Killing Equals Killing:
The Amoral Confusion of Death Penalty Opponents
Dudley Sharp, independent researcher, death penalty expert, former opponent, 832-439-2113, Houston, Texas, CV at bottom
original 2/2013, updated last 3/1/2023
Everyone should have justified sympathy for Muina Arthur, whose son Karl Eugene Chamberlain was executed. Chamberlain was executed because he raped and murdered 30 year-old Felecia Prechtl.
However, she was in error, by saying: “I am the survivor of a murder victim,” meaning her son’s execution.
Make no mistake, Felicia Prechtl was the innocent rape/murder victim. She was murdered.
Karl Chamberlain was the guilty murderer justly executed for that crime. His just sanction was execution for that murder.
There is a huge moral difference between the murder of an innocent rape/murder victim and the just execution of the guilty rapist/murderer who committed that crime.
Please do not confuse the innocent and the guilty, the victim and the perpetrator, the crime and the just sanction.
Be as opposed to the death penalty as you wish, just don’t equate murder and execution. Doing so is both amoral and immoral.
No one wants any parent to suffer the horror of knowing their child is a rapist/murderer.
Nor do we wish that the parents of the true murder victim, Felecia Prechtl, will have to hear that someone is trying to find some moral equivalence between the rape/murder of their innocent daughter with the execution of her guilty rapist/murderer.
The cruelty of it is astounding. Even the hint of it should not be approved. Please.
Anti-death penalty folks use it as an everyday tool and they refuse to stop. They use it because it is cruel.
There is a very common anti-death penalty slogan:
“Why do we kill people to show that killing people is wrong?” We don’t and they know it. It is, just, one of so many lies.
Murder has been known as evil most foul, since the beginning of man and within religion, since Genesis 9:6, 4500 years ago, using the religious timeline.
All of us know murder to be wrong, long prior to the sanction. Obvious.
Sanction is, only, considered, long after society has decided that the act is wrong.
The sanction never decides that something is wrong. That would be impossible. The act, itself, is determined wrong and, only, thereafter, do we determine what sanction is proportional to that wrongful act.
Even with no sanction or no one arrested, everyone knows that committing murder is wrong.
We execute guilty murderers who have murdered innocent people. The difference between crime and punishment, guilty murderers and their innocent victims is very clear to most.
The moral confusion exists when people, blindly, accept the amoral and immoral position that all killings are equal.
The anti-death penalty folks are just looking at an act — “killing” — and saying all killings are the same.
Only an amoral person would equate acts, without considering the purpose behind them.
For those, like some anti-death penalty folks, who believe all killing is morally equivalent, they would equate the slaughter of 6 million innocent Jews and 6-7 million additional innocents with the execution of those guilty murderers committing that slaughter.
They would also equate the rape and murder of children with the execution of the rapist/murderer.
This is what the anti-death penalty folks do, morally equate killing (murder) with the punishment for that murder, another killing (execution).
For such anti-death penalty folks to be consistent, they must also equate holding people against their will (illegal kidnapping) with the sanction for it, the holding people against their will (legal incarceration) or the taking money away from people (illegal robbery) with a sanction for that, taking money away from people (legal restitution).
All people understand the moral differences, just as the anti-death penalty folks do.
Some anti-death penalty folks are either incapable of knowing the moral differences between crime and punishment, guilty criminals and their innocent victims, or they are knowingly using a dishonest slogan by equating killing (murder) with killing (execution). The later is the most likely.
Either way, it’s time to stop it. It is too grotesque a tool and it is a lie.
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Additional research,w/sources, w/fact checking/vetting & critical thinking, as required of everyone.
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