Re: Stanley “Tookie” Williams
Dear Governor Schwarzenegger,
Many Christians believe Williams should be executed. I am a born-again Bible-believing Christian. Here is what you should say to Christians when you grant clemency to Williams.
Criminal laws in America have a long heritage stretching back through Anglo-Saxon law, and this heritage was taken from the Bible. The New England "Body of Liberties" (1641) was one of the earliest codes of law in America, and it was annotated with Bible verses such as Numbers 35 and Exodus 21 to prove the righteousness of the laws.
The Old Testament had a temple and a system of sacrifices to atone for sins, but some sins, like Murder, were so heinous that the blood of a lamb could not make atonement. The blood of the offender had to be shed. Numbers 35:33 says,
So you shall not pollute the land where you are; for blood defiles the land, and no atonement can be made for the land, for the blood that is shed on it, except by the blood of him who shed it.
Verses like this are the basis for capital punishment laws in Western Civilization.
Deuteronomy 21:1-9 says that if a homicide has been committed, but the offender cannot be located and his blood shed, the city leaders must shed the blood of a heifer.
99.9% of all Christians agree that city leaders are not required to shed the blood of a heifer in cases of an unsolved homicide. The reason: only the blood of Jesus Christ can cleanse our land of the pollution caused by the shedding of the blood of an innocent person.
This is sound reasoning. The blood of animals need not be shed in our day, nor the blood of human beings. Our current form of execution does not literally shed blood, but the principle of execution is directly derived from verses in the Bible which demand the shedding of blood in order to atone for sin.
The Bible also demanded the death of adulterers and homosexuals. But after the death of Christ, the Apostle Paul can say,
Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.
1 Corinthians 6:9-11
I see no evidence that Stanley "Tookie" Williams has been washed and sanctified, but neither do I see any Biblical evidence that he should be executed. I do see evidence that he might be able to undo some of the damage he did by creating the "Crips" gang, and he should be required to do even more during the rest of the days of his life to make some restitution to society.
Execution benefits nobody.
http://LibertyUnderGod.com/death/