Are We Not Better Than This?

It’s supposed to be a cold, soggy weekend, but stepping outside this early morning, it felt cool and although there are clouds on the horizon, it’s still dry.  The ground is dry, only a bit of the morning dew remaining.  Who knows?  Maybe we will get the rain we need.  Field planting is behind schedule with the price of fertilizers rising.

While we look for the spring weather we want, yesterday in a 52-document on the death penalty, the DOJ announced it would begin executions by firing squad. There are many ways the state uses to kill those sentenced to death:  electrocution, lethal injection among others. Hanging used to be a favored mechanism. 

Of course, we don’t do public executions as in days gone by.  Now we sequester the one to be executed behind walls with a select group of witnesses so we don’t see the horror of it. Now that execution by firing squad to be reinstituted, we must ask how will the member of the squad be selected?  Or the cleaning quad to clean up the blood?

Prayer for the Day

You call us, O God, to be a people of life,

   But we create a culture of death around us;

You call us, O Lord, to be both loving and gentle,

   But we ask how in a world of violence?

Hold us to your call and enlarge our imagination,

   So we can create a world that reflects your call.

In the name of the One who opens our minds,

    Even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.

Thoughts for the Day

Execution by firing squad has a long history in the United States. Its first use took place in 1608 in the Virginia Jamestown colony.189 More than 250 years later, in 1878, the Supreme Court held in a unanimous opinion that the firing squad does not offend the Constitution’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishments.

            Restoring and Strengthening the Federal Death Penalty, USDOJ (4/24/2026)

The sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty has found no reli­able evi­dence of the death penal­ty being a deter­rent to homicides…Murder rates are and have been inde­pen­dent of the impo­si­tion of the death penal­ty of the insti­tu­tion of hav­ing a death penalty.

          Wyandotte County District Judge Bill Klapper, in an April 2025, order in the com­bined cas­es of Hugo Villanueva-Morales and Antoine Fielder.

Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.

            Paul in Romans 12:19