


As he explained, someone facing an imminent death does not “have any option but to consider eternal questions” and so “if out of some misguided sense of compassion, we do not give somebody the death penalty who deserves it,” society is failing that person by not putting them in a position that would require them to face these “eternal issues.”

Criminals not forced to contemplate their own death may therefore fail to repent for their crimes and seek God’s forgiveness, with the result being, Fischer concluded, that “we may have made it easier for them to go the Hell than to go to Heaven”: