Local religious leaders share views of their faiths

With the execution this week of Stanley "Tookie" Williams, people of various religions — or no religion — find themselves discussing the death penalty.

When asked for their opinion, local spiritual leaders mention the history of their particular faiths:

• Rabbi Tracee Rosen, of Salt Lake's Congregation Kol Ami, cites Jewish sources nearly 2,000 years old. She says one might think by reading the Hebrew scriptures (including verses such as, "one who violates the Sabbath can't live") that Jewish law is "draconian."

In fact, she says, the later traditions, the rabbinical courts, "put all kinds of boundaries around what constitutes a capital case."

For one thing, Rosen says, "It has to be unambiguous." A murder must be witnessed by more than one witness. The offender must be warned that this will be a capital offense and has to say, "I know and I don't care."

Talmudic standards of proof go far beyond "a reasonable doubt," she notes. "There was a general feeling that you didn't want to even risk taking someone's life by mistake." In fact, she tells of one rabbinical court that became known as a "bloody court" because it had executed one person over the course of seven years.

There is a humility about the awesome task of judging when to take a life, she says. Every Jewish community had a court. And no court wanted to invoke the death penalty if there was even a remote possibility of being wrong. "Better to err on the side of human beings not taking a life and letting God settle the score." And if you believe in God, she notes, you actually are able to say, "Well, God is going to sort it out."

• The Encyclopedia of Mormonism quotes ancient scriptures, especially Lev. 24:17 "He that killeth any man shall surely be put to death." It goes on to say, "Capital punishment is viewed in the doctrines of the Church to be an appropriate penalty for murder, but that penalty is proper only after the offender has been found guilty in a lawful public trial by constitutionally authorized civil authorities."

• At the Khadeeja Mosque, in Salt Lake, Imam Shuaib-Ud Dim makes a distinction between Islamic law and what Muslims practice when it comes to capital punishment. "What is found in the Quran is that if someone is guilty of murder and it has been proven without a speck of doubt, then that person's penalty will be carried out by the judicial system of that Islamic country." And the penalty is death.