“Thou shalt not kill”(Exodus 20:13)

“Thou shalt not kill” (Exodus 20:13) becomes a point of courtroom interpretation in the prosecution’s closing argument. Green distinguishes the commandment’s prohibition of unlawful killing from the state’s authority to impose death for murder, using other passages in the Bible to answer the defense’s appeal to scripture against capital punishment.

The Commandment and Green’s Interpretation

Green tells the jury that Exodus 20:13 is one of the Ten Commandments and says it refers to unlawful killing. He presents the next chapter’s prescribed penalty for killing a person as evidence that the prohibition does not, in his reading, forbid every taking of life. His argument depends on separating murder from a punishment imposed under law: the commandment condemns the former, he contends, without excluding the latter.

Biblical Authority in the Closing Argument

Green responds to the defense attorneys’ use of the Bible by reading from the Old Testament. He cites Christ’s statement, “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill,” and then invokes Genesis 9:6: “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed.” Together, these references let him argue that the coming of Christ did not erase the earlier scriptural basis for capital punishment.

The Commandment Applied to the Case

Green ultimately turns from biblical interpretation to Kansas law, telling the jurors that first-degree murder carried either life imprisonment or death by hanging and that they were there to enforce that law. He urges the maximum penalty for the defendants, presenting the killings as deliberate murders committed for money and emphasizing that the stolen property was worth forty dollars. In this courtroom setting, “Thou shalt not kill” is not treated as a self-evident answer to the death-penalty question: Green makes its meaning depend on the distinction he draws between unlawful killing and legally authorized punishment.