Interesting thought

Can't say I totally agree with the following letter to the editor, which appeared in today's Lima (Ohio) News. But it's an interesting perspective:

New way to use death penalty
Recent executions and their associated problems have caused me to
reconsider the question of capital punishment. As a Christian, I cannot deny
government has the right to impose the death penalty on society’s worst
offenders. The scriptural references, even in the New Testament, are too
numerous to ignore.

Still, recent overturns in capital and extended sentence cases have made it
evident that something is lacking in our judicial process; as usual, the Bible
has the answer for us.

What should society do when we determine a prisoner has been wrongly
convicted through contrived evidence or when we find pertinent evidence that
would have freed an individual has been swept under the rug by a prosecutor
whose main interest is advancing his career rather than seeing to the
administration of social justice? The answer can be found in Deuteronomy,
Chapter 19. There we are told, in cases such as these, the offender should
receive the very same sentence he sought to have imposed upon the innocent man:
“And thine eye shall not pity; but life shall go for life, eye for eye, tooth
for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.”

This single provision would go a great distance toward eliminating such
miscarriages of justice and restoring some sense of equity to our failing
judicial system. It wouldn’t fix all of the problems we’re experiencing, but
accountability is certainly a fine place to start.
MARK WELLER, Wapakoneta