those who are guilty of murder should by law be spared the death penalty.

Dressler maintains that a counterterrorism bill under consideration in Congress represents a greater interest in efficiency than in truth and administrative fairness. The proposed bill would limit most death row inmates to one federal court appeal.

Death penalty opponents have thoroughly documented a racial bias in the administration of capital punishment. Roughly half of all murder victims are black, but in executions, 85 percent of those they had murdered were white. "I think it is clear that the death penalty is reserved primarily for the poor and for people of color," Stevenson says. "As we say in our circles, 'Capital punishment means them without the capital get the punishment.' "

Stevenson believes that the death penalty has a subconscious attraction to the middle class "by symbolically communicating to poor people and racial minorities, 'We will not let you terrify us. We will strike back at you.'" He believes that if the death penalty were administered fairly, it would lose this symbolic value and as a result be abolished. "I don't believe our society is capable of making the judgment that the life of any person, even a guilty person, no longer has purpose or value."

Christians who favor the death penalty, however, believe the answer lies not in eliminating a punishment whose purpose is to recognize the value of human life, but in advocating legal remedies to ensure fair application.

Given the current mood of the country, laws supporting the death penalty are not likely to disappear anytime soon. Then again, neither will those committed to opposing those laws.

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Copyright (c) 1995 Christianity Today, Inc./CHRISTIANITY TODAY Magazine

ctcurrtk5T90505814

*

A few weeks ago, Charles Young was beaten to death on the north side of Milwaukee. On the face of it, the murder wasn't particularly noteworthy. It's a rough part of town.

But what captured people's attention were the ages of those charged with the crime. Charles Young was killed by a mob of children as young as age ten.

It all began when a thirteen-year-old boy threw an egg at Young, who chased the boy and punched another one who intervened. Then the hunter became the hunted as a mob of nearly twenty males chased Young, caught him, and beat him with brooms, shovels, and bats. Eerily, none of the boys uttered a word as they went about their grim work.

Among the sixteen boys charged in Young's death was a 10-year-old who is believed to be the youngest person ever to face homicide charges in Wisconsin. At a preliminary hearing, Dennis Cimpl, the court commissioner, asked the question that was on everybody's mind: "Where were the boys' parents?" One parent, the father of the ten-year-old, had no real answer, but told reporters, "Kids will be kids."

An equally important question is, "Who are the parents?" According to the MILWAUKEE JOURNAL-SENTINEL, at least nine of the eleven minors charged in the crime have at least one parent with either a felony conviction or a record of serving time in prison. The rest -- like a boy whose father was stabbed to death outside a methadone clinic -- come from equally unstable homes.

This is what social workers have in mind when they talk about "at-risk children." These boys have grown up in a world devoid of fathers or any other effective adult supervision. Thus we shouldn't be surprised when they reenact a scene from William Golding's LORD OF THE FLIES on the streets of Milwaukee.

It's in stories like these that the need for ministries like Prison Fellowship is most keenly felt. At BreakPoint, for the past decade, we have been telling Christians about the link between family breakdown and crime.

Listeners have learned that the children of offenders are the kids most at risk for drug and alcohol abuse, teen pregnancy, poor school performance, and criminal activity. Eighty-five percent of juveniles arrested for their first serious crime report having a sibling or parent in prison -- a statistic that came into clear focus in Milwaukee.

But Prison Fellowship is doing more than describing the problem. We offer Christians an opportunity to make a difference in the lives of the children of prisoners through Angel Tree Christmas gifts. These gifts let kids know that someone cares.

In addition, they can serve as the beginning of a relationship with these at-risk kids -- a relationship that can lead to forgiveness and eternal life through faith in Christ. Programs like Angel Tree Camping and mentoring can help children keep from following in their parent's footsteps and can break the cycle of crime and despair.

Unfortunately, it's too late for those kids in Milwaukee. But there are other kids who are just as vulnerable -- thousands, hundreds of thousands -- kids who can still be helped before their actions capture people's attention in the worst way imaginable.

FURTHER READING & INFORMATION

Gina Barton, Jessica McBride, and Vikki Ortiz, "Where were the parents?", MILWAUKEE JOURNAL-SENTINEL, 14 October 2002. http://www.jsonline.com/news/Metro/oct02/87613.asp

Jessica McBride, Mary Zahn, and Tom Held, "Suspect, 10, may become youngest ever charged," MILWAUKEE JOURNAL-SENTINEL, 3 October 2002. http://www.jsonline.com/news/Metro/oct02/84732.asp

BreakPoint commentary no. 020607, "Breaking Down the Family Business: Loving the Children of Prisoners." http://www.breakpoint.org/Breakpoint/ChannelRoot/FeaturesGroup/BreakPointCommentaries/Breaking+Down+the+Family+Business.htm

Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcey, THE PROBLEM OF EVIL (Tyndale, 1999).

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Copyright © 2002 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

*

“I think abortion is killing a life. [But] the person who is pregnant should decide whether to do it or not.”

Those are the words of Estrella Flores, an immigrant from Ecuador, who attended the so-called “March for Women's Lives,” held here in Washington, D.C., this past Sunday. Ms. Flores and thirty-four other immigrants from her Brooklyn neighborhood were bused to the march by the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, one of the march organizers. They were among the reported 500,000 who marched in the pro-choice rally. I've been in Washington since the civil-rights marches of the sixties, and from my office in the White House, I have watched the anti-Vietnam protestors. There's one thing I have learned that's true of almost all of these demonstrations: People don't come. They are brought.

Last weekend's group understood this very well. They brought many protestors by downplaying the issue that the march was supposed to be about. According to the NEW YORK TIMES, “A selling point for Latinos was the idea that they would march, not just for abortion rights, but for a range of issues that affect immigrant women, including the need for better prenatal health care, medical insurance, and access to birth control. ... 'They're not going to come to an abortion rally, but they are going to come to a rally that's about taking control of your life,' said Lorraine Cortés-Vázquez, president of the Hispanic Federation.” And T-shirts read in Spanish: “Health. Dignity. Justice.”

Now, with this kind of advertising, it sounds like the ranks of the marchers were more heavily padded than the organizers would like to admit. But let's think about what “taking control of your life” actually means in this context. It brings us back to Estrella Flores's ideas about abortion: that it's wrong — in fact, that it's “killing” — but that people should be able to do it anyway, because it's their life to control.

Ms. Flores's attitude is deeply troubling, especially when you realize how widespread it is. Over and over again, people at the march made similar comments — the kind of comments that make your hair stand on end. The political debate is changing among activists on the ground. They're now willing to admit that abortion is killing. But they're arguing that their right to do what they want, without restraint, justifies that killing.

What we are seeing, of course, is the logical consequences of the desire for personal autonomy in an era of moral relativism. People can say with a perfectly straight face and without a twinge of conscience, “Yeah, it is wrong. It is murder. But nobody is going to tell me I can't do it.”

If this is really the position that the pro-abortion movement is taking, then we're in a heap of trouble. If my neighbor thinks to himself, “I know stealing is wrong, but I don't want anybody to tell me I can't do it,” I'm going to start putting extra padlocks on my house and bars on my windows. If somebody says, “I know pedophilia is a bad thing, but I have the right to do what I want with my own body,” I am going to start keeping my grandkids locked in the house when they come to visit.

The “don't tell me what to do” mentality will unravel the very fabric of our society. If people actually believe that their autonomy is so important that it gives them the right to kill the innocent, then none of us is safe. I wonder how many of those folks getting bused to Washington ever thought of that.

FOR FURTHER READING AND INFORMATION:

• “'Keep Your Laws Off My Body!’ Screamed Left-Wing Celebrities,” CyberAlert, Media Research Center, 27 April 2004.

• Andrea Elliott, “Against Abortion but in Favor of Choice,” New York Times, 26 April 2004. (Free registration required.)

• Pia de Solenni, “Sounds of Silence,” National Review Online, 29 April 2004.

• Erin Montgomery, “'Abort Bush',” Weekly Standard, 27 April 2004.

• Kathryn Jean Lopez, “We're F*****' Feminists!“ National Review Online, 26 April 2004. See also this article.

• Kathleen Parker, “Abortion march is ugly spectacle,” Townhall.com, 28 April 2004.

• Suzanne Fields, “Where women can't march,” Townhall.com, 29 April 2004.

• Lynn Vincent, “The end is near,” World, 1 May 2004.

• See also the “Worldview for Parents” pages “Big Business“ and “What's the Big Deal about Abortion?“

• BreakPoint Commentary No. 040419, “Building Better Babies.”

• BreakPoint Commentary No. 040420, “Spin Control.”

• BreakPoint Commentary No. 040421, “Irreplaceable.”

• William Saletan, “Face the Fetus,” Slate, 29 March 2004.

• Peter Kreeft, Three Approaches to Abortion (Ignatius, 2002).

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Copyright (c) 2004 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

*

[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of KeruxID #13630]

Scientists in white lab-coats conducting experiments on human beings, and destroying thousands of lives in the process. Sounds like a scene from Dr. Frankenstein, but if the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has their way, that image will soon become a terrifying reality.

The story began in 1993. Only two days after taking office, President Clinton ended the moratorium on fetal tissue research that was put in place by both the Reagan and Bush administrations. The new administration was apparently not concerned that funding this kind of research would encourage women to have abortions — whether in the name of science or in the hopes of helping a sick loved one.

Congress saw the risks, however, and passed a ban on federal funding fetal of tissue research in 1995, over the president’s objection.

That didn’t, of course, stop private research. By December 1998, privately-funded scientists were growing human stem cells in the laboratory. Stem cells are the so-called “master cells” that the body uses to form tissue and organs. They’re available from a variety of sources, but the most convenient source is human embryos — in other words, unborn children.

Meanwhile, NIH scientists wanted to get back into the game of stem-cell research. They tried to escape the ban by restricting the federal funding to research on cells and not for the destruction of embryos. But as Stephen Hall observes in the New York Times, “in order to obtain human embryonic stem cells … you must destroy a human embryo.” And therein lies the ethical dilemma.

The thinking had been that private abortions would provide an ample supply of cells for the researchers. But it hasn’t worked out that way. Sometimes the abortion procedure renders them unusable, and sometimes, by the time scientists acquire the aborted babies, the cells are dead, and no longer useful to them.

NIH scientists were also anxious to get their hands on the estimated 150,000 unclaimed or unwanted frozen embryos around the country, produced through in-vitro fertilization. If implanted in a mother’s womb, these embryos would grow up to be men and women, like you and me. But in the laboratory, I shudder to think what they may become!

So to gain access to a sufficient supply of cells, the NIH issued new guidelines last December. Basically they allow federal scientists to obtain private funds for abortions, and federal funds for stem cell research. But this is just a dodge — a way of getting around the congressional ban. As Douglas Johnson of the National Right to Life Committee observes, this “would result in federal sponsorship and funding of experiments in which living human embryos are dissected and killed.”

These new rules would bring America that much closer to the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust and the experiments of Dr. Joseph Mengele.

Fortunately, NIH is still taking comments from the public prior to applying the new standards, and it’s vital that we speak out.

We can make a difference — saving unborn children from being harvested in the name of science, and preventing America from funding laboratories for Dr. Frankenstein with your tax dollars.

Like many Christians, I’ve been encouraged to hear Senator Joseph Lieberman talk openly about his faith on the campaign trail. He’s dead right arguing that religious perspectives belong in public discourse. And he argues, as well, that we should obey the Ten Commandments.

But we have to be careful. There’s a fine line between using faith to guide our policies and using it as a prop for political maneuvers.

Now I always make a point of avoiding commenting on partisan matters — as an ex-offender, I can’t even vote. So don’t take these as partisan comments. I would say the same thing were the candidate Republican or Democrat.

But there are some references to Scripture by candidate Lieberman that concern me — in particular, his selective reading of Holy Scripture.

And it’s true: too many Americans have forgotten the important role of our Judeo-Christian tradition in this nation’s history. They’ve even missed the fact that the Civil Rights movement was driven, in large part, by the religious commitment of men like Martin Luther King and, yes, Joe Lieberman.

But if we inject faith into the campaign, we then have to be prepared to live according to its dictates. The Hebrew Scriptures make it clear that taking innocent unborn life is a sin, which is why Orthodox Jews — along with evangelical and Catholic Christians — are strongly pro-life. And support for abortion rights unmistakably contradicts the same Bible that gives us these Ten Commandments.

So that’s why I find it hard to square Senator Lieberman’s arguments with his pro-choice stance. While I certainly respect his faith and his good will, his reading of Scripture, I think, is off-base.

Take another example. Speaking in a Detroit church last week, the Senator said that the Fifth Commandment — “honor your father and mother” — provides a good reason to support Vice President Gore’s plan for funding prescription drug benefits. Whoa! Wait a minute! The Ten Commandments were directed to individual Israelites to care for their own parents, just as Ezra and Proverbs make it clear that parents are to care for their own kids.

Now, I’m willing to grant that honoring our parents includes concern for their health care — and one could argue that this principle carries over into our political concerns. But the leap to federal funding of programs to confer drug benefits is a matter of political philosophy, not theology — and a philosophy much more indebted to nineteenth-century utopianism than Judeo-Christian ethics.

That utopianism is rooted in the belief that humanity’s problems can be solved by creating a perfectly just society — the problem isn’t man, they say, it’s government. But utopian myths like these deny individual responsibility and foster ever greater dependence on the state.

The spirit of the Fifth Commandment is infinitely richer — and more radical — than any government program could put into practice. The apostle Paul, a Jew and a Pharisee himself, said: “if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith, and is worse than an unbeliever.”

In short, the Judeo-Christian tradition requires us to care for our own families, and not foist off our obligations onto the state.

I have great respect for Joe Lieberman’s devout faith. And I’m delighted to see religion being taken seriously in the public square. But as I explain in my book, KINGDOMS IN CONFLICT — written some years ago but still a definitive work on Christians in politics — we must be careful that we bring faith to bear in politics and not the other way around.

The following story is fiction (and a very popular email). Dr. Don Harper Mills is real, and he did share the story at an awards dinner, but it was presented as a brain twister. He freely admits he made it up.[1] However, the logic concerning who is responsible is interesting.

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At the 1994 annual awards dinner given for Forensic Science, AAFS President Dr. Don Harper Mills astounded his audience with the legal complications of a bizarre death. Here is the story:

On March 23, 1994, the medical examiner viewed the body of Ronald Opus and concluded that he died from a shotgun wound to the head. Mr. Opus had jumped from the top of a ten-story building intending to commit suicide.

He left a note to the effect indicating his despondency. As he fell past the ninth floor his life was interrupted by a shotgun blast passing through a window, which killed him instantly.

Neither the shooter nor the deceased was aware that a safety net had been installed just below the eighth floor level to protect some building workers and that Ronald Opus would not have been able to complete his suicide the way he had planned.

“Ordinarily,” Dr Mills continued, “someone who sets out to commit suicide and ultimately succeeds, even though the mechanism might not be what he intended, is still defined as committing suicide.” That Mr. Opus was shot on the way to certain death, but probably would not have been successful because of the safety net, caused the medical examiner to feel that he had a homicide on his hands. The room on the ninth floor, where the shotgun blast emanated, was occupied by an elderly man and his wife. They were arguing vigorously and he was threatening her with a shotgun. The man was so upset that when he pulled the trigger he completely missed his wife and the pellets went through the window striking Mr. Opus.

When one intends to kill subject “A” but kills subject “B” in the attempt, one is guilty of the murder of subject “B.”

When confronted with the murder charge the old man and his wife were both adamant and both said that they thought the shotgun was not loaded.

The old man said it was a long-standing habit to threaten his wife with the unloaded shotgun. He had no intention to murder her.

Therefore the killing of Mr. Opus appeared to be an accident; that is, assuming the gun had been accidentally loaded.

The continuing investigation turned up a witness who saw the old couple's son loading the shotgun about six weeks prior to the fatal accident.

It transpired that the old lady had cut off her son's financial support and the son, knowing the propensity of his father to use the shotgun threateningly, loaded the gun with the expectation that his father would shoot his mother.

Since the loader of the gun was aware of this, he was guilty of the murder even though he didn't actually pull the trigger. The case now becomes one of murder on the part of the son for the death of Ronald Opus.

Now comes the exquisite twist.

Further investigation revealed that the son was, in fact, Ronald Opus. He had become increasingly despondent over the failure of his attempt to engineer his mother's murder. This led him to jump off the ten-story building on March 23rd, only to be killed by a shotgun blast passing through the ninth story window. The son had actually murdered himself so the medical examiner closed the case as a suicide.

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A true story from Associated Press, (Reported by Kurt Westervelt)

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1. For more details see http://www.snopes.com/horrors/freakish/opus.htm

*

When I was at the Eddyville State Penitentiary several weeks ago, I learned about Paul Stevens. Paul Stevens's daughter was stabbed to death by a neighbor in Evansville, Indiana, years ago. Paul Stevens spent nearly a decade tortured by the memory of his daughter's killer.

A year later, the memories proved so hard to bear that Stevens moved his family from Evansville to a new home near Dawson Springs, Kentucky. His daughter's killer was released after seven years behind bars. Stevens's hatred twisted his psyche. “At that time I wanted to see that man dead,” Stevens said.

In 1978, nine years after the murder, Stevens tried something radical. At a religious retreat, he finally grasped that his hate couldn't restore his daughter. He vowed to overcome the tragedy and devote his time to working with violent criminals. Since that time, Stevens has spent two days each week working as a counselor and lay minister at a maximum security prison. He has come to call some of the 29 prisoners on death row his friends.

I met one of those prisoners who said he could never have been led to Christ except by this man who had such compassionate understanding. Stevens said treating violent criminals as human beings has helped him lose his hatred and made him a happier person.

If he could forgive that, you can forgive however you've been hurt.

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Robert Russell, “Releasing Resentment,” Preaching Today, Tape No. 136.

Source: A Dose of Inspiration, http://www.quietstones.com/mydailydose

*

Convicted sex offender Joseph Edward Duncan III spent months on the Internet documenting his internal struggle over right vs. wrong. Then, four days before two Idaho children he is accused of kidnapping disappeared, he wrote: “The demons have taken over.”

It was one of the last entries in Duncan's Weblog before the 42-year-old North Dakota man was arrested and charged with two kidnapping counts. Authorities believe he took 9-year-old Dylan Groene and 8-year-old Shasta Groene from their Idaho home shortly before their 13-year-old brother, mother and her boyfriend were bludgeoned to death May 15, 2005. Police say Duncan also is a suspect in the killings.

“God has shown me the right choice, but my demons have me tied to a spit and the fire has already been lit,” Duncan wrote April 24, after he had jumped bail in Minnesota on charges of molesting a 6-year-old boy in a playground.

His last blog entry was May 13, two days before Dylan and Shasta were taken from their home and their family members killed.

“As far as 'taking people with me,' well, I don't know if that is right or wrong,” he wrote. “In fact, I don't know much any more what right and wrong even is.”

Duncan was arrested Saturday at a Denny's restaurant in Coeur d'Alene when a waitress recognized the girl with him as Shasta and called police. A body believed to be that of Dylan has been found in Montana and awaits positive identification.

Duncan's began his “Blogging the Fifth Nail” online journal - the title is an allegorical reference to a fifth nail intended to end Christ's suffering on the cross - in January last year.

A HORRIFYING CASE

Police concluded that Duncan was the author of the journal based on interviews of people who knew him and on the Internet Protocol address - an identifying number specific to a computer - that was used to establish the blog. The entries each include the tag line, “Posted by: Joe.”

In sporadic entries usually posted in the middle of the night, Duncan used the digital soapbox to vent his anger over the social stigma of being a convicted sex offender.

“I have decided to give up on trying to convince people that I am a real person, with honest and good intentions, not some evil monster they should be afraid of,” he wrote last year.

The entries include excerpts from a book he said he was writing based on his conviction at age 16 in Tacoma, Washington, of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old boy at gunpoint. He documents his nightmares, his anger over serving 20 days past his 20-year prison sentence, his difficulty making friends and dating, and diatribes against police checking on his whereabouts and confiscating his computer and digital camera to check for child pornography images.

“Of course I am clean, they might find some pictures of me naked, non-sexual mode photos I used once to make a birthday card for a girlfriend once, but that's about it,” he wrote in an entry last August titled “Home Invasion.”

His irritation with registering as a convicted sex offender and having that information publicized on a Web site maintained by the police department in his home of Fargo, N.D. was a frequent topic. He submitted anonymous questions about law enforcement's efforts to monitor sex offenders to Fargo Police Chief Chris Magnus periodically through The Forum newspaper's online “Chat with the Chief” feature and then posted the responses to his blog.

“I think it's pretty amazing you believe that as a registered sex offender your situation is comparable to being a Jew or member of another minority group persecuted by the Nazis,” the police chief wrote in a May 2004 reply to Duncan's comparison of the Fargo police policy to visit the homes of high-risk sex offenders to the 1935 Nuremberg Laws that stripped Jewish people of their German citizenship.

*

The U. S. Supreme Court is set to rule on the constitutionality of insanity-defense laws across the nation. The case, CLARK V. ARIZONA, has to do with a defendant, Eric Michael Clark, who at age seventeen killed an Arizona police officer, supposedly thinking that he was shooting a space alien.

Clark's attorneys argue that they should have been allowed to enter into evidence proof that Clark had been insane at the time of the murder. Their argument for a constitutional right to an insanity defense will put the Court on the record on one of the law's most controversial issues.

Writing in USA TODAY, Professor Jonathan Turley of George Washington University argues that a society which fails to “recognize the difference between a premeditated and delusional act,” is immoral. Turley points to four states, Idaho, Kansas, Montana, and Utah, that have eliminated the insanity defense altogether. Other states have moved to curtail the insanity defense in significant ways.

In recent years, there has been no shortage of notorious defendants claiming an insanity defense. Currently, Lashaun Harris is on trial in San Francisco for the murder of her three children, whom she is charged with throwing into San Francisco Bay last October. According to press reports, Harris told authorities that God wanted her children as a sacrifice.

The nation's conscience was seared by the news that Andrea Yates, a housewife in Houston, had drowned her five children. With regard to all these cases, the public at large is generally ready to concede that those who committed these acts might be mentally impaired or ill, but most Americans believe that mental illness does not eliminate the moral burden of a criminal act.

The idea of the insanity defense has roots that go all the way back to ancient Greece and Rome. Nevertheless, the modern version of an insanity defense emerged from the attempted assassination of the British Prime Minister in 1843. In that case, Daniel M'Naghten shot Edward Drummond, an aide to British Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel. M'Naghten's goal was the assassination of the Prime Minister. Instead, he shot and killed Sir Robert's principal secretary.

Faced with a defendant that appeared to be insane, British courts came up with the so-called “M'Naghten Rules,” intended to identify which defendants are insane, and thus are not to be held as criminally responsible for their actions.

In one form or another, the M'Naghten Rules have found their way into American jurisprudence. Most American jurisdictions allow some form of an insanity defense.

As the rule stipulates, an accused is excused from criminal punishment if “at the time of committing the act, the party accused was laboring under such a defective reason, from disease of the mind, as not to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing, or if he did know it, that he did not know he was doing what was wrong.” As Professor Phillip E. Johnson of the University of California, Berkeley, explains, “Successful defendants under M'Naghten are also generally so incapable of living in normal circumstances that there is no question of granting them freedom.” But that assessment is now clouded by the fact that so many mental patients are now released into the general population. There is very little assurance that an accused found to be not guilty by reason of insanity will be kept from the larger society for any lengthy period of time.

In essence, the M'Naghten Rule opened the door for insanity claims in criminal prosecutions -- especially for violent and heinous acts such as homicide. Nevertheless, the legal elite has pushed the definition far beyond the M'Naghten Rule. The “Model Penal Code of the American Law Institute [ALI],” asserts that “a person is not responsible for criminal conduct if at the time of such conduct as a result of mental disease or defect he lacks substantial capacity either to appreciate the wrongfulness of his conduct or to conform his conduct to the requirements of law.” That last phrase represents a radical expansion of the M'Naghten Rule.

Other jurisdictions have come up with their own definitions and rules. The real question is this -- is the insanity defense itself morally justified?

A shift to more liberal interpretations of the law with respect to insanity defenses came to the attention of the American public when John Hinckley, the young man who shot President Ronald W. Reagan in a brazen assassination attempt was found “not guilty” because of his mental state. According to reports from the trial and investigation, Hinckley had intended to kill the President in order to gain the attention of a movie star.

As Professor Johnson explains: “By traditional standards Hinckley was dead-bang guilty of attempted murder and related crimes. But he came to trial in a federal court in the District of Columbia, in a legal culture that by this time had absorbed not only of the ALI defense but also its spirit. Hinckley, whose parents were both wealthy and devoted to him, had the benefit not only of the ALI standard, and of the testimony of expert witnesses with sterling scientific qualifications, but also the general principle of evidence that the burden of proof rests on the prosecution, not the defense. Thus the federal rule required the prosecutor to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a demented man, who had attempted to assassinate a president for utterly bizarre reasons, was not insane.”

The American public was outraged at the verdict at the Hinckley trial. Facing such pressure, Congress adopted the Insanity Defense Reform Act of 1984 which tightened the requirements for an insanity defense in the federal courts. The act stipulates that the defense bears the burden to prove that, “at the time of the commission of the acts constituting the defense, the defendant, as a result of a severe mental disease or defect, was unable to appreciate the nature and quality or the wrongfulness of his acts.” The act went on to assert: “Mental disease or defect does not otherwise constitute a defense.”

With the exceptions of Idaho, Kansas, Montana, and Utah, the states and the District of Columbia have their own definitions of legal insanity with respect to those accused of committing criminal acts. As psychologist Stephen Lally explains the general contours of these laws: “If you meet the criteria for insanity, ... you are viewed as not being criminally responsible: In other words, your thinking was too disordered or your actions too impaired to have formed the intention to commit a criminal act, and so it is unfair to inflict punishment on you. This singular exception justifies treating all other defendants as competent and criminally responsible: They rationally chose to commit a crime and should be punished for their actions.”

As Professor Johnson argues, the very idea of a criminal prosecution requires the moral understanding that human beings are responsible for their actions. Without this basic understanding, the entire logic of the law collapses. Thus, the very existence of an insanity defense affirms, in its own way, the fact that the vast majority of criminal defendants are assumed to be absolutely responsible for their actions. The supposedly rare exceptions of those deemed to be insane constitutes a counter evidence.

But does the insanity defense make moral sense? In one sense, the finding that an individual is insane might well influence the character or nature of any punishment or sentence meted out after conviction. Nevertheless, it is morally problematic at the very least when individuals are found “not guilty” of acts they have clearly and undeniably committed.

In other words, the problem with the plea “not guilty by reason of insanity” is with the words “not guilty.” It is moral nonsense to argue that a person is not guilty of committing a crime if the evidence clearly indicates that they have done so. From a Christian perspective, there is no Scriptural warrant for assuming that anything described as “insanity” eliminates moral responsibility.

Modern critics of the insanity defense have pointed to such issues as the fact that defendants with sufficient financial means are in a better position to hire “experts” who could argue for the insanity defense. This became an issue of public concern with regard to John Hinckley, but his case is hardly unique in this regard.

At a deeper level, the late Karl Menninger, a well-known psychiatrist, argued that the insanity defense should be abolished because it undermined the notion of individual responsibility. Menninger called for eliminating the insanity defense so that the sense of individual responsibility would once again be honored by the court. Similarly, Menninger warned that the concept of sin had ceased to be meaningful in modern society. Instead, immoral actions were redefined as in terms of social or psychological pathologies, and were increasingly treated as symptoms of illness rather than as signs of depravity.

The law must deal with a seemingly endless array of complications and special circumstances. Nevertheless, the burden of any civilized society is to maintain a rule of law that holds human beings responsible for their actions. Any legal system -- which must by definition include the impact of fallible human beings -- falls short of perfect justice in terms of its execution and administration. Nevertheless, society bears the positive obligation to hold persons accountable for their actions, in terms of both reward and punishment.

In the main, the existence of the insanity defense is a warning that we are all too ready to redefine sin in terms of lesser categories. Furthermore, we appear ready to deny moral responsibility when there is an apparent way out that avoids the need for that judgment.

The administration of justice must combine and balance justice and mercy -- but this makes sense only in a context of clear moral order and authority. Courts must be allowed considerable latitude in the application of penalties, treatments, and other available options. But finding a guilty person “not guilty by reason of insanity” is an act of moral evasion -- and we all know it.

Veteran crime reporter Dominick Dunne has the misfortune to know about murder firsthand: His daughter, Dominique, was strangled by her former boyfriend in 1982. Her killer, John Thomas Sweeney, was released from prison after serving only two and a half years.

It goes without saying that her father was enraged when Sweeney got off so lightly. Dunne hired a investigator to keep track of Sweeney. But Dunne didn’t initially intend simply to keep tabs on Sweeney. He reached out to the private detective to help him put a contract out on Sweeney’s life.

“I was nuts at that time with rage and hate that the guy who strangled my daughter for five minutes until she was dead got out in two and a half years,” Dunne says. “I truly went through a period of wanting to hire somebody. I know, it seems absurd now.... But I worshipped my daughter. I just became obsessed with this guy getting out of prison. I wanted harm to come to him.”

The private eye had a sympathetic ear but talked Dunne out of it, saying, “Dominick, you don’t want to do this.” Dunne was willing to be talked out of it.

In retrospect, Dunne thinks he simply had a fantasy common to parents who have lost a child to violent crime.

As for Sweeney, Dunne lost track of him some time back. “I don’t know where he is,” he says. “I don’t want to know where he is.... I just hope something terrible happens to him before he dies.”

When you hear the word “pagan,” what springs to mind? Do you think of ancient tree worshippers dancing by moonlight? Well, an authority on the subject says that notion is out of date. These days, says Dr. Robert George of Princeton University, the term “pagan” ought to conjure up images of affluent, well- educated Americans — including many who go to church.

George’s definition of paganism was presented at a recent meeting of Toward Tradition, a group that brings together Orthodox Jews and conservative Christians. He said paganism is not confined to the past, with primitive peoples offering sacrifices to the sun or praying to golden calves. Instead, the temptation to worship false gods is “a permanent threat” and “a constant temptation.”

You see, the essence of paganism is idolatry — the worship of false gods in place of the one true God. But, sadly, many modern Christians fall into pagan practices and don’t even know it, and some attend churches that actually promote it.

So, how do you know if you’re among them? There’s a fool-proof test, George says. “False gods demand the blood of innocents. Where the innocent and just are slain … the god being worshipped is not the God of Israel.” When Christians of the past burned heretics, persecuted Jews, and enslaved Africans, they were serving, not the biblical God, but false gods.

The false gods of modern pagans are even more bloodthirsty. “Today,” George says, “the unborn, the partially born, and the handicapped newly-born are … sacrificed to the false gods of choice, autonomy, and liberation. They’re sacrificed on stainless steel altars, by priests robed in surgical whites.” And advocates of assisted suicide and euthanasia are their fellow believers.

By contrast, George notes, faithful Christians and observant Jews worship the Lord of life — a God who “endows every human being — however humble, however poor, however afflicted — with a sublime dignity.” It is for this reason “that the life of every innocent person is … equally inviolable under the moral law.”

Modern pagans — including most secularized Christians and Jews — wrap their pagan ideology in a cloak of virtue. They speak of compassion, even as they rationalize their “choice” to kill the innocent. In reality, they’re worshipping, not the God of compassion, but false gods of depravity and death.

It is a fact of history that every civilization that has sacrificed children to the gods has been destroyed. The God of the Bible has brought judgment on even the most powerful empires. That’s why, when friends of mine visited Mother Teresa a few years ago and asked what they could do to help her, she responded, “Go back to America and stop the slaughter of the innocent babies. Hurry, while there’s time, or God will judge you.”

She was right.

Today’s false gods masquerade under the name of “choice” and “compromise.” But as Professor George says, “A pagan culture is … a culture of death.”

It’s important that you and I learn to recognize these beliefs and practices, which can infiltrate our churches and are pervasive in our culture. Not only for the sake of the innocents who are being killed, but for the sake of our nation’s soul and our survival.

Everyone did as he saw fit. –Judges 21:25

Eighteen thousand murders, 800 suicides. That’s what a young person in the United States will view on television by the age of 18, according to statistics compiled by researchers at UC-Santa Barbara as part of a nationwide study. Pretty depressing.

It gets worse. The killer goes unpunished in 73 percent of all television murder cases. About half of all violent interactions show no harmful effects on the victims; a similar proportion show no pain.

Little wonder we have become such a violent society. Some evidence would suggest, however, that human beings have always been that way. Our sin nature–so quick to seek its own way and to hurt those who get in our way–was around long before television.

After Joshua died, Israel degenerated into social and moral chaos. Judges 19 paints an ugly picture, but it is an accurate series of snapshots. Be warned that the chapter is harsh, including sexual immorality, gang rape, and dismemberment.

It seems that society was in bad shape, and few people were interested in making it better. Everyone had his or her own standard of morality. (Sound familiar?)

Back then, few people had the courage to stand against the evil in their society. A few did–Deborah and Gideon come to mind, though they too had their weak points.

Will our society suffer the same lack of courageous men and women of conviction? Will we accept immorality and violence as unavoidable aspects of life today? Or will we stand against the moral relativism described in Judges 21:25, “Everyone did as he saw fit.”

The people of Israel would have argued that their problem grew out of their need for a king. They do make a relevant point: To serve the right king is good. Live out that alternative today. Obey your heavenly King. Your impact on society might be minimal, but society’s impact on you will be even less! –JC

REFLECTION

• Which violent or immoral aspect of society bothers me most? Why?

• How am I going to trust God to help me stand against evil today?

• Lord, without You, our society is in drastic need. Help me to live a holy life as a light in the darkness, and to help lost people find a personal relationship with You through Your Son.

Don’t wink at sin–God doesn’t.

What does Judges 4-5 mean to abused women who fought back?

Danielle was lying on her living room couch in Betty Boop pajamas, reading a book, when a man kicked in her front door. He had just been involved in a drug deal gone bad, and he was enraged. He demanded Danielle’s money.

Danielle remembers asking, “Why are you doing this?”

He answered, “Because I can.”

By the end of the night, Danielle had been strangled nearly to death multiple times. She’d managed to grab a Ginsu bread knife and land one blow to the man’s leg. She’d watched as that one small cut — miraculously — seemed to slow the assault against her, and she’d watched her kitchen fill with blood from that one wound on his leg. Danielle had called 911, and when her assailant’s heart stopped she’d been talked through how to give him CPR for 17 excruciating minutes. When help finally arrived, the man was dead.

Danielle went with the police — shaky, swollen, but willing to answer all their questions. At the end of the night, she was charged with first-degree murder and told that she could get the death penalty for killing the man. The reason? He was her boyfriend.

“If a stranger had did what he did. . .” Danielle pauses and shakes her head, the end of the sentence lost somewhere in her disappointment and disbelief. I knew the end of the sentence. The story has become familiar.

Finishing for her, I say, “If a stranger had done what he did, it would have been considered self-defense.”

I had been a chaplain at a women’s prison for a year before I realized that almost every woman I met who was doing time for murder had killed an intimate partner who had been abusing her for years. Some were serving four-year sentences for manslaughter, others were serving 15 to 20 years for first- or second-degree murder, and still others were in prison for life. Two of my congregants began their incarcerations on death row, having been given death sentences for killing men who actively tried to kill them first. I can still remember feeling shock, confusion, and a righteously sized anger as I learned that these situations were not considered self-defense.

This wasn’t always the case. In Women Who Kill, Ann Jones explains that until the 1970s, battered women who killed their abusers were often acquitted on grounds of self-defense or insanity. But as the rising rate of incarceration dovetailed with a wave of publicity surrounding the prevalence of wife-battering, prosecution of such crimes began to shift. The publicity about domestic violence had been meant to increase public awareness of the issue and garner sympathy for women’s resistance. But in a sickening irony, the affirmation of women’s agency warped into a suspicion of women’s motives. If women were killing in order to get away from abuse, the argument went, they should be punished to the full extent of the law.

In Convicted Survivors: The Imprisonment of Battered Women Who Kill, Elizabeth Leonard explains that self-defense law allows someone to use “reasonable force” when she believes herself to be in “imminent danger.” The force used in defense must be proportionate to the force used in the attack against her and must be the “only means of preventing harm.” At each of these points, women’s typical modes of self-defense are disqualified. Women who ultimately kill their abusers have learned from years of experience that they are no match for their partners. Research shows that men are able to kill their partners with their hands and feet, beating and kicking them to death. Leonard explains that in intimate homicides, beating and strangulation “appear to be exclusive to male offenders.” When women defend themselves against such attacks, the use of a weapon is necessary, reasonable, and proportionate. Yet the courts repeatedly rule that the use of a weapon disqualifies battered women from invoking self-defense.

Women are also denied the use of self-defense by a discrediting of the “imminent” nature of the threat against them. The argument goes that they could have escaped, that lethal force was not the only option open to them. Women often kill their abusers when they are asleep, incapacitated, or in a temporary lull between violent acts. In Justifiable Homicide: Battered Women, Self-Defense, and the Law, Cynthia K. Gillespie notes that even something as simple as the existence of a door in the room in which an attack occurs has been used to argue that a woman could have, should have, escaped, and therefore her use of force to defend herself was not a necessary act of self-defense.

The Bible does contain an example of a woman who killed a violent man in exactly the same patterns by which abused women today fight back against their abusers. Jael kills Sisera in her home, while he is asleep, with the use of a weapon. And she is lauded for it.

I first offered this interpretation of Jael at the women’s prison in a class called Prison and the Bible. We were crowded into a circle of 25 women in a double-wide trailer that serves as both our school and our chapel. We had placed a small podium at the front of the circle, and a woman named Bella had just shared her story aloud, a story similar to Danielle’s. I made my way to the podium, and we opened our Bibles to Judges.

Judges 4 introduces the reader to Sisera by telling about his violence. Sisera had “cruelly oppressed” Israel for 20 years, such that she was crying out to God for help (4:1). The story then cuts to a courtroom drama involving a judge named Deborah. Between trials, Deborah calls for military leader Barak and tells him that if he will go up against Sisera, God will deliver Sisera’s army into Barak’s hand. But Barak seems to know how difficult such an attack would be. He is out of his depth. He is scared. He asks for Deborah to join him in the fight. Deborah responds, “Very well, I will go with you. But because of the way you are going about this, the honor will not be yours, for the Lord will hand Sisera to a woman” (4:9, NIV).

Sisera brings 900 iron chariots to battle. Israel has no such strength, but she stands to fight anyway, desperate for these 20 years of oppression to end. And we are told that the Lord fights with and for Israel. As she stands to fight back against great odds, the Lord goes ahead of her and routs Sisera’s army. We are told that all the troops of Sisera fell by the sword that day; not a man was left (4:16).

Except Sisera himself. The leader, the most powerful one, the one we are told has been oppressing Israel, slips away on foot to the tent of his ally Heber the Kenite. But Heber isn’t home. Jael, Heber’s wife, goes out to meet Sisera and invites him into her tent. Sisera asks for water. Jael gives him milk and covers him up. Sisera tells her to stand by the door while he sleeps and protect him. Jael obeys. She stands watch as he falls asleep. Then she “picked up a tent peg and a hammer and went quietly to him while he lay fast asleep, exhausted. She drove the peg through his temple into the ground, and he died” (4:21).

The Bible says that when Jael killed Sisera, God subdued Israel’s enemy (4:23). Jael does not do what is expected of her. She violates hospitality. She violates her husband’s alliances. She violates gender roles — one of very few women in the Bible to kill anyone at all. Jael keeps her own counsel. She chooses to kill a violent oppressor, and by her act Israel “grows stronger and stronger” (4:24).

Jael’s crime meets all of the conditions for a conviction of first-degree murder. Her deliberate use of a deadly weapon, the tent peg and hammer, establishes a clear and premeditated intent to kill. She is in no imminent danger, as it has been defined in America’s courts, because Sisera is asleep and she is in her tent with access to a doorway (4:20). Indeed, the poetic rendering of Judges 5:25 suggests Jael may have intentionally administered a soporific. Sisera asks for water, but Jael gives him chem’ah, translated “cream, fat, or butter,” and covers him up, encouraging him to sleep. Her use of deadly force is not proportionate, since no force has, as yet, been used against her. Furthermore, the text indicates that Sisera can reasonably expect safety because Jael’s husband has an alliance, literally shalom, with the King of Hazor (4:17).

On these grounds, Jael could have easily been condemned to death in our courts. But instead of condemning her the Bible tells Jael’s story a second time, this time in the form of an epic poem. It is as if the text knows that Jael’s actions are open to misinterpretation, and so the text is explicit. Jael’s actions are worth singing about. They are the actions of God working in her. The poetry of Judges 5 erupts with praise, “Most blessed of women is Jael, wife of Heber the Kenite! Most blessed of tent-dwelling women!” (5:24).

As I proclaimed in that double-wide trailer, “Most blessed is Jael!” the room fell silent. The silence stretched on and on, until one woman, another lifer who was also in for killing an abusive partner, sighed aloud. “This world would be a lot different if people called us blessed,” she said.

Judges 4–5 works through a cycle of pretelling, telling, and retelling the story of Jael. The reader is prepared for Jael to drive a tent peg through Sisera’s skull because Deborah has predicted it as the means by which Israel will be saved. To pre-dict something is to say it in advance, and such saying does not need prophetic skill. Indeed, battered women killing their batterers can be said in advance, predicted, simply because it has continued to happen — again and again, according to the same patterns, with the same risk factors, after multiple calls to law enforcement — for centuries. Jael’s story is not only talked about before it happens, it is also retold after the fact. Deborah and Barak join together to sing Jael’s song (5:1). In singing it, they offer an interpretation. Every life is precious. Every death to be mourned. But if one person continues to flout such truth, God will fight against him for the safety of God’s people — through government, through the stars in the heavens, and through tent-dwelling women, housewives like Jael (5:19–24).

According to law professor and attorney Victor Streib, 53 percent of the women on death row in the United States in the year 2000 were there for killing abusive partners. Many more are serving life sentences, often with the story of their past abuse having never gone on record. Bella, the woman who shared her story for the first time that night in the double-wide trailer, says that her main regret looking back is not having stood up and told the story of her abuse at her trial.

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Sarah Jobe is a prison educator through Duke University Divinity School and a prison chaplain through Interfaith Prison Ministry for Women.

In April 2005, Katrina Effert, age nineteen, secretly gave birth to a baby boy in the downstairs bathroom. She then strangled the child, wrapped him in towels, and dropped him over the backyard fence behind a neighbor’s shed.

After repeatedly lying to police and trying to pin the crime on a man she hooked up with nine months earlier, Effert finally confessed to killing the child, whom she named Rodney.

In 2006 and again in 2009 juries convicted her of second-degree murder with a minimum of ten years in prison. Earlier this month the same judge who presided over Effert’s trial in 2009 changed the conviction to infanticide and sentenced her to a three-year suspended sentence with probation.

In England since 1922 and in Canada since 1948, infanticide has been separated from murder. Women who killed their newborns were often domestic servants who hid their pregnancies and destroyed the evidence for fear of being fired.

Juries were unwilling to convict those women of murder since it carried the death penalty. Therefore, a new crime with a lesser penalty was created using the dubious assumption that only a mentally disturbed and, thus, morally irresponsible woman would kill her own child. Mental illness, remember, is the way that secular societies replace the judgmental “sin” word.

According to an article in Canada’s National Post, when Justice Joanne Veit gave instructions to the jury in 2009, she told them that if they determined that Efferts was “disturbed” — a word that has no clear legal or psychological definition — they had to find her guilty of infanticide. The jury nonetheless returned a verdict of murder.

Now whether or not Veit should have overturned the jury’s decision can be debated. What can’t be debated was the judge’s chilling rationale. Veit linked her leniency and Effert’s crime to abortion.

Canada, you see, has no restrictions on abortion. If Effert had had an abortion the day before she delivered, all would be well — legally at least. Instead she gave birth.

As reported in the Calgary Herald, Veit wrote that the lack of a Canadian abortion law shows that “many Canadians ... generally understand, accept and sympathize with” hard-pressed mothers, “especially mothers without support.” So, such sympathy makes infanticide permissible?

Commentator Mark Steyn correctly states that the judge is, in essence, justifying “fourth-trimester abortion.” He goes on: “So a superior court judge in a relatively civilized jurisdiction is happy to extend the principles underlying legalized abortion in order to mitigate the killing of a legal person — that’s to say, someone who has managed to make it to the post-fetal stage.”

As Dr. Al Mohler puts it, “The willingness to kill within the womb leads logically to a willingness to kill outside the womb.” Of course it does — and don’t let abortion supporters deny it. Princeton Professor Peter Singer has made that argument for years as a justification for killing infants.

At least this case in Canada exposes where the evil logic of abortion leads. It is totally morally unsustainable.

But it’s clear that despite the fact that more and more Americans at least are turning pro-life, the battle is far from over. We, that is, the Church, have a lot of work to do to uphold the dignity — and the sacredness — of every human life, from conception to natural death.

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Copyright (c) 2011 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.