Why and How Jesus Would Vote - Part 2

From Barbara Walter-Skinner's Why and How Jesus Would Vote (see here for the beginning of the discussion).

Point 2:

As the author of life, God is committed to protecting the lives even of those who have for any reason taken the lives of others. Candidates should be evaluated by their commitment not to protecting life as it is unborn, but to protecting even the lives of criminals who are incarcerated in states that support the death penalty for heinous crimes. God values all life that he alone has created.

Frankly I'm appalled that Dr. Walter-Skinner believes that Jesus would be indifferent to the lives of the innocent unborn and is committed to protect the lives of those guilty of murder.  All you have to do is perform a word search on the phrase "innocent blood" in the Bible and you will find ample evidence of God's horror for those responsible for the wilfull death of innocents (see Jeremiah 19 for a particularly graphic instance of this).

As for the administering of the death penalty, in Deuteronomy 19:11-13, God makes it quite clear that to not punish some crimes with death is culpable leniency and that such a failure makes us guilty of the crime as well.  If Dr. Walters-Skinner claims that Jesus' death overrides this principle, she still has to deal with NT passages, such as in the deaths of Annanias and Saphira (Acts 5), Romans 13 (where Caesar is given the sword for a reason), 1 Corinthians 11:30 (where people die because of their eating the body and blood of Christ in an unworthy manner) and especially in Revelation, where vast quantities of blood are shed by God in judgment.  While God may mercifully spare a murderer (as he did King David), this sets no precident requiring murders may never be executed.

Given the uniform testimony of Scripture in this regard, the views of Dr. Walters-Skinner in this regard are inexplicable.  What she should say is

As the author of life, God is committed to protecting the lives the innocent, and candidates should be evaluated by their commitment to protecting the unborn.  On the other hand, the state may (and perhaps even should) require that those who have wilfully taken the lives of the innocent be punished by having their own lives taken in return.