Chuck Colson Opinion:  Lockerbie Bomber Should Have Died in Prison

Today's "On Faith" Online Conversation at The Washington Post/Newsweek Joint Venture Included An Opinion by Prison Fellowship Founder Chuck Colson on the Lockerbie Bomber’s Release

LANSDOWNE, Va., Aug. 25, 2009—Today, "On Faith"--the online conversation sponsored by The Washington Post and Newsweek--included panelist Chuck Colson's response to the following questions:

Scotland freed the terminally ill Lockerbie bomber last week so he could die at home in Libya. "Our beliefs dictate that justice be served, but mercy be shown," a Scottish official said. Did Scotland do the right thing? Should we have any mercy for mass murderers who are terminally ill?

Colson's reply may be shocking to some who follow the founder of the word's largest outreach to prisoners, ex-prisoners and their families.

"Scotland has made a mockery of justice. Ask the families of the 270 people al-Megrahi murdered.

"By any measure, serving only eight years in prison for blowing up an airplane full of people is nothing short of scandalous. Surely there are appropriate ways to show mercy—even to a terminally ill mass murderer: Scotland could have given him palliative medical care, could have allowed family visits, or even arranged for family to stay with al-Megrahi during his last days.

"In his essay, 'The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment,' Christian writer C. S. Lewis argued that we ought to punish people for no other purpose than just deserts, and in so doing, we recognize that humans are free moral agents, responsible for our actions. That's why Lewis wrote, 'To be punished, however severely, because we have deserved it, because we "'ought to have known better," is to be treated as a human person made in God's image.'

"In my view, to usher al-Megrahi out of the country and into the arms of cheering crowds in Libya defies the notion of just deserts and unbalances the scales of justice—scales that even his lifelong confinement could barely balance.

"Overall, I back the concept of compassionate release for terminally ill prisoners—in fact, I once helped a prisoner in advance stages of AIDS gain release so she could die at home with her family. But we should only support compassionate release in cases where it does not injure justice, and so long as further confinement serves no penological purpose.

"Given the enormity of al-Megrahi's crime, he should have died in prison.  Shame on Scotland."

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