The answer is love and compassion for all of humanity

The answer is love and compassion for all of humanity. I learned this lesson many years ago when God touched my heart with love and compassion for Paula Cooper. Paula Cooper was on death row at the time for the murder of my grandmother, Nana.

When God touched my heart with compassion, forgiveness took place. I learned immediately about the healing power of forgiveness. Healing is what all murder victim family members really need when a loved one has been killed.

Not only did forgiveness take place but I became very much aware that the death penalty was not an appropriate punishment, but in fact itself a crime against humanity. The death penalty not only had nothing to do with the healing that murder victim family members need so desperately. It just continues the cycle of violence and creates more murder victim family members.

There are many problems with the criminal justice system. If they could all be fixed, when I don’t believe they can, the death penalty would still be wrong. When I was in the infantry in Vietnam, our job was to kill or capture the enemy. If a prisoner was taken, we no longer tried to kill them.

I believe it is morally wrong to unnecessarily take another person life. If you can capture a violent offender and put them in prison where they can’t harm anyone else, there is no need to kill them for society to be safe. To take a person out of their cell some ten years or so after the have been arrested and lead them handcuffed to the death chamber and take their life is just not right.

We live in a vengeful society. Revenge is never, ever the answer; the answer is love and compassion for all of humanity. If you have love and compassion for all of humanity then it is impossible to want to see anyone taken to the death chamber and their life taken from them.

If you support the death penalty then you need to rethink your philosophies of life because somewhere in your thought process there is a glaring error. If you don’t have compassion for all of humanity then you are not keeping the great commandment.

Hate the sin but love the sinner. Hate the sin but not the person who committed it. The answer is love and compassion for all of humanity.

Bill Pelke