Capital punishment, the death penalty, has always been controversial. 

There are those who believe if a person murders someone, the murderer’s life should be forfeited. 

There are those who believe a civilized society should not condone government-sanctioned executions.

While discussions about the death penalty often center around religion and personal faith, it is not simple. Even people of faith have vastly different views surrounding the death penalty. 

For example, some believe in the Old Testament eye for an eye while others express their belief that in the New Testament Jesus not only advocated forgiveness but was wrongly convicted and an innocent victim of capital punishment.

Others claim if the state is going to execute people, it should at least do it expediently, if not quickly. 

Condemned inmates sit on death row, often, decades after being sentenced to death.

While understandably, people whose family members have been murdered would like to see the sentence carried out as soon as possible, there should be no mad dash to execution.

Appeals are a necessary part of the process. 

Given the number of inmates serving life sentences who are exonerated years, and yes, even decades later, death penalty appeals serve as safeguards to ensure the state does not execute a wrongly convicted person. 

In several states, DNA testing has exonerated some death-row inmates. Had it not been for appeals in these cases, innocent people would have been executed for crimes they did not commit.

There is no need to rush carrying out the death penalty. 

Death row inmates are not going anywhere. 

They are locked down in a maximum security prison.

While the appeals system can be abused, and it can drag out for decades, it serves as a safeguard that the state does not execute an innocent person.

Justice is not vengeance. 

It should not be the state’s place to rush the “fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword.” As the old saying notes, “The wheels of justice turn slowly but grind exceedingly fine.” 

And that’s how it should be.

For those guided by what was once commonly referred to as a Judeo-Christian ethic, in the Bible justice means to make right. 

Neither a swift execution nor a decades-long wait will bring a murder victim back. But the wait may ensure that the right thing happens. That justice is served.