Feb. 1
USA:
Boston Police Commissioner: Pursuing death penalty for Tsarnaev is
'appropriate'
The U.S. government will seek the death penalty against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in
the Boston Marathon bombings.
The Boston Marathon bombings killed 3 people and wounded more than 260 others.
17 of the 30 federal charges against Tsarnaev, including using a weapon of mass
destruction to kill, carry the possibility of the death penalty.
The 20-year-old has pleaded not guilty; no trial date has been set as of yet.
Boston Police Commissioner William Evans said he believe the pursuit of the
penalty is appropriate, but he wants to remain focused on those who were
injured and killed.
Evans said, 'It's not so much about the punishment, but it's about not
forgetting those victims who still have to live with the events that happened
on that tragic day."
He said it was likely a difficult decision, but an appropriate one due to the
destruction and people hurt.
Boston Mayor Marty Walsh said that he supports the decision made and will leave
it up to the court process.
(source: NECN)
*************
One penalty equal to crime: Death
There's an adage holding that hard cases make bad laws, meaning they're so
heart-tugging that they shouldn't be the basis for formulating general laws.
That's the shelter former House Speaker Tom Finneran sought back in 1997 when
he turned his back on demands that the savage killers of young Jeffrey Curley
should experience capital punishment.
"What I hesitate to do," he said, "is decide the question on the basis of
emotion, on the basis of a single case that grabs you by the heart."
Please. What murder doesn't grab someone by the heart?
Is a kid shot to death in Mattapan Square of any less worth than a young boy
abducted and slain in the suburbs?
Yet here's Eric Holder, telling us Dzhokhar Tsarnaev should be put to death
precisely because of "the nature of the conduct at issue and (its) resultant
harm," as if the "conduct and resultant harm" of any other homicidal act is
less egregious in his opinion.
Try telling that to loved ones who'll grieve forever.
The Globe took a more circuitous route to its predictable conclusion yesterday
when it editorialized that Tsarnaev's execution would delay the day "that
Boston can close the books on the Marathon bombing."
What hubris. Does that writer not understand the "books" on what happened here
last April will never close for anyone who's missing a son, missing a limb? And
as for those "raw wounds" a trial and execution would only inflame, according
to the editorial, how much more traumatic might it be to know Tsarnaev will
forever be fed and cared for, will have visits, programs, and perhaps even wind
up with a college degree?
We treat our prisoners much better than we treat their victims.
No, Trooper Mark Charbonnier's widow, Ann Marie, had it right the day she
addressed the court at the trial of her husband's assassin: "I believe there
exists among us savages who lack the human traits of conscience and value of
life.
"Untamed animals therefore need not be spoken to, only put down."
Charbonnier's death was "a single case that grabbed us by the heart" and
repulsed us by a monster's "conduct and resultant harm."
But then again, any murder should, including those we never read about, those
that never make it to Page One, those that have no potential for political
posturing.
Is there a commensurate punishment for such a crime?
Yes. It's called capital punishment.
It's our only way to fully measure the worth of lives sacrificed to evil, and
our empathy for those other lives that were forever changed.
(source: Opinion, Joe Fitzgerald; Boston Herald)
**********************
For Boston bombing victims, death penalty decision a 'step forward'
Federal prosecutors say they'll seek the death penalty against Boston Marathon
bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, arguing that he acted in "an especially
heinous, cruel and depraved manner" and lacks remorse.
The highly anticipated announcement Thursday means that when the case against
Tsarnaev goes to trial, jurors will not only weigh whether he's guilty, but
also whether he deserves to die.
For Liz Norden, it's 1 small step forward.
Her sons, JP and Paul, each lost a leg in the bombings, which killed 3 people
and injured more than 250 at the April 15 race.
"I just am relieved that it's going forward in the right direction, 1 step
forward in the recovery process, just that the option is out there on the table
for the jurors, if that's the way it goes," she told CNN's The Situation Room.
Whenever the case goes to trial, Norden said she plans to attend every day.
"It's important to me. I'm trying to make sense of what happened that day. My
boys went to watch a friend run the marathon, and one came home 46 days later.
The other one, 32 days later. And their lives are forever changed," she told
CNN's Wolf Blitzer. "So I want to try and find out, somehow, to make some sense
of how somebody could do this to all these innocent people."
Attorney general: Harm caused was factor
Authorities allege Tsarnaev, a Chechnya-born American, and his brother Tamerlan
planted 2 homemade bombs near the finish line of the marathon, then killed a
Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer 3 days later.
The attacks triggered the massive manhunt that led to Tsarnaev's capture.
Police shot and killed Tamerlan Tsarnaev during the manhunt.
"The nature of the conduct at issue and the resultant harm compel this
decision," U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said in a statement released by
the Justice Department Thursday announcing that prosecutors would pursue the
death penalty in the case.
After Holder made his decision, prosecutors filed a notice listing factors that
they argue justify a death sentence in the case. Among them: The attack killed
multiple people, involved substantial planning and premeditation and involved
betrayal of the United States, prosecutors said.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is charged with 30 federal counts stemming from the attack.
He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
The decision announced Thursday is no surprise, CNN senior legal analyst
Jeffrey Toobin said.
"This is a case, that, if you believe in the death penalty, seems to cry out
for the death penalty, even though the defendant is only 19 years old, and
potentially the junior partner to his late brother," Toobin said.
But that doesn't mean it's an open-and-shut case.
"One of the most interesting, difficult, strategic decisions the defense
faces," Toobin said, is whether to push for a change of venue for the trial.
"Boston was obviously deeply traumatized by this incident. And the jury pool is
Boston, if the case remains where it is. But Boston is also probably the most
liberal city in the country. Death penalty opposition there is higher than
anywhere else," Toobin said. "So does the defense go somewhere else, where
people don't have the immediate association with the crime? Or do they go
somewhere that might not oppose the death penalty in the same numbers?"
Massachusetts abolished the death penalty 3 decades ago, but prosecutors can
seek the death penalty against Tsarnaev because federal law allows for the
penalty in certain circumstances.
Despite Holder's decision to authorize the death penalty in the Tsarnaev case,
prosecutors still could reach a plea deal for a lesser sentence with his
attorneys, who include death penalty lawyer Judy Clarke.
Survivor speaks out
Federal officials weighed a number of factors before they announced their
decision, including the opinions of victims of the deadly attack.
Survivors were asked to fill out a questionnaire about what they thought about
the death penalty.
Marc Fucarile, who lost a leg in the bombing, said he has no doubt about where
he stands: Tsarnaev deserves to die.
"I prefer the death penalty, because I prefer that people know that if you
terrorize our country, you're going to be put to death," he told CNN affiliate
WCVB. "And I strongly believe that's how it should be."
Life since the bombing hasn't been easy, he said.
"This is almost kind of too easy for him (Tsarnaev)," Fucarile told WCVB. "I
still haven't walked for more than day in a prosthetic, and it's almost a year
later. ... Life's good, you know. It's going to get better, but it's going to
be a road, and it's going to be a long road for the rest of our lives."
In a statement Thursday, Gov. Deval Patrick urged the state's residents to stay
strong.
"One way or another, based on the evidence, Tsarnaev will die in prison. In
each milestone of the case -- today's announcement, the trial and every other
significant step in the justice process -- the people hurt by the Marathon
bombings and the rest of us so shocked by it will relive that tragedy," he
said. "The best we can do is remind each other that we are a stronger
Commonwealth than ever, and that nothing can break that spirit."
Victims' mom: 'It shouldn't have happened'
Tsarnaev's attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Reached before federal authorities announced their decision to seek the death
penalty, Zubeidat Tsarnaev, the suspect's mother, did not comment on the
specifics of the case.
"We are, you know, sickened about our child. ... We have nothing in our heads
or in our hearts, so what should I say? We are just really sick," she told
CNN's Nick Paton Walsh in a telephone interview.
"The only thing I want to say," she said, "is I want the whole world to hear
that I love my son, my precious Dzhokhar. That's it."
Thousands of miles away, another mother -- Norden -- said her love for her own
sons makes her want to learn more about Dzhokhar Tsarnaev during the trial, to
try to understand why the deadly attacks occurred.
"I watch my sons, and it's sad. Their lives have changed, and they're OK with
it. They've learned to accept it. But I can't," she said, her voice cracking.
"You know, those are my kids, and they went to watch a marathon on the streets
of Boston, and it shouldn't have happened."
(source: CNN)
************************
Opinions Divided As Prosecutors Seek Death Penalty for Boston Bombing Suspect
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced Thursday that federal prosecutors
will seek the death penalty for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev if he is convicted.
The announcement by federal prosecutors that they will seek the death penalty
against the man accused in the Boston Marathon bombing came as no surprise to
people who lost limbs or suffered other injuries in last year's attack.
But the victims and their families expressed a range of emotions about the
decision Thursday to seek the execution of a 20-year-old man prosecutors accuse
of committing one of the worst terror attacks on U.S. soil since Sept. 11,
2011.
"It shows people that if you are going to terrorize our country, you are going
to pay with your life," said Marc Fucarile, of Stoneham, who lost his right leg
above the knee and suffered other severe injuries in the bombing.
But the grandmother of a 29-year-old woman killed in the attack said she isn't
sure she supports the death penalty for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, yet she fears that
prison wouldn't be enough punishment for him.
"I don't know, because it's not going to bring her back," said Lillian
Campbell, grandmother of Krystle Campbell. "I don't even like to discuss it
because it makes me so upset. She was my granddaughter and I miss her so much.
Steve Byrne, who was at the finish line with friends and injured in the
bombing, believes a death sentence would be too quick and easy for Tsarnaev.
"Obviously I do agree with it because death is death, but in my own eyes this
is a 19 year old kid. He has a long healthy life ahead of him and personally
I'd like to see him sit in prison for 50-60 plus years dealing with that,"
Byrne told New England Cable News.
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder's decision, announced Thursday, was widely
expected. The twin blasts last April killed three people and wounded more than
260. Over 1/2 the 30 federal charges against Tsarnaev carry a possible death
sentence, including using a weapon of mass destruction to kill.
In a notice filed in court, federal prosecutors in Boston accused Tsarnaev, who
moved to the U.S. from Russia about a decade ago, of betraying his adopted
country by planning and carrying out a terrorist attack without remorse.
"Dzhokhar Tsarnaev received asylum from the United States; obtained citizenship
and enjoyed the freedoms of a United States citizen; and then betrayed his
allegiance to the United States by killing and maiming people in the United
States," read the notice filed by U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz.
Tsarnaev has pleaded not guilty. No trial date has been set.
In the notice, prosecutors listed factors they contend justify a sentence of
death against Tsarnaev.
They cited allegations that he killed an MIT police officer as well as an
8-year-old boy, a "particularly vulnerable" victim because of his age. They
also cited his alleged decision to target the Boston Marathon, "an iconic event
that draws large crowds of men, women and children to its final stretch, making
it especially susceptible to the act and effects of terrorism."
Tsarnaev's lawyers had no immediate comment.
In an interview with ABC, Tsarnaev's mother, Zubeidat, who lives in Russia,
said: "How can I feel about this? I feel nothing. I can tell you one thing,
that I love my son. I will always feel proud of him. And I keep loving him."
Prosecutors allege Tsarnaev, then 19, and his 26-year-old brother, ethnic
Chechens from Russia, built and planted 2 pressure-cooker bombs near the finish
line of the race to retaliate against the U.S. for its military actions in
Muslim countries.
The older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, died in a shootout with police during a
getaway attempt days after the bombing. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was wounded but
escaped and was later captured hiding in a boat parked in a yard in a Boston
suburb.
Authorities said he scrawled inside the boat such things as "The US Government
is killing our innocent civilians" and "We Muslims are one body, you hurt one
you hurt us all."
Killed in the bombings were: Martin Richard, 8, of Boston; Krystle Campbell,
29, of Medford; and Lu Lingzi, 23, a Boston University graduate student from
China. At least 16 others lost limbs.
Legal experts have said that the defense may try to save Tsarnaev's life by
arguing that he fell under the influence of his brother.
"I think their focus ... will probably be to characterize it as coercion,
intimidation and just his will being overborne by the older brother," said
Gerry Leone, a former state and federal prosecutor in Boston who secured a
conviction against shoe bomber Richard Reid.
If a jury convicts Tsarnaev, it will then hold a 2nd phase of the trial to
determine his punishment.
Juries are asked to weigh aggravating factors cited by the government against
mitigating factors raised by the defense in deciding whether a defendant should
be executed. In Tsarnaev's case, mitigating factors could include his young age
and claims that he played a secondary role in the crime.
Massachusetts abolished its own death penalty in 1984.
Celeste and Sydney Corcoran, a mother and daughter from Lowell who were both
badly injured in the bombing, said of the Tsarnaevs in a statement on a
Facebook support page: "They have taken enough from us & we trust in the US
Legal System to do its job."
"If you're going to try and commit these types of acts, terrorist acts, then
you're going to be held accountable and if it means the death penalty then it
means the death penalty," added Peter Brown, whose nephews, Paul and JP Norden,
lost their right legs when the 2nd bomb went off 100 yards from the finish
line.
2 other federal death penalty cases have been brought in Massachusetts. A
former veterans hospital nurse who killed 4 patients by overdosing them was
spared the death penalty by a jury. A man accused in the carjack killings of 2
Massachusetts men was sentenced to death in 2003, but the punishment was
overturned and he is awaiting a new penalty trial.
Since the federal death penalty was reinstated in 1988, 70 death sentences have
been imposed, but only 3 have been carried out, including the execution of
Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh in 2001.
(source: Associated Press)
*****************************
Flawed imposition of death penalty calls for replacement by life in prison
It's good, maybe, that some states are looking for alternatives to death by
lethal injection in their criminal justice systems, but they are looking in the
wrong direction. Instead of stepping back into the era of firing squads,
electrocutions and hangings, they should be looking to a future in which they
forgo the death penalty in favor of life in prison.
This is not a plea to be nice to murderers and sociopaths. There are crimes
that are so terrible that death would be an appropriate penalty. Dzhokhar
Tsarnaev comes immediately to mind. If he is, indeed, guilty of last year's
Boston Marathon bombing, then the loss of his own life would not be an
inappropriate penalty - but for one overriding and inescapable fact: The system
doesn't work, won't work and can't work - not reliably enough to ensure that
innocent people aren't sent to their deaths. It's the reason that Washington
and the states that still impose the death penalty must look beyond it to
account for the horrifying risks of error.
Several states, including Missouri, Wyoming and Virginia, are looking to
alternatives to lethal injection, given the increasing difficulty of obtaining
the necessary drugs and questions over the humaneness of lethal injection. Only
a few weeks ago in Ohio, Dennis McGuire took 26 minutes to die by injection,
gasping repeatedly. On Jan. 9 in Oklahoma, Michael Lee Wilson's final words
were, "I feel my whole body burning."
Those events raise serious issues, going straight to the constitutional
prohibition of cruel and unusual punishments. While a return to the
gruesomeness of firing squads or electric chairs might get around that problem,
it evades the fundamental issues of fairness and certainty.
The facts are that poor people and minorities are more likely to be sentenced
to death for the same crimes for which others draw lesser sentences. And, at
least as troubling, the death penalty system has already been shown to be
flawed.
Texas executed an innocent man, Carlos DeLuna, for a murder he did not commit.
There surely have been others, in Texas and elsewhere, given the revelations in
recent years of the numbers of wrongful convictions around the country,
including New York and, specifically, including Buffalo. Innocent people went
to prison; it's strains credulity to believe that no other innocent people have
ever been executed.
The need for retribution is great among humans and, properly channeled, it has
its place. But we are not slaves to our urges and when the death penalty is
shown to be unreliable, when it is shown to be unfairly applied, when its
imposition allows for no correction, when other acceptable punishments are
available, it is government's responsibility to take notice and to act. Other
forms of punishment will get the job done well enough, including life in prison
without parole.
More and more states and countries have abandoned the death penalty and,
thankfully, New York is among them. But many states cling to it like an infant
to a blanket. They insist not just upon its importance, but its holiness. For
the death penalty supporters in those states, we'll pass along the unanswerable
observation made several years ago by conservative columnist George Will:
Capital punishment is a government program, so skepticism is in order.
(source: Opinion, Buffalo News)
***************
The death penalty, and a passion for pain---Giving full satisfaction to popular
sadism always risked undercutting public support, but now politicians feel
comfortable calling for a return to harsher methods
States that kill tell us, in their scientific-technical language, that the
death penalty is an unfortunate but strictly necessary activity, always used as
a last resort and always restrained by mercy. The precise method of killing is
itself a matter of pained, moral exactitude. The question is always how to
deter as much brutality as possible, with as little brutality as possible.
So, a question: if you wrap a ligature around someone's throat and tighten it
until it breaks their neck or they choke to death, what is the deterrent effect
of this compared with, say, tying them by the neck to a crane and then jerking
them violently upward? How many fewer murderers and rapists would there be if
we injected convicts with poison, as opposed to gassing or electrocuting them?
For if you take states at their word, the sheer variation in both the use and
method of the death penalty over time and place necessarily gives rise to such
mind-boggling calculations.
For a few decades, this controversy has been moot in the United States. Those
states in the union that operated the death penalty had abandoned the
traditionally harsher methods of killing, such as electrocution or gassing. The
long, agonising deaths associated with these methods had been replaced by
superficially serene ones, effected by the seemingly precise method of
poisonous injections. Now, as the availability and effectiveness of these drugs
is in question, 6 states are attempting to bypass controversy by bringing back
the firing squad, the gas chamber or the electric chair.
There are certain ironies here. Electrocution was itself once considered the
gentle, civilised method of killing in the US. After centuries of hanging
people in public squares, the American state was centralising and consolidating
its power. Its ability to contain violent disobedience was expanding
dramatically. By and large, it was less threatened by criminal disobedience
than by the potential for unruliness among witnesses to such spectacles. It
began to use the death penalty less, and in more confined settings, with fewer
witnesses.
This did not mean that the element of sadism, which is essential to the social
meaning of the death penalty, had been expunged. As a ritual, it effectively
harnesses the desire to see satisfaction in pain and humiliation, and as such
legitimises the state's ultimate authority. That is why witness must be made,
especially by the grieving relatives of a murder victim, for whom the killing
of the convict is apparently the only route to "closure".
The death penalty is linked to a wider array of sadistic punishment practices -
"life-trashing" sentences, and "shame" penalties - which in the US are part of
the management of a racial order, in which black people are seen as the
potential nemesis of civilisation itself. The merest hint of a breach of their
symbolic status has often been sufficient to produce an outburst of repressive
violence. In this respect, it is notable that public killings mainly - although
far from exclusively - persisted in the southern states, where political
authority was weaker and more decentralised, and where racial terror was the
dominant means of political control. Yet, while the US started to shift toward
less spectacular forms of execution, they were not less public, not less
symbolic, and certainly not less racially charged, as a result - until an
effective moratorium on the penalty which lasted from 1960 to 1976.
It is telling, perhaps, that the basis of the current recourse to more
traditionally brutal forms is an "economic" rationale - what can be done at
least cost to the state, avoiding expensive legal challenges. The prosecution
of offenders and the pursuit of the death penalty is always a costly and
time-consuming process. This is one reason why, as Sister Helen Prejean wrote,
African Americans and Hispanics not only do not expect the district attorney's
office to pursue the death penalty when a loved one is killed, but rarely
expect even a prosecution.
However, the death penalty today is precisely grounded in an "economic"
rationality. The end of the supreme court's ban on it in 1976 corresponded to
the beginnings of a political shift in the direction of neoliberalism. The
neoliberals, despite their anti-statist rhetoric, were in fact advocates of a
strong, authoritarian state, particularly in order to protect property rights
and curb "market bypassing". Of course, in its application it continued to be
"selective" in favour of killing African American suspects. However, the
legitimacy of state killing for some was at least partially secured by the
introduction of the lethal injection in 1982, which was vaunted as a humane
means of death. Subsequently, Clinton's Antiterrorism and Effective Death
Penalty Act enabled a drastic escalation in the use of the death penalty.
Yet, while American states - above all, Texas - are killing more people at a
faster rate, supporters of the death penalty remain unhappy. It is precisely
this "civilising" process - the slow, premeditated legal planning that must go
into killing - that outrages them. The government is fighting evil, with one
hand tied behind its back: let the forces of order do their work without
hindrance and put an end to the chaos. Once the discussion is cast in terms of
such moral absolutes, the evidence is that any potential wider costs of the
death penalty are as superfluous as "collateral damage" in a war. Unfortunate,
but of no real interest. The libidinal energies invested in killing overwhelm
any such objections.
This is the bind that the American state has always been in over the death
penalty. The regular application of lethal force serves a vital political
purpose; but giving full satisfaction to popular sadism has always risked
undercutting broad public support for it. If American politicians are now
unembarrassed to call for a return to harsher methods of killing, this signals
that the bind is loosening and that politics is tilting in favour of a renewed
authoritarian statism - inevitably mandated by racism.
"Deterrence" in this sense is entirely symbolic; what is deterred by the
binding of popular sadism to state bureaucratic processes is any questioning of
the state's claim to the final say over life and death.
(source: The Guardian)
*******************
The death penalty has become a game of chess
Americans have developed a nearly insatiable appetite for morbid details about
crime, as any number of docudramas, Netflix series and Hollywood movies attest.
There is 1 notable exception: executions. Here, we'd just rather not know too
much about current practices. Better to just think of prisoners quietly going
to sleep, permanently.
The blind eye we turn to techniques of execution is giving cover to disturbing
changes with lethal injection. The drugs that have traditionally been used to
create the deadly "cocktail" administered to the condemned are becoming harder
to get. Major manufacturers are declining to supply them for executions, and
that has led states to seek other options.
That raises questions about how effective the lethal drugs will be. At least 1
execution appears to have been botched. In January, an inmate in Ohio was seen
gasping for more than 10 minutes during his execution. He took 25 minutes to
die. The state had infused him with a new cocktail of drugs not previously used
in executions.
States have been forced to turn to relatively lightly regulated "compounding
pharmacies," companies that manufacture drugs usually for specific patient
uses. And they'd rather you not ask for details. Death row inmates and their
attorneys, on the other hand, are keenly interested in how an approaching
execution is going to be carried out. Will it be humane and painless or cruel
and unusual?
Lawyers for Herbert Smulls, a convicted murderer in Missouri, challenged the
compound drug he was due to be given, but the Supreme Court overturned his stay
of execution. A district court had ruled that Missouri had made it "impossible"
for Smulls "to discover the information necessary to meet his burden." In other
words, he was condemned to die and there was nothing that attorneys could do
because of the secrecy.
Smulls was executed Wednesday.
Missouri, which has put 3 men to death in 3 months, continues shrouding
significant details about where the drugs are manufactured and tested. In
December, a judge at the 8th U.S. Circuit of Appeals wrote a scathing ruling
terming Missouri's actions as "using shadow pharmacies hidden behind the
hangman's hood."
States have long taken measures to protect the identities of guards and medical
personnel directly involved with carrying out death penalty convictions. That
is a sensible protection. But Missouri claims the pharmacy and the testing lab
providing the drugs are also part of the unnamed "execution team."
That's a stretch. And the reasoning is less about protecting the firm and more
about protecting the state's death penalty from scrutiny.
The states really are in a bind. European manufacturers no longer want to be
involved in the U.S. market for killing people. So they have cut off exports of
their products to U.S. prisons.
First, sodium thiopental, a key to a long-used lethal injection cocktail became
unavailable. Next, the anesthetic propofol was no longer available. At one
point, Missouri was in a rush to use up its supply before the supply reached
its expiration date.
Next, the state decided to switch to pentobarbital. So, along with many of the
more than 30 states that have the death penalty, Missouri is jumping to find
new drugs, chasing down new ways to manufacture them.
Information emerged that at least some of Missouri's lethal drug supply was
tested by an Oklahoma analytical lab that had approved medicine from a
Massachusetts pharmacy responsible for a meningitis outbreak that killed 64
people.
For those who glibly see no problem here, remember that the U.S. Constitution
protects its citizens from "cruel and unusual punishment." But attorneys for
death row inmates are finding they can't legally test whether a new compounded
drug meets that standard because key information is being withheld. Besides, we
citizens have a right to know how the death penalty is carried out.
All of this adds to the growing case against the death penalty, showing it as a
costly and irrational part of the criminal justice system. We know the threat
of it is not a deterrent. We know it is far more costly to litigate than
seeking sentences for life with no parole. We know extensive appeals are
excruciating for the families of murder victims. And we know that some of
society's most unrepentant, violent killers somehow escape it.
And now we've got states going to extremes to find the drugs - and hide
information about how they got then - just to continue the killing.
ABOUT THE WRITER Mary Sanchez is an opinion-page columnist for The Kansas City
Star
(source: Fresno Bee)
**********************
Death penalty is minor issue in governor's race
Death penalty cases are always emotional, and executions are not frequent.
Rhode Island doesn't have a death penalty and most of the candidates for
governor say they don't want one.
The Boston Marathon bombing last year killed 3 people and wounded hundreds. It
reverberated across the nation, and the federal government's decision to seek
the death penalty against the 1 surviving bomber will be a national story.
Massachusetts has no death penalty, and its last execution was more than 60
years ago. Rhode Island also has no death penalty. That became an issue in 2011
when Gov. Lincoln Chafee tried to prevent federal authorities from taking
accused murderer Jason Pleau into custody. The federal government eventually
won jurisdiction, but accepted a plea from Pleau and he is serving life without
parole.
NBC 10 asked the current candidates for Rhode Island governor where they stand
on the issue.
"I am totally opposed to the death penalty," General Treasurer Gina Raimondo, a
Democrat, said Friday on a taping of "10 News Conference."
Providence Mayor Angel Taveras also is opposed to the death penalty. NBC 10 was
unable to reach Democrats Clay Pell and Todd Giroux.
As for the Republican candidates, Cranston Mayor Allan Fung said he would like
to see the death penalty restored, citing his experience as a prosecutor.
Republican Ken Block has promised to keep his campaign away from social issues.
He said if there was a death penalty he would support it, and since there isn't
one, he won't.
It is not likely Block will have to make a choice if he is elected governor. In
recent years, the legislature has shown little eagerness to restore a death
penalty. Though several bills have been introduced for specific crimes, none
has made much progress.
That's why the death penalty issue really has little role in the governor's
race. It was Chafee who elevated the topic. Besides the battle over Pleau, he
pardoned John Gordon, the last man executed in Rhode Island for a murder in
1845.
(source: turnto10.com)
*********************
Executing my father's killers didn't bring peace to our family
My father, Laurence Foley, was born and raised in Boston. Bitten by John F.
Kennedy's call to public service, he joined the Peace Corps in 1965. From that
point, there was no stopping him; he worked in international development for
the US government for 20 more years.
In 2002, he was assassinated in front of his home in Amman, Jordan, by men who
were later found to comprise an Al Qaeda cell. Many of the gunmen were later
caught, convicted, and executed by the state of Jordan.
That makes me and my family some of the few who actually know how it feels to
have a loved one's killers executed. It was presumed that executing my dad's
killers would make us feel better, would give us a sense of justice and
closure.
It did not.
I didn't know beforehand what I know now. I didn't know that executing killers
doesn't bring an ounce of peace to the families of victims. I didn't know that
what makes a victim of terrorism feel better is to have a chance to connect,
understand, and explain. I never got to tell my father's killers that my dad
had spent his life trying to help people who didn't have medical care or clean
water. I didn't have a chance to tell them that my father wasn't responsible
for the political arm of the United States' overseas actions. Just like the
victims of the Boston bombing haven't been able to tell Boston Marathon bombing
suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev who their loved ones were, and why the world is worse
off without them and not better.
In turn, I never got the chance for time to change the minds of those men, for
them to grow out of impetuous action and into a wiser understanding of how to
manage trouble. I never heard them say they were sorry for what they did. All
possibility for growth, for redemption, was eliminated when they were killed.
And that means a certain kind of peace that I could have come to feel has been
taken away from me by the people who wanted to help, never to be returned.
Let's not make this same mistake with the victims of the Marathon bombings and
their families. In our anger and our grief, we'll be tempted to sentence
Tsarnaev to death if he is convicted. We might offer that option as a gift to
the victims, telling them that this is what will bring them peace and closure.
But it won't. Time, and the opportunity for redemption, that's what brings
peace and closure. I know.
This past September, my father's name was inscribed on the wall at Boston's
Garden of Peace. Alongside his name are the names of victims of the Marathon
bombings. My dad and those folks are already connected, resting together in a
place that actively wishes peace upon this world. Let us not make the same
mistake with Tsarnaev that was made with my father's killers. As we learned
from Martin Luther King Jr., back when my father first committed his life to
service: Hate cannot drive out hate. Only love can do that.
(source: Opinion; Rev. Megan Foley is a Unitarian Universalist minister in
Germantown, Md.----Boston Globe)
****************
http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/resources-federal-death-penalty-and-boston-marathon-case
(source: DPIC)
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