Where my daily bible reading took me this morning: Deuteronomy 19:15–21

“A single witness shall not suffice against a person for any crime or for any wrong in connection with any offense that he has committed. Only on the evidence of two witnesses or of three witnesses shall a charge be established. [16] If a malicious witness arises to accuse a person of wrongdoing, [17] then both parties to the dispute shall appear before the LORD, before the priests and the judges who are in office in those days. [18] The judges shall inquire diligently, and if the witness is a false witness and has accused his brother falsely, [19] then you shall do to him as he had meant to do to his brother. So you shall purge the evil from your midst. [20] And the rest shall hear and fear, and shall never again commit any such evil among you. [21] Your eye shall not pity. It shall be life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot. (ESV)

The American legal system has abandoned the very idea of Justice. There is so much unpunished or wrongly punished crime happening in our communities and we have no recourse to seeking justice when the legal system conspires against it.

Take the Buffalo murderer. Justice would say that he should already have been tried, convicted, and executed. Instead, the legal system celebrates that they have charged him with a plethora of hate and weapons crimes – crimes that will never be appropriately punished. Heaping charges on a criminal does not punish him, it only makes the chargers feel virtuous.

The bible tells us we must execute murderers if we would preserve society. It further tells us that a major restraint against false convictions and executions is to punish a false witness with the punishment appropriate to the crime. If a person is falsely accused of murder, then the prosecutor or policeman or nextdoor neighbor should be tried and executed for murdering an innocent man.

Justice goes crying in our cities and the blood of the murdered cries out from the ground.