Having read one or two John Grisham's some years ago and being an obsessive I try to read all he writes. I think this is the latest. I took it on the plane to Kenya. It focuses on the death penalty as apparently practiced in Texas and makes for a very good and easy read. You get both a good story and a mildly stimulating opportunity to think over some of the issues with regard to that matter. A bonus for me was perhaps that the hero is a clergyman (a Lutheran minister). That gave Grisham (a Baptist I believe but decidedly liberal) opportunity to say one or two interesting things that I might share in a separate blog. It also helped with the title, I guess. I also spotted a brief namecheck for Nick Needham (a detective mentioned at the beginning and end adn nothing to do with the Inverness pastor adn church historian).
Have you read the A Saint on Death Row: The Story of Dominique Green by Thomas Cahill [http://amzn.to/jrk533]? A true story of a young man on death row in Texas who was visited by the author. There is also a clergy man in the tale. Desmond Tutu. This book made me rethink/sharpen my position on capital punishment. If a nation is not in covenant with God or there isn't at least an overwhelming Christian consensus executing people [often African Americans and Hispanics] with no physical evidence or witnesses whilst good lawyers get middle class white kids off the hook is gross injustice.
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ReplyDeleteThe Christian case for Capital punishment does not rest on the Mosaic Covenant but the Noahic - a covenant not with a redeemed covenanted people but with humanity - whoso sheds a man's blood by man shall his blood be shed...
That said, I agree, the problem is not so much capital punishment as the fair administration of it. Inequity and miscarriages of justice make capital punishment difficult.
I thik I'm with you both on this. Capital punishment - yes. As currently practiced in Texas (if Grisham is at all correct) - no. It's interesting how the Osama deathhas gone down so well, though there have been murmurs.
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