Crime and Punishment

Three Strikes About to Bite Hard

David Garrett, former ACT MP
Republished from Kiwiblog

When the three strikes (3S) bill was making its way through parliament I told Clayton Cosgrove – in response to an interjection – that it might be ten to fifteen years before 3S would really start to bite. Although Cosgrove immediately tried to make capital from my answer, I was not  unhappy with that prediction – in fact I thought it a little optimistic. In my view we have taken a generation to get into the mess we are in with violent offending, and it might take a generation to reverse it. It seems I was unduly pessimistic.

Unless there are extremely good reasons which would preclude such a result, we are about to get our first  “strike” offender sentenced to Life Without Parole (“LWOP”) for murder as a second strike.  Justin Vance Turner, aged 28, has pleaded guilty to murder. It is his second “strike” offence, and accordingly, he should be sentenced to LWOP in accordance with s.86E (2) of the Sentencing Act. That section requires that a stage two offender guilty of murder should serve a sentence of LWOP “unless the court is satisfied that given the circumstances of the offence and the offender, it would be manifestly unjust to do so.”

The “manifestly unjust” provision was one of the conditions the National Party required in order for them to support the 3S Bill beyond first reading.
It did not take long for ACT to agree to the amendment. The words “unless…manifestly unjust” have already been defined in case law. It is a very high hurdle to surmount. If for nothing else, Justice Graham Lang’s sentence notes will be pored over by everyone interested in 3S to see what he says about that phrase in the 3S context.

So what  “circumstances of the offence and the offender”  could cause Justice Lang to sentence to life imprisonment with a finite minimum Non Parole Period (NPP) instead of LWOP? As for the offence, in my respectful view there is absolutely nothing which would justify giving Turner the benefit of the “manifestly unjust” proviso. If the news report is accurate, the hapless victim – a homeless man – was kicked and punched until unconscious, and then Turner “continued stomping on him with enough force that  his head bounced off the floor.”

Given that Turner told police his intent was to kill, it would seem he had little choice but to plead guilty – although I suspect the motivation for the plea at an early stage (the trial was to begin on 1 December) was to try to avoid LWOP on the basis of an early guilty plea. Again in my respectful view, that is no reason to depart from the presumption created by s. 86E (2). Nothing in the 3S provisions of the Sentencing Act suggest early guilty pleas should be a factor in sentence.

What about the “circumstances of the offender”? Because of privacy laws we know little about him other than he has a first strike to his name  for serious  violent offending. There is a suggestion from the terms of the remand that his fitness to plead may have been an issue, but clearly that is no longer the case.

Again in my respectful view, if the court was to find that because of some psychological condition falling short of a “disease of the mind” which would be a reason for an acquittal (Turner was prone to episodes of extreme violence), this ought to be even more reason to lock him up for the rest of his life. It is clear from his actions that he is a menace to society, and given his age, he will be for a long time.

One option the Judge has is to decline to impose LWOP, but to give a very lengthy NPP – say thirty or even forty years. If the Judge chose to go down that route the sentence would almost certainly be appealed. That is no bad thing, as it would give the Court of Appeal the chance to make some observation on the decision to apply the “manifestly unjust” proviso, and on the length of minimum NPP that ought to be imposed if the proviso was applied.

Finally it should be noted that LWOP as a possible sentence for murder was not  part of the original 3S Bill, although it was passed into law at the same time. At the 2008 election both ACT and the Nats campaigned on making LWOP available for our worst murderers.  From the aftermath of the  2014 election it appears both ACT and the Nats have lost the appetite  for law and order measures. In time, 2008 -10 may come to be regarded as a brief “window”  which opened and allowed our justice system to start dispensing real justice to killers – and their victims.

There are many who would argue that a sentence for the rest of one’s natural life to prison for murder is cruel and unusual.  How could a Christian contemplate such a sentence, let alone support it?  Whilst it does not justify the sentence, or any sentence in itself, a lifetime in prison does not necessarily mean the end of meaningful human life. 

As evidence for that contention, consider the the following video.

Don’t Waste Your Life Sentence

June 6, 2012

• by John Piper
• Topic: The Unwasted Life

The Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, LA, is the largest and historically one of the bloodiest maximum-security prisons in the USA. In 2009, Desiring God and John Piper were invited to Angola to learn about prison life, hear from men who have been radically changed by the gospel, and minister to many of the 5,000 inmates.

Don’t Waste Your Life Sentence confronts you with the realities of inmates who, though their lives appear to have been wasted, often have a greater grasp on eternity than those on the outside.

//player.vimeo.com/video/48640251

Douglas Wilson’s Letter From Moscow

To Curvet and Simper in the Pulpit

Posted on Wednesday, September 18, 2013  

By Douglas Wilson 

Blog and Mablog

The sodomy challenge — and all related sexuality challenges — present us with a glorious opportunity. It is a glorious opportunity that the Spirit has cleverly disguised as a real hazard to our future comfort and well-being.

For the gospel is a troublemaker. Let me explain that first and then come back to the sodomy challenge.
It is quite true that the gospel is good news. It is true that the gospel is a message of salvation and redemption. It is a message of buoyancy and hope. All this is true, and the one who preaches the message should be lifted up by the glory of God’s everlasting kindness to us. It is kindness.

But it is never heard that way initially.
The gospel is a troublemaker because men love their sins, and they hate the very smell of repentance. To slander and misrepresent what it must all mean is for them the work of a moment. The current crop of sodomite cheerleaders hate, loathe, and despise the very idea of real repentance — I mean, they hate it almost as much as the Westboro Baptists do.

God has configured this story in such a way that the first wave of those declaring His everlasting kindness will always meet stiff resistance. So the courage of the messenger is not part of the gospel message, but the gospel message is of such a nature that the courage of the messenger can be considered an essential part of the definition of what it means to preach that gospel.

So to curvet and simper in the pulpit is a travesty. Emo-preaching is not preaching at all. To spend a bunch of time up there worrying about how unbelievers might be “turned off” if we say this, do that, or intimate the other is to be a faithless herald. And our current system of theological education produces this kind of pretty boy preacher by the metric ton. One of the reasons we don’t preach repentance is that we might have to go first.

Then we have the fellows who are like reenactors at some Civil War battle. They have everything — the uniform, the food, the jargon, the companions, the steady advance of the troops, the smoke over the field, and the deafening sound of gunfire. They have lots of powder but no shot. It has the look of true boldness, but the whole thing is a set up.

Then there are also men who have found themselves — somehow — in the midst of a real battle, and so they have developed various ways to brandish and flourish. They are like that soldier that Bierce describes in his Devil’s Dictionary.

VALOR, n. A soldierly compound of vanity, duty and the gambler’s hope.

“Why have you halted?” roared the commander of a division at Chickamauga, who had ordered a charge; “move forward, sir, at once.”

“General,” said the commander of the delinquent brigade, “I am persuaded that any further display of valor by my troops will bring them into collision with the enemy.”

The Bible defines the gospel as the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ, in accordance with the Scriptures (1 Cor. 15:3-4). But how does the Bible describe and define true gospel preaching? One of the essential elements of true preaching is boldness.

Christ set the pattern for us by speaking boldly (John 7:26). He was the one who made the good confession (1 Tim. 6:13).

The boldness of Peter and John was the most notable thing about them (Acts 4:13), especially considering their lack of appropriate accreditation. Boldness was what the early preachers sought after (Acts 4:29), and God fulfilled that particular request (Acts 4:31). The fact that Paul had preached with boldness was one of the arguments that Barnabas used to commend him to the others (Acts 9:27). Right after that, we are told that Paul preached boldly, to such an extent that plots to kill him arose (Acts 9:29). Paul and Barnabas preached boldly to the Jews (Acts 13:46). Paul and Barnabas were enabled by the Spirit to preach boldly over an extended period of time (Acts 14:3). When Apollos was first heard by Aquila and Priscilla, he was speaking boldly in the Lord (Acts 18:26). Paul spoke boldly over the course of three months at Ephesus (Acts 19:8).

Here is a rule of thumb. If it doesn’t require courage and boldness to preach, then perhaps you should consider the possibility that it is not the gospel you are preaching.

“And for me, that utterance may be given unto me, that I may open my mouth boldly, to make known the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in bonds: that therein I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak” (Eph. 6:19-20).

Several things must be pointed out here. The apostle was asking for prayer — after decades of preaching experience — that he would be bold as he unfolded the mystery of the gospel. He was not asking that they pray for his boldness because he had a lifelong struggle with stage fright, or because large crowds gave him butterflies. He wanted boldness because he knew that when he preached the gospel a not unheard of reaction would be a riot.

The second thing is that he says “as I ought to speak.” But one of the first things that will happen to a preacher today who starts preaching boldly is that he will be taken aside by the self-appointed protectors of the “feelings” of unnamed others, and told that he really needs to lay off. Try a little tenderness.

A preacher who declares the message of the gospel boldly is creating an opportunity to display why such boldness was needed. He will be attacked — in the newspaper, or by discernment bloggers, or on the floor of presbytery, or by a close friend and mentor who comes to him privately to say that he had been “deeply hurt” by “way” he had phrased that particular denunciation that has caused “so much” of the “recent and very unnecessary unpleasantness.”

It is not the only measurement, but we should measure by the reaction. Paul preached grace, and he was not an antinomian. But he showed that those who preach grace will be accused of antinomianism (Rom. 3:8). Paul preached the sovereignty of God, and he was not a fatalist. But he demonstrated for us that those who preach the sovereignty of God will be accused of preaching a puppet master God (Rom. 9:19).

In the same way, the Lord Jesus gave all of His preachers and heralds a sturdy walking stick, and He told us to go out into the world and whack all the beehives. This seems counter intuitive to us, and so, instead, we organize walking stick conferences. And we can see a lot of exuberant stick swinging, and some sweet ninja moves in the break-out sessions. We see seminaries collecting confessional walking sticks to put in glass cases, just in case one of them buds like Aaron’s rod did that time. We see lots of walking stick activities.

But what we don’t see are any angry bees.

Douglas Wilson’s Letter From America

The Cootie Contagion Radius 

Liturgy and Worship – Exhortation
Written by Douglas Wilson
Saturday, 02 March 2013

One of the things we have to learn as Christians is that, when it comes to appearances, we clean up real nice. But we also have to remember that this is also true of whited sepulchers. They clean up real nice also.

When new Christians join us, still reeling and recovering from all the problems they have had, they are presented with the same optical illusion presented to children who grow up among us. That illusion tells you that you “are the only sinner here.” If people knew what my thought life was like, they wouldn’t have anything to do with me. If people knew the state of my heart, they would shun me. If people knew my past, they would stay out of the cootie contagion radius.

But all of us are a piece of work.
Remember that your fellowship with God is not dependent upon whether or not other Christians treat you right. Rather, your fellowship with other Christians is dependent upon whether or not God has received you. And if God has received you, He has done so even though He knows all of your sins in exhaustive and excruciating detail. What could you tell Him about the state of your heart that would surprise Him, and make Him call your salvation deal off?

If God were to mark iniquities, no one in this room could stand. But if the Word says, as it does, that with Him is forgiveness of sins, it follows from this that everyone in this room can stand. It is true we must take our stand in the grace of God, but having done so, we may stand.

Getting Beyond Slogans

I’m Tired of Hearing “The Gospel” (Warning: Mild Rant)

Thabiti Anyabwile

. . . . It’s Tuesday.  I’m on vacation (which is why I’m ahead on blogging).  And someone has sent me another note chastising me (mildly) for not concluding a post with “the gospel.”

It doesn’t matter what the topic is.  Men and women struggling to get along in their marriages?  ”The gospel.”  Someone struggling to find work in this economy?  ”Believe ‘the gospel’.”  The mechanic just “fixed” your car–again–and charged you–again–for the same problem you noticed last week?  Think of “the gospel.”  The Russian high court sentencing a punk rock band to two years in prison for a flash mob performance in a Russian Orthodox cathedral?  ”They need the gospel.”  Want rock hard abs?  Try “gospel” aerobics.  I smashed my little toe against the dresser?  All together now, “the gospel.”

It’s ubiquitous.  And it’s becoming an inflexible law.  We dare not face any issue without the requisite hat tip to “the gospel.”  If we do, there’s bound to be someone to write us a ticket for our verbal violation, to insist we missed a “gospel” opportunity.

Power of God Unto Salvation

Raphael,_St_Paul_Preaching_in_Athens_(1515)

Do Preachers Expect a Response to the Preaching of the Gospel?

St Paul expected his hearers to be moved. He so believed in his preaching that he knew that it was “the power of God unto salvation” [Rom. 1:16]. This expectation is a very real part of the presentation of the Gospel. It is a form of faith. A mere preaching which is not accompanied by the expectation of faith, is not a true preaching of the Gospel, because faith is a part of the Gospel. Simply to scatter the seed, with a sort of vague hope that some of it may come up somewhere, is not preaching the gospel. It is indeed a misrepresentation of the gospel. To preach the Gospel requires that the preacher should believe that he is sent to those whom he is addressing at the moment, because God has among them those whom He is at the moment calling: it requires that the speaker should expect a response. —Roland Allen, Missionary Methods—St. Paul’s or Ours? (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1962), p. 74.

Hat Tip: Justin Taylor

"Christian" Social Justice, Part II

Demanding God’s Mercy as a Right

The concept of “social justice” has its origins in socialism.  Fairness or equity in society is believed to require a fundamental equality of outcome: from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.  The achievement of this more just outcome requires the compulsion of the state to redistribute forcibly, through a progressive taxation system, taking from some to bestow upon others.  In doing so the state necessarily claims the right to suspend the eighth and the tenth commandments. 

When Christians buy-in to this non-Christian worldly ideology they often do so because they think it is a means of complying with the biblical injunction to take care of the poor and the needy.  They could not be more mistaken.
  Actually, when Christians are sucked into the “social justice” ends and means they are effectively giving up their responsibilities to their neighbours and delegating them to a pagan state.  They are deciding that the poor belong to the realm of Caesar, not the Christ.

But there is a deeper evil at work.  It is hinted at in the use of the word “justice” with respect to the poor and needy.  Justice has to do with one’s rights and getting what one deserves.  In criminal justice, this means appropriate punishment (or not) depending upon guilt or innocence in committing a crime.  In civil justice, it means (largely) receiving the rights and rewards of contractual obligations, whether explicit or implicit via the general equity of common law.

In the case of welfare, “justice” means that poorer people get the property and support to which they are entitled or to which they are due.  This means that “social justice” teaches that the poor have an implicit and overriding property right in the possessions of others.

In the Scriptures, and the Kingdom there is a sharp disjunction drawn between justice and charity (grace).  Salvation is a matter of grace and divine love, not a right.  If God treated us as we deserve–that is, justly–we would all be condemned.  The law of God, codifying the justice of God, condemns us at every point–not because the law is so high or unreasonable, but because we are wicked from conception.  But God shows mercy and sets His love upon us.  His salvation is a matter of being a free gift, not a just reward.  These concepts are at the heart, and reflect the essence, of the Gospel. 

Care for the poor and providing for them is an expression of charity not justice in the Scriptural world-view.  It is an expression of love of our neighbour.  But when Christians forget this and begin to promulgate compassion for the poor and helping provide for them as a matter of justice not love, they implicitly disbelieve the Gospel itself.  If taking care of the poor is required because of the demands of justice, then the blessings and good gifts of God must be due to human rights and receiving just deserts.  This implicit denial of the Gospel leads the next generation of Christians into explicitly denying the Gospel itself: salvation becomes a matter of receiving what one deserves in the first place.

Whilst this may not appear to have a logical necessity, it certainly has a spiritual one.  Churches and denominations at the forefront of the social Gospel in the early twentieth century within a generation were openly denying the Gospel itself, along with the divinity of the Saviour, the virgin birth, the resurrection, and the life to come.  We believe there is a reason for this development.  The idea of social justice in social and political ethics eventually transferred to the Christian Gospel.

If God’s love can be demanded as a right by the poor, so it can be demanded as a right by the sinner.  The next generation will “make” it so–to their own eternal destruction.

>Trying to Win Unbelief’s Approval

>As Irrelevant as the Outer Mongolian Dung Beetle

As Unbelief grows stronger in our Western culture, which languishes under the curses of the Covenant, Christians are finding out first hand the enmity that exists, by Divine placement and decree, between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent.

A natural response is for Christians to seek peace. The response is biblical in some important ways. Paul says, as far as it is possible, live at peace with all men (Romans 12:18). But more often than we would care to admit the search for peace with Unbelief comes at the expense of the Gospel. Modern Christians want to assure Unbelievers that the Living God loves them and has a wonderful plan for their lives. When this is taken out of a proper biblical context, it makes the Gospel anodyne. It also does nothing to remove the enmity that exists between Belief and Unbelief.

We saw an example of this in much of the public Christian commentary on the Christchurch earthquake. Official Christians emphatically affirmed that the earthquake was not an act of God. Bad news for insurance companies then who routinely attempt to avoid paying out on damages caused by such divine acts. But more seriously what on earth were these erstwhile representatives of God trying to say? If the earthquake was not an act of God, who then caused it? Did amorphous, impersonal nature cause the earthquake? Did the Devil? Did it happen without the express will and purpose of God? If so, then of all people, Christians are the most pitiable on the earth.

We are sure that these official Christians were attempting to communicate that, despite the earthquake, God still loves the people of Christchurch. To suggest otherwise would be to invite their anger and wrath–which Christians would rather not face. But when living at peace with all men leads us to hide the truth something is terribly wrong. Maybe we should remember that several times during His public ministry the Lord Himself–the Prince of Peace–so outraged his listeners that they sought to kill Him. Maybe we should consider that His death occurred because the High Priest and his fellow conspirators hated and despised the Christ for what He said. Maybe we should bear in mind that our Lord clearly told us that if the world hated Him it would also hate us. Maybe we Christians should just harden up, become more faithful to our Lord, and expect the inevitable loathing and anathema, counting it as nothing.

Modern Christians have forgotten, or have preferred not to hear, that the Gospel is bad news before it is good news. Or, to put it another way, the Gospel only becomes good news when people realise just how wretched and lost they truly are. Without that realisation–which the ancient divines called “conviction of sin”, the Gospel is not good news at all–it is an irrelevance at best, a provocative nuisance, at worst. Why tell me God loves me when I could not care less? As useful and relevant to tell me the outer Mongolian dung beetle has nocturnal habits. Quaint, but an irrelevant waste of breath.

In John 3:36 we are told that, “He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.” Now that is very bad news indeed. Christians generally don’t want to say this to Unbelievers, even though they know it is true, because they fear the opprobrium and wrath that would descend upon their head.

Now, to be sure, there is an appropriate time and place for all speech. But when it is time to speak of our relation to the Living God, we must not fail to remind our listener that he abides in and lives under the wrath of God as long as he remains stubborn, independent, and unrepentant. The good news, the Gospel, is that today God will yet be merciful, if he repents of his slights toward God, and seeks His forgiveness offered in Christ. But, tomorrow? Who knows.

This message, this Gospel, cost the Lord His life. Far better that we stand in His steps, instead of lusting for the approbation and approval of Unbelief.

>"Miserable Sinner" Christianity

>A Life of Exultant Joy

B.B. Warfield (1851–1921), Professor of Polemical Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary, wrote an essay in 1920 entitled, “’Miserable-Sinner Christianity’ in the Hands of the Rationalists,” published in The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield, vol. 7, pp. 113-114.

The essay deconstructs the attempts by rationalistic theologians of his day to re-interpret the Gospel of Christ to make salvation a synergistic work between man and God. Here is an excerpt:

We must always be accepted for Christ’s sake, or we cannot ever be accepted at all.This is not true of us only “when we believe.” It is just as true after we have believed. It will continue to be true as long as we live.

Our need of Christ does not cease with our believing; nor does the nature of our relation to Him or to God through Him ever alter, no matter what our attainments in Christian graces or our achievements in Christian behavior may be.

It is always on His “blood and righteousness” alone that we can rest. There is never anything that we are or have or do that can take His place, or that can take a place along with Him. We are always unworthy, and all that we have or do of good is always of pure grace.

Though blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ, we are still in ourselves just “miserable sinners”: “miserable sinners” saved by grace to be sure, but “miserable sinners” still, deserving in ourselves nothing but everlasting wrath. That is the attitude which the Reformers took, and that is the attitude which the Protestant world has learned from the Reformers to take, toward the relation of believers to Christ.

There is emphasized in this attitude the believer’s continued sinfulness in fact and in act; and his continued sense of his sinfulness. And this carries with it recognition of the necessity of unbroken penitence throughout life. The Christian is conceived fundamentally in other words as a penitent sinner.

But that is not all that is to be said: it is not even the main thing that must be said. It is therefore gravely inadequate to describe the spirit of “miserable sinner Christianity” as “the spirit of continuous but not unhopeful penitence.” It is not merely that it is too negative a description, and that we must at least say, “the spirit of continuous though hopeful penitence.” It is wholly uncomprehending description, and misplaces the emphasis altogether.

The spirit of this Christianity is a spirit of penitent indeed, but overmastering exultation. The attitude of the “miserable sinner” is not only not one of despair; it is not even one of depression; and not even one of hesitation or doubt; hope is too weak a word to apply to it. It is an attitude of exultant joy. Only this joy has its ground not in ourselves but in our Savior.

We are sinners and we know ourselves to be sinners, lost and helpless in ourselves. But we are saved sinners; and it is our salvation which gives the tone to our life, a tone of joy which swells in exact proportion to the sense we have of our ill-desert; for it is he to whom much is forgiven who loves much, and who, loving, rejoices much.

Hat Tip: Justin Taylor