Presenting a case for life

Today, The Birmingham News editorial page begins a six-day exploration of the death penalty in Alabama. The ideas expressed in these pieces represent the consensus of an editorial board that has spent months researching and debating the issue.

We hope you will read and consider them.

That does not mean we expect everyone to agree with us. This is not wisdom handed down from Olympus. It is the considered judgment of a group of mortals who have wrestled with a difficult question.

We respect those who have reached different conclusions. Most of all, we respect the strong sentiments of those whose lives and families have been touched by horrible crimes. We would not presume to suggest to them what their feelings and reactions should be.

What we have done is look at capital punishment in the context of some of our strongly held views on other life-and-death issues. In the course of that inquiry, we found it increasingly hard to reconcile our traditional support for the death penalty with our reverence of life, as expressed in our consistent opposition to abortion on demand, embryonic stem-cell research and euthanasia.

Editorial page editor Bob Blalock and editorial writers Robin DeMonia, Joey Kennedy and Eddie Lard have written this series of editorials about their research and the conclusions we have reached. They will document over the next several days how the death penalty is applied arbitrarily in Alabama, how the system for defending those accused in capital cases is deficient and how the argument that capital punishment deters crime is open to question.

These findings would be troubling on their own. When you consider these uncertainties in the context of a culture of life, a conviction that life has value from the moment of conception through the ravages of age or infirmity, it becomes harder to defend a flawed system for deciding who lives and who dies.

We know almost all of the people on Death Row committed ghastly crimes. By their own choice and by their own actions, they forfeited their right to live in civilized society. They deserve to be punished. They have no call on our sympathy.

At the same time, a society that values life will at least insist on justice in the application of the ultimate penalty, if it is applied at all. People who commit the same crime should face the same punishment, regardless of the county where the crime occurred or the race of the victim or the competence of the attorneys. That is not true in Alabama.

As you read our thoughts on the issue, we hope you will use the opportunity to study and review your own beliefs about the death penalty. We hope many of you will find our arguments persuasive. We understand that many of you will not.

Perhaps, though, you will come to understand your own convictions better, and be strengthened in either your support for or your opposition to capital punishment. Perhaps, in ways large or small, you will come to think differently. In any event, we believe this is a journey worth taking, even if it leads you back to where you have always been.

We are not telling you how to think; we are just challenging you to think. Tom Scarritt is editor of The News. His e-mail address is tscarritt@bhamnews.com.