THOSE advocating the death penalty for the US soldier responsible for killing 16 villagers in Afghanistan would do well to read Portia’s speech, The quality of mercy”, from William Shakespear’s “The Merchant of Venice.” It is perhaps the best known “positive” representation of a lawyer in poetry. It serves, primarily, as a reminder that all people are called upon to work within the man-made law to give effect to the “higher law” which is, mercy, “an attribute to God himself”.
Shakespeare reminds us all – especially those whose duty it is to uphold the law – that “Though justice be thy plea, consider this, that, in the course of justice, none of us should see salvation: we do pray for mercy; and that same prayer doth teach us all to render The deeds of mercy.”
Criminals are human persons who, despite their crime, deserve to be treated with respect and dignity. God’s mission is to bring salvation to all men and women, excluding no one. His salvation is not imposed but reaches us through acts of love, mercy and forgiveness that we ourselves can carry out.
There is no moral justification for imposing a sentence of death. Violence begets violence both in our hearts and in our actions. By continuing the tradition of responding to killing with state-sanctioned killing, we rob ourselves of moral consistency and perpetuate that which we seek to sanction.