Obviously, also, God, Who knows the value of human life better than anyone, saw no difficulty in commanding the death penalty as a just punishment for exceptionally serious crimes. This has always been the traditional teaching of the Catholic Church. On the other hand, Jesus refused to condemn the woman caught in adultery, because death is not a proportionate punishment for adultery, as it is for malicious murder. In both cases, in the Old and New Testament, God s approval of capital punishment is a matter of justice, with the full knowledge of the value of human life. That should tell us something about what our own thinking should be.
Any child can answer that.
If you threaten a child with punishment and fail to fulfill your threat, the child soon learns to disregard the threat. The same is true of our legal system, where the threat of death for serious crimes is avoided, delayed, and most often not carried out. This is not the case in Malaysia, where illegal use and selling of drugs is a capital offense, punished by death. Malaysia has no drug problem as we do here in the U.S., because the death sentence for illegal use and selling of drugs is swiftly carried out. That seems to be harsh to us, but by their fruits you shall know them.