Punishment Paradox : Execution: Supporters and opponents of the death penalty cite biblical passages to justify their stands.

“An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” So goes the often-quoted ancient biblical code of justice and retribution in the Old Testament.

But in the New Testament, Jesus says something entirely different:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth’ but I tell you . . . whoever slaps you on your right cheek turn the other to him also.”

This apparent biblical paradox mirrors a split in the religious community over the morality and ethics of capital punishment. Does the first passage, from Deuteronomy 19:21, mean that the Bible condones the death penalty? Or is the second example, from the “Sermon on the Mount” in Matthew 5:38, truer to God’s teachings? How is a devout Christian to decide?

As the execution date of Robert Alton Harris draws near, both pro- and anti-death penalty forces are recalling these and other Scripture passages to rationalize their positions.

Harris, 39, has been sentenced to die in the gas chamber Tuesday for the July 5, 1978, murders of two 16-year-old boys in San Diego. A jury found him guilty of forcing the boys to drive their car to an isolated spot, shooting them, then finishing their half-eaten hamburgers. Harris and his brother Daniel used the boys’ car in a bank robbery.

Ironically, Harris’ execution is scheduled to occur barely a day after Easter--the Christian holiday commemorating the Resurrection of Christ, who Christians believe was a victim of capital punishment.

Although theological considerations have generally not been the main arguments for or against Harris’ execution, the Bible is a weapon that has been frequently employed by both camps in the highly charged debate.

“I think what happens is that people already have their own values and conclusions, then they go back to the Bible to find the evidence,” said Marvin Meyer, a professor of religion at Chapman College in Orange County and a death penalty opponent. “But you can prove all sorts of things by manipulating the text and taking it out of context. People used the Bible to justify slavery.”

Most of the outcry comes from within the Catholic clergy. Cardinal Roger M. Mahony in Los Angeles has stated the Catholic church’s unequivocal opposition.

San Francisco Archbishop John Quinn has appealed to Gov. Pete Wilson to cancel the execution. Even Mother Teresa, the Catholic nun famous for feeding India’s poor, has joined the chorus.

A virtual listing of “who’s who” in other mainline Christian and Jewish denominations have also issued statements condemning the death penalty: The World Council of Churches. The Organization of Conservative Rabbis. The Northern California Ecumenical Council.

Amnesty International and other death penalty foes have printed up shock posters depicting Jesus on the cross, with the caption: “Maybe the death penalty should have been abolished a long time ago.”

Despite the activism on the part of the clergy, there is a tremendous gap between the pulpit and the pews.

According to a recent California Poll, a majority of people who consider themselves to be spiritually minded support the death penalty. The poll found 88% of Protestants and 77% of Catholics in favor of capital punishment. (The margin of error was 4%. Jews and other people with religious affiliations other than Protestant or Catholic were not sampled in large enough numbers to provide an accurate measure of their opinion.)

“There is such an overwhelming majority of Californians who favor the death penalty that it doesn’t really matter what their religious background is,” said Mark DiCamillo, associate director of the California Poll.

Consequently, many religious leaders find themselves in an uncomfortable situation as bearers of an extremely unpopular message.

“In upholding this position, we recognize that we are clearly in the minority,” Mahony said. “Nonetheless, moral and ethical principles cannot and will not be dictated by public opinion polls.”

The Rev. Bill Fling, one of the few religious leaders to publicly support the death penalty, said the opposition has strayed from the teachings of the Bible.

He has been maintaining a vigil in front of San Quentin prison for the last few days--a determined advocate of the death penalty amid a sea of opponents.

“I’ve seen that a lot of these people demonstrating against capital punishment are preachers and I wonder: ‘How can they do that?’ ” said Fling, a Church of Christ pastor in Orangevale, just outside Sacramento. “If people believe the Bible to be the real, inspired word of God, then they believe that capital punishment is ordained by God.”

In a recent interview, Fling cited several biblical verses in support of his theological views.

There is Genesis 9:6: “Who so sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed for in the image of God made he man.”

Or, Numbers 35:16-17: “And if he strike him with an instrument of iron, so that he die, he is a murderer: The murderer shall surely be put to death.”

And, Deuteronomy 19:21, in its extended version.

“And thine eye shall not pity but life shall go for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.”

“All of these things repeated time after time show that it was God’s view that a murderer has to pay with his life,” Fling said. “Not only does God (punish) people with death in the Bible but he commands man to do that to murderers because human life is sacred and God made us in his image.”

However, death penalty foes counter that this view strikes at the core of the Christian doctrine of forgiveness. Christians learn that God sacrificed his son, Jesus Christ, to atone for the sins of mankind. The Bible says Jesus asked God to forgive his killers because “they know not what they do.” Death penalty opponents have urged Gov. Pete Wilson to spare Harris “as Jesus would have done,” but Wilson rejected Harris’ clemency plea.

Fling acknowledges that a man can receive divine forgiveness for his sins if he repents. “But forgiveness from God means that the man won’t have to suffer the next death penalty, which is hell,” Fling said. “Jesus never made forgiveness a license for a pardon from a civil penalty for murder.”

The San Quentin chaplain who has counseled Harris for the last nine years agrees that divine forgiveness cannot erase the murders or the anguish that Harris has inflicted on the families of his victims.

Yet the Rev. Earl Smith said in an interview this week that he does not believe that Harris should be executed. He cited the abuse that Harris received as a child and the remorse he has shown during prison Bible study meetings as reasons Wilson should have spared him.

Referring to the harsh code set out in Deuteronomy, Smith said: “If we take the eye after the victim has expired, who are we taking the eye for? When we get it, does it replace that which has been taken? I can’t see where it has.”

The Deuteronomy verse is probably the passage most often quoted in support of the death penalty. At Harris’ clemency hearing Wednesday, Andy Mayeski, brother of one victim, referred to it in a letter to Gov. Wilson urging that the execution go forward.

According to historians, the “eye for an eye” principle, formally known as lex talionis , originated in ancient Babylon around 1792 BC. It comes from the Code of Hammurabi, a set of 282 case laws that covered a range of civil and criminal issues from slavery to murder.

Criminal penalties were by no means uniform: They depended upon not only the severity of the offense but the status of the wrongdoer as well.

The basic idea of lex talionis was that a criminal should receive the same injuries that he inflicted upon his victim as his punishment. In early Palestine, the dispute was usually settled privately between the victim and the accused, not by the state.

Eventually, the leaders decided that two people could not suffer the exact same bodily injuries and changed the law. From then on, a person could no longer demand an eye from the person who caused the loss of his eye but could demand the monetary value of his eye. According to historians, by 5th Century BC, fines had begun to replace lex talionis in most instances.

Death penalty opponents maintain that this ancient law, taken in its proper biblical context, was never meant to endorse capital punishment.

Sister Mary Anne Vincent, a Los Angeles nun whose brother was murdered 10 years ago, believes that the law was aimed at keeping violence from escalating at a time when people were routinely put to death for killing a neighbor’s livestock.

“This was something written more than 1,000 years before Christ in a time when ‘an eye for an eye’ was an improvement on the existing situation,” said Vincent, who opposes the death penalty. “What God was saying was, let’s have quid pro quo. You don’t kill someone because they crippled your cow or knocked out your tooth. If they knock out your tooth, knock out theirs.”

In fact, said the Rev. Joe M. Doss, an Episcopal priest in Palo Alto, some of the most famous figures in biblical history were murderers. These included Moses, who delivered the Jews out of Egypt, and David, one of the great Kings of ancient Israel. Both were forgiven by God after repenting for their crimes.

According to the Bible, David sent Uriah, a soldier in his army, to the front lines in the hopes that he would be killed because David had impregnated the man’s wife, Bathsheba. Uriah, who had just returned home from another long battle, had not had sex with his wife in a long time and David feared that his secret would be exposed.

After Uriah was killed, God forced David to wander the Earth pursued by his enemies. Eventually, David repented and God allowed him to return to his kingdom.

Doss, the founder of Death Penalty Focus, an organization working to abolish capital punishment, believes that David’s saga is a strong biblical argument against the death penalty.

“The Gospel has the power to transform anyone’s life no matter how terrible,” Doss said. “Capital punishment says we don’t believe it and this strikes at the heart of the Gospel.”

Death penalty foes also cite John 8:1-11 to support their cause.

The passages tell the story of a woman who was arrested for adultery. She was brought before Jesus by the Scribes and Pharisees, who reminded Jesus that under Mosaic law, the woman must be stoned to death.

However, Jesus told them: “He that is without sin among you, let them cast the first stone.”

But no one did, and, according to the passage, “when they heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, (they) went out one by one, beginning at the eldest . . . and Jesus was left alone (with) the woman standing in his midst.”’

The Rev. Ralph Fowler knows better than most how the theological arguments over the death penalty play out in real life. An Assemblies of God pastor from Arizona, Fowler was among the witnesses at the April 6 execution of 43-year-old Donald Eugene Harding, who was sentenced to die for killing three businessmen in 1980. Fowler, who once considered himself a “law and order man,” said the “nightmarish” 10-minute, 32-second ordeal has made him rethink his position.

“I don’t have all the answers,” said Fowler, who served as Harding’s pastor for nine months before his death. “But my statement to people who’ve never been to an execution is when you’re far away from the details, it’s a lot easier to be dogmatic on things.”

He is not the first clergy member to be deeply affected by an execution.

The late Byron E. Eshelman, who served as San Quentin’s Death Row chaplain in the 1950s and 1960s, became an ardent critic of the death penalty.

During each execution, Eshelman wrote in his 1962 book, “Death Row Chaplain,” he would say a silent prayer.

“It would end with words only a little different from those spoken on the cross,” Eshelman wrote. “Oh God, have mercy upon this morning as we prepare to take the life of this man. . . . Father, forgive us, for we know not what we do.”

Religious Preference and the Death Penalty

The California Poll, directed by Mervin Field, surveyed 615 California adults in March and found overwhelming support for capital punishment, regardless of religious preference. The margin of error is 4.1%.

Because the percentages polled of Jews and people with religious affiliations other than Protestant or Catholic were smaller than the margin of error, their views could not be measured with any degree of accuracy.

FAVOR OPPOSE NO OPINION All Californians 80% 14% 6% Protestants 88% 9% 3% Catholics 77% 14% 9% No Religious Preference 71% 26% 3%

SOURCE: The California Poll, March, 1992