Bryan Fischer is outraged by the news that the trial of Jared Loughner is going to be moved from Tucson, Arizona, to San Diego, California because moving the trial is “contrary to biblical concepts of justice“:
Innocent blood was shed in Tucson, and the public servants of Tucson should be entrusted with the responsibility and authority to execute justice on behalf of the victims and their families.
It is a perversion of justice to deprive this community of the ability to deal with the monstrous act of evil. The murders of six innocent people by the Marxist-loving, Hitler-loving, Bible-hating, atheistic pothead radical leftwinger Loughner is traumatic enough on a city. Now to be deprived of the authority to see for themselves that justice is done is a second injustice.
In the ancient civil code of Israel, the community in which the murder had been committed had the responsibility to carry out justice. The standards of evidence were very high – no one could be sentenced to death without the testimony of two or three eyewitnesses – but when the standard had been met, execution followed.
It’s worth nothing, by the way, that if biblical standards of evidence were still followed in America’s judicial system, as they once were, you would have only an infinitesimal chance of sending an innocent man to death row. Too many are sentenced to die or to long prison terms today based on the testimony of a single witness. That’s exactly how you get innocent people sent away for life. Once again, the Bible is the solution, not the problem.
The only exception was that when a man killed another man unintentionally – the death was accidental – he could flee for safety to a city of refuge until his trial was held. (It’s worthy of note that there was no system of incarceration in ancient Israel. A crime against property was taken care of through restitution plus a substantial penalty. A crime against life was taken care of through execution. Think of the money we could save if we returned to something approximating this simple but elegant system of justice.)
Is anyone surprised that Fischer wants to see our justice system modeled on these “simple” Biblical principles which demand that adulterers, gays, those who curse their parents and those who worship other gods be put to death?
We can just add this to Fischer’s long history of demanding that America’s legal system needs to operate according to Old Testament principles and practices.
