Parenting Advice From Joy Berry: Capital Punishment

I can’t get Byrd and Melanie Billings off of my mind. The ruthless killing of two incredible people, parents of 16 children, 12 of whom they adopted, many with special needs, is overwhelming. This senseless tragedy becomes even more egregious in light of the recent discovery that the apparent motive for the crime was financial gain.

Murdering the Billingses for money was like tossing aside the Krupp’s Diamond in favor of a copper penny. The loss of Byrd and Melanie to their biological and adopted children is incalculable. And so is the enormous loss for the society as a whole.

More then ever, we need more problem-solvers rather than problems. And no one fit better into the first category than the Billingses.

Initially, situations like these cause me to rethink my pacifist position on capital punishment. But then, when my thoughts find their way back to the underlying reasons people commit such heinous crimes, I remember why I would never be willing to throw the switch.

When my son was in the eighth grade, he wrote a report on capital punishment. It was a life-altering experience for both him and me. Up to that point, I had been part of a very conservative eye-for-an-eye-and-tooth-for-a-tooth community that was in favor of capital punishment.

For his main research, I took my son to San Quentin State Prison in Northern California where he interviewed and videotaped the “Death Row Chaplain,” the author of a book with the same name.

Before the interview, my son and I read the chaplain’s moving book—which begins on the morning of an execution and provides a minute-by-minute account of the time up to and immediately following the execution. In his book, the chaplain suggests that, unless one is willing to throw the switch, one should not advocate capital punishment.

Eventually my son became a successful, world-class singer, songwriter, musician, and performer. His music is meaningful and inspiring. In one song he asks, “Why do we kill people, who kill people, to show people that killing people is wrong?” In the same song he asserts, “What good is an eye-for-an-eye when it leaves the whole world blind.”

In the end, crazy people killing good people is wrong. But to me, good people killing crazy people is worse. As my son’s music suggests, there’s simply got to be a better way to stop pointless killings like the ones involving Melanie and Byrd Billings. One hopes that a world that can put people on the moon will find that way—soon.