Moral justifiers of execution reframe killing as murder sanctioned by scripture

Evidence

Reagan voiced strong support for the penalty while he was the governor of California. His linguistic justification was that according to Hebrew scholars, the commandment “Thou shall not kill” should have been translated as “Thou shalt not murder.” The Old Testa-ment, he noted, also requires “an eye for an eye” (Reagan, 1967). In response to Christian ministers who tolled bells as the time for execution neared, Reagan replied, “If you toll your bells every time somebody is murdered, I won’t mind if you do it every time the state executes a killer” (Ashcroft, 1998). — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1846

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the vault’s existing claims about how ordinary people and elites rationalize harmful policy through framing — here Reagan reframes state killing as scripturally-sanctioned justice.
• DEFINE: Illustrates euphemistic labeling and moral justification in action: distinguishing ‘killing’ from ‘murder’ is precisely the linguistic disengagement move.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 1846