Dennis Prager

March 15, 2011

Murderers should die

The Torah: Part IV

By Dennis Prager

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The Case for the Torah: Part I / Part II / Part III / Part IV / Part V

Last week, Rhode Island announced that it will release Michael Woodmansee from prison this August, 12 years early, because of “good conduct.” He will have served 28 years of his 40-year sentence.

His crime? In 1975, Woodmansee tortured a neighbor’s 5-year-old son to death.

In addition to a boy dying under torture, a family was destroyed. First, the family endured eight years not knowing what had happened to their child — he had simply disappeared. When they finally found out what happened, the news was every parent’s worst nightmare come true — their son had not only been murdered, but had been made to suffer unspeakably. According to the boy’s older sister, the father became an alcoholic and the mother became chronically depressed. Asked on television how her childhood was, the daughter responded, “I didn’t have a childhood.”

For reasons that have always eluded me, many people believe that it is right, compassionate, just and moral to keep people like Woodmansee alive. It has long been clear to me that there is almost no issue — not abortion, same-sex marriage, the size of government, the war in Iraq, taxation, God’s existence, you name it — for which the gulf between people on opposite sides of an issue is as unbridgeable as on the issue of the death penalty for murderers.

Those of us who are for the death penalty are sickened that this man was not killed when first convicted. It sickens us that the family had to live with the daily reality that the torturer and murderer of their son was enjoying his meals, watching TV and sharing the camaraderie of his fellow inmates.

Anyone not sickened by all this not only has a different moral compass from proponents of the death penalty, he or she also has a different heart. Wanting to see all murderers kept alive is to inhabit a different emotional and moral universe from that of the proponents of the death penalty —and from that of the Torah..

Nor am I persuaded by the argument that we cannot execute any murderer, no matter how certain his guilt, because we might execute an innocent person. In America, that is so rare (if it has happened at all in the last half century) that the chances of executing an innocent person — actually executing an innocent person, not sentencing an innocent person to death — are much fewer than the chances of a convicted murderer murdering another prisoner, or murdering a prison guard, or escaping and murdering someone outside of prison. In other words, more innocents die with no capital punishment than with it.

In any event, the vast majority of death penalty opponents are against it even when there is no doubt about the murderer’s guilt. They think the world is a better place if all murderers are allowed to keep their lives.

The Torah differs with them.

It so differs with them that putting murderers to death is the only law to appear in all five books of the Torah. The Torah regards putting premeditated murderers to death as foundational to a decent society. Any Jew or non-Jew can say the Torah is dead wrong here, but no honest person can deny that the Torah views executing murderers as central to a decent society.

Yes, the Torah lists the death penalty for other offences as well, but (a) none are in all five books, (b) the death penalty for murder is one of the basic moral laws God reveals to Noah, and (c) no other time in the Torah is the death penalty declared a fundamental moral value: “Whoever sheds human blood, by humans shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made the human.” The Torah asserts the truism that keeping all murderers alive cheapens the value of human life.

In the Torah, there is no other punishment, capital or otherwise, that has anywhere near the significance of the death penalty for murder. Even accidental homicide is punished — though of course not by death — because the taking of a human life is that serious. That is why an animal — even though it has no moral free will — is also put to death if it kills a person. Human life is cheapened when takers of human life are allowed to keep their own life, let alone be released from prison after 29 years.

Many Jewish opponents of the death penalty point to Israel, which has disallowed capital punishment since its establishment.

That argument, however, is entirely irrelevant. Israel was founded by Jews who took their values from the European Enlightenment, not from the Torah, and that is why they banned capital punishment in Israel.

Moreover, Israel’s actual behavior argues for support of, not opposition to, the death penalty.

Example one: Israel executed Adolf Eichmann. Keeping Eichmann alive would have mocked the millions of Jews whose murders he oversaw. But executing Eichmann put Israel in a morally untenable position. It means that a man who murders millions deserves to die, but a man who murders five people or one person doesn’t.

Question: How, pray tell, was it morally right to kill Eichmann, but morally wrong to kill Woodmansee?

Example two: Israel made sure to kill every terrorist involved in the Munich massacre of the Israeli Olympic team. If that wasn’t the death penalty for murder, then it was simply vengeance.

Example three: That Yigal Amir, the murderer of Yitzchak Rabin, was not put to death is a moral scandal. Because Israel was founded largely by a socialist party with European liberal values, Amir has been allowed to marry and to father a child. Which is more morally obscene — executing Amir or allowing him to live, marry, and father a child?

Yes, I know the rabbis, a thousand years after the Torah, made capital punishment for murder almost impossible. They did so because they lived among the Romans, who executed hundreds of innocent people on a good day. And they did so when there was no Jewish society in which to apply their ruling; their ruling was purely theoretical.

So, once again, I’ll take the Torah’s values over the progressives’. Because if no murderer is ever put to death, murder — even the torture-murder of a little boy — isn’t particularly evil. And what does it say about a society that sentences a Madoff to 200 years in prison and a Woodmansee to 40 (less 12 for “good conduct”)?

Dennis Prager’s nationally syndicated radio talk show is heard in Los Angeles on KRLA (AM 870) 9 a.m. to noon. His latest project is the Internet-based Prager University (www.prageru.com).

A version of this article appeared in print.

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Well Dennis, this is just what I expected from someone brain-washed in an Orthodox Yeshiva.  First of all when you continually and arrogantly state, ‘The Torah says…’, you should state either, “In my opinion,’ or ‘The rabbis tell us.’  I can assure you though, with the track record of 6 million dead Jews and all the previous success these 4-eyed creeps have brought to the Jewish world, I would not trust them to give me the correct time of day.  But that is just me.  Unlike cowards and bullies like yourself, I don’t wait for others to lead, especially not from the Jewish world.

Comment by theleviteline.com on 3/17/11 at 1:17 pm

As far as the Torah advocating or demanding the death penalty, the 10 Commandments are quite clear, ‘Thou Shalt Not Kill (Murder).’  I can think of little else that could be considered murder than to take the life of a helpless convict.  Now arrogant and self-righteous people like yourself and your creepy Orthodox rabbis can interpret and invert the whole peaceful message of God’s Law as you’re forefathers have done since the beginning.  I will not follow along with you losers and I will tell you just how disgusting I think you and the other Orthodox are.  The reason I attack is I know the futility of debating right-wingers and their warped moral compasses.

Comment by theleviteline.com on 3/17/11 at 1:26 pm

The title of your column is interesting though, “Murderers Should Die.’  Just as the Torah repeatedly states, ‘should be put to death.’  Yes, many actions which people engage in are deserving of death.  Since God wrote these laws, obviously God could put these people to death.  Except if you have any decency and understanding of God, than you would understand that God’s intention is not for man,  nor God to be puttin’ people to death left and right.  As people turn to God, they can begin to cleanse themselves.  However always standing in the way are the arrogant, self-righteous like yourself, the real murderers… of people’s souls.

Comment by theleviteline.com on 3/17/11 at 1:33 pm

Christianity has generally viewed Jewish law as the law of death and thanks the proud upholders of these traditions, like yourself, the Christians are correct.  The problem, however is not the Torah, is not God, it is people like you and your creepy, ugly traditional Jewish rabbinic leaders.  As I’ve stated here before, the real enemy of the Jew is his fellow Jew.  You’ve proven this for 3 millenia and I have 100% faith that you will continue to prove this.  Heck you even pat yourselves on the back and are proud of your heritage and history.

Comment by theleviteline.com on 3/17/11 at 2:43 pm

I guess if 7 or 8 million or more Jews had been mass-murdered that you folks could kvell even more.  Ipso facto, you are the enemy of yourselves.  It is sick, sickening and embarassing.  However, since I am no longer a Jew, as only I will define who I am, I can now begin to express these obvious truths.  Now go ahead and call me all your little names and try to label me.  1) I take it from whence it comes.
2) I really don’t give a damn what you cowards say or think about me.
3) In fact as you see, I will tell you what I think of you.

Comment by theleviteline.com on 3/17/11 at 2:43 pm

There are many reasons to be for the death penalty, but when Dennis tries to base his opinion on the Torah, he runs into a problem: the Torah contains dozens of death-penalty offenses. So we get a lengthy explanation of why the Torah’s prohibition against other offenses is so much less important than the one against murder. 

So which is it? Do you follow the Torah, or do you pick and choose which parts to follow and which parts to ignore?

Comment by Susannah on 3/18/11 at 8:10 am

To prove your point, all we have study is the progressive raising of the bar for qualifying for the death penalty.

In many states, the crime has to be “heinous”. Even the killing of a prison guard, for which a lifer can’t be given any worse punishment, isn’t heinous enough. We see how untenable and hypocritical these positions are.

Western society’s version of eyewitness testimony falls woefully short of providing enough surety to preclude convicting an innocent man, and is too easily subverted. Yet it has been used as the sole criteria. It must be corroborated with timelines, opportunity, and other circumstantial or direct evidence.

Comment by jimmy37 on 3/31/11 at 1:24 pm

When the Rabbi Akiva declared almost two millennia ago that “if we had been on the Sanhedrin, no one would ever have been executed,” he was at once speaking prophetically and offering an opinion in accord with a very striking precedent. Let us consider the case of famous Hebrew offender who committed a premeditated murder in the course of another capital felony: King David! Yet his life was spared, and his hard path of repentance and restitution is recorded in the Book of Psalms. Today, by rejecting the death penalty and imposing life without parole for the most heinous murders, we can affirm the inviolability of human life without ourselves transgressing it.

Comment by Margo Schulter on 4/09/11 at 6:41 pm

These wacky liberals like Margo, someone should put them all to death.  I’m sure Dennis and his Yeshiva bullies/cowards will do the trick.  I do pray for the Orthodox and may God damn you and your warped murderous ideas.  You really are sickening, evil, ugly and a shanda.  You make me ashamed to be a Jew and hence, since I will and do define who I am (not my mother), I am no longer a Jew.  So excommunicate me all you want like the bully b*stards you are, I really don’t care to hear from y’all anyway.  However you will NOT shut me up very easily.

Comment by theleviteline.com on 4/10/11 at 12:11 pm

I was looking forward to seeing the comments here—looking at and participating in a healthy debate over this issue.  Instead I see a large amount of hate coming from someone who fancies himself a Levite.  I wonder if he is even aware that the tribe of Levi would have been exactly the people that he would be railing against 3 millenia ago, as they were the priests?  Talk about irony!

I have learned a long time ago that while it is very entertaining to see a progressive/communist behaving stereotypically, even I know that there is no sense debating someone that takes that much pleasure in being wrong.

It is a strange game.  The only winning move is not to play.

Comment by Steven Falken on 5/03/11 at 5:33 pm

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