If you knew you were gonna spend life in prison
- Thread starter Lithp
- Start date
Hmmm, if you were innocent, what good would it do to kill someone, to commit a crime? If you did kill someone, you might as well stay and serve the sentence.
I think I'd run though, even though common sense tells me the best course would be to rely on appeals.
Absolutely, even if guilty.
Why? Because the state commits a sin if it executes someone in a condition where it knows the incarceration is sufficient remedy to prevent a person from being a threat to society. The Catechism rule goes on to say that such a case where the safety cannot be guaranteed should be a very rare occurance in these days of efficient prison systems. By allowing my/yourself to submit to an entity's obstinate will to disobey the will of God, I/we, in the spirit of fraternal correction, must do everything in my/our power to prevent it from carrying out that sin. The rule puts the
situation in the jurisdiction of self defense for the offender, as the entity places it'self out of the bounds of it's limitations.
C2267 - Assuming that the guilty party's identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.
If, however, non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people's safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means, as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.
Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm - without definitely taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself - the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity "are very rare, if not practically nonexistent."
AndyF