May 2
ILLINOIS:
Sister Helen Prejean continues 35-year fight against death penalty
Standing behind a podium in one of the meeting rooms in DePaul's Student
Center, wearing her signature purple jacket, Sister Helen Prejean begins to
tell a story.
The story is about a man named Richard Glossip, who is currently sitting on
death row in Oklahoma for the 1997 murder of motel owner Barry Van Treese, a
murder Prejean believes Glossip did not commit.
Prejean found law yers to take Glossip's case pro-bono, but also mobilized a
national media effort to raise awareness about his case and his innocence. She
even managed to get Pope Francis and the Papal nuns to put pressure on the
state government not to execute him.
"People were calling ... the lines were filling up ... the world was watching
and people were getting it out on the social media," Prejean said. "When things
were at their height, 300 million people in the world had heard ... Richard
Glossip's name."
Prejean's efforts and a problem with the drug cocktail used for lethal
injection led to a stay of execution. This was but a minor victory for Prejean
and Glossip, who is still imprisoned and sitting on death row.
The story of Richard Glossip is one of the many stories Prejean has to tell.
This is Prejean's 3rd visit to DePaul since 2014. She spends most of her days
traveling around the country telling the story of her experience with the death
penalty and advocating for its abolition.
Prejean began her work with death row inmates in 1981. After moving into the
St. Thomas housing projects in one of New Orleans poorest neighborhoods,
Prejean became pen pals with Patrick Sonnier, a convicted murderer waiting to
be executed by the state of Louisiana.
Prejean became Sonnier's spiritual advisor before ultimately witnessing his
execution. This experience awakened Prejean to the darkest realities of the
death penalty and she decided to dedicate her life to not only counseling
inmates sitting on death row but also to work towards abolishing the death
penalty.
In 1994, Prejean wrote a book detailing her experiences called "Dead Man
Walking: An Eye Witness Account of the Death Penalty." The book became a
bestseller, enjoying the No. 1 spot on the New York Times Bestseller List for
31 weeks.
Just 2 years later, the book was adapted into a film, directed by Tim Robbins
and starring Sean Penn and Susan Sarandon, who played Prejean.
Matt Cook, a junior at DePaul, saw Prejean's book and the film as eye opening.
"After watching and reading Dead Man Walking, I never really realized that the
justice system was so unjust and Sister Helen really emphasized that in her
book," Cook said.
Prejean credits the people she met while living in the St. Thomas housing
projects with teaching her how to write.
"I lived this privileged little white life of privilege in Baton Rouge and was
never in the company of people struggling with poverty and racism, and they
taught me, they graciously taught me ... and so I began to write."
Through her book and lectures, Prejean has become the face of the struggle
against the death penalty. But for DePaul students, like junior Maggie Mech,
she is also a role model.
"She's devoted so much of her time but she's also so well-respected and
so...well-known in the world just because of how smart she is and how much she
has done for all different types of people. I think she totally embodies
Vincentian values" Mech said.
The DePaul Office of Mission and Values described the Vincentian identity as
"...above all characterized by ennobling the God-given dignity of each person."
While values like community, service and reflection have guided Prejean's work,
she has always placed special emphasis on dignity.
On her website, Prejean expresses her belief "in the dignity and rights of all
persons and recognize that government-sanctioned killing ... is a violation of
those rights and a denial of human dignity."
Prejean hopes to raise public consciousness about the death penalty and the
impact it is having on society. One group that Prejean thinks is especially
important in the fight to end capital punishment is the millennial generation.
"We have a savvier, smarter group of young people coming up ... I am very
hopeful about young people in this country and how they are helping us,"
Prejean said.
DePaul junior Nora Melton agrees with Prejean's assessment that young people
should get involved with social justice issues.
"I definitely think that youth and millennials need to be involved in social
justice issues today," Melton said. "I love that Sister Helen Prejean is really
including us and making us feel important ... we have so much power even if we
don't realize that we do ... if we really apply ourselves to change something,
we can make a really big difference."
As she continues to travel the country and the world, Prejean is hopeful that
as more people are confronted with the inhumanity of the death penalty, the
movement to abolish capital punishment will grow stronger.
"It's never going to be 1 man, it's never going to be 1 thing. But I think of
consciousness raising in the culture (like) the way a pot comes to boil,"
Prejean said.
"When a pot comes to boil you don't have 1 great big fat bubble comes up...but
you have little bitty bubbles that start in the bottom ... I believe that???s
the way consciousness changes."
Prejean believes that no matter what the crime, or who the victim, the death
penalty does not constitute justice.
"(The death penalty) is pain, it's punishment for what you do wrong," Prejean
said. "The safety of society is another thing ... I believe, and we're
beginning to see the first seeds of it to go towards more restorative justice."
A shift away from capital punishment and towards restorative justice is what
Prejean has been working for her entire life. She is confident one day her
vision will be achieved.
"I have met the American people and what I have met is not people wedded to the
death penalty, it's just that we haven't reflected on it very deeply at all."
Racism is a fundamental part of Prejean's argument that the criminal justice
system on a whole needs to be reformed. Not only does the current system
disproportionately incarcerate African-Americans, but it is also biased against
them when it comes to sentencing their killers.
In her years of counseling death penalty inmates, Prejean has realized the
death penalty is reserved for people who kill white people.
"I don't know what made us think that we could design a process ... and that
we'd be so pure that there'd be no racism in it so if you killed people of
color or you killed white people," Prejean said. "It's the same, it's equal."
(source: depauliaonline.com)
OKLAHOMA:
Man convicted of killing Arkansas woman in eastern Oklahoma
A jury in Le Flore County has convicted an Arkansas man of 1st-degree murder in
the 2010 death of a woman in eastern Oklahoma.
Elvis Thacker was convicted Friday of murder and forcible sodomy in the death
of 22-year-old Brianna Ault. The jury will reconvene Monday to consider whether
Thacker should receive the death penalty or serve life in prison.
Ault was found dead in a pond in Pocola. Her throat had been cut.
Thacker's attorneys had blamed his brother, Johnathen Thacker, with killing
Ault. Johnathen Thacker pleaded guilty in 2014 to 1st-degree murder as part of
an agreement in which he testified that his brother cut Ault's throat with a
razor after forcing her to perform sex acts, then trying unsuccessfully to
drown her.
(source: Associated Press)
CALIFORNIA:
Supreme Court rejects death penalty case
The Supreme Court on Monday denied review of a case challenging the
constitutionality of long-delayed death sentences.
The case centered on Richard Boyer, who was sentenced to death in California 32
years ago. Boyer had asked the court to weigh whether the delay in carrying out
his sentence violated the Eight Amendment's protections against cruel and
unusual punishment.
In dissenting from the court's majority decision to reject the case, Justice
Stephen Breyer said the delays in Boyer's sentence were the result of a system
that the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice had called
"dysfunctional."
The commission released a report 8 years ago, Breyer said, which found that
that more than 10 % of the capital sentences issued in California since 1978
had been reversed. Many prisoners had died of natural causes before their
sentences were carried out and more California death row inmates had committed
suicide than had been executed by the State.
"Put simply, California's costly 'administration of the death penalty' likely
embodies three fundamental defects about which I have previously written: '(1)
serious unreliability, (2) arbitrariness in application, and (3) unconscionably
long delays that undermine the death penalty's penological purpose.'" Breyer
wrote in the order Monday. "For these reasons, I respectfully dissent from the
denial of certiorari."
(source: thehill.com)
****************
The trial of alleged "Grim Sleeper" Lonnie Franklin Jr. headed to a close
Monday after months of testimony about a serial killer who stalked women during
the 1980s crack cocaine epidemic, then laid low for 14 years before renewing
the grisly sex attacks
The trial of alleged "Grim Sleeper" Lonnie Franklin Jr. headed to a close
Monday after months of testimony about a serial killer who stalked women during
the 1980s crack cocaine epidemic, then laid low for 14 years before renewing
the grisly sex attacks.
Closing arguments were scheduled to begin in the morning and could last 2 days.
Franklin, 63, could face the death penalty if convicted.
He is charged with killing 9 women and a 15-year-old girl between 1985 and
2007. They were shot or strangled and their bodies dumped in alleys and trash
bins in South Los Angeles and nearby areas.
He also is charged with the attempted murder of a woman who survived being shot
in the chest and pushed out of a car in 1988.
At his trial in February, the women identified Franklin as her attacker and
said he took a Polaroid photograph of her after the attack.
Prosecutors said a photo showing the wounded woman slouched over in a car was
found in Franklin's possession when he was arrested in 2010.
Prosecutors say many of the killings occurred in the midst of a crack cocaine
epidemic in South Los Angeles and many of the victims were prostitutes.
At one point, prosecutor Beth Silverman told jurors that Franklin targeted
women "willing to sell their bodies and their souls in order to gratify their
dependency on this powerful drug."
Prosecutors allege that firearms or DNA evidence connects Franklin to the
killings. Before his arrest, a police officer posing as a busboy at a pizza
parlor got DNA samples from dishes and utensils Franklin had been using at a
birthday party.
Franklin's lawyers, however, argued that many DNA samples taken from "Grim
Sleeper" victims or their clothing didn't match Franklin.
Defense attorney Seymour Amster told jurors last month that many victims had
DNA from more than one man on their bodies and that more than 20 DNA tests
excluded his client.
Both Silverman and Amster acknowledged disliking each other and at times held
heated arguments in the courtroom out of the jury's hearing.
In March, Amster yelled at Superior Court Judge Kathleen Kennedy after she
ruled that he would have to refile a subpoena.
"I am now going to rest. We have no defense," Seymour said to gasps in the
courtroom. "I cannot represent this man any further." However, he continued on
with the case.
Authorities dubbed the killer the "Grim Sleeper" because of a gap between
killings from 1988 to 2002.
(source: US News & World Report)
*****************
Kamala Harris picks her fights as criminal justice crusader
As district attorney of San Francisco, Kamala Harris looked at the criminal
justice system like a pyramid, with the worst crimes occupying the tip. The
largest mass of the pyramid, Harris wrote in her 2009 book, is the "truly
staggering" number of nonviolent offenders.
"The problem is that we have been using only the tools best suited to combating
the offenders at the top of the pyramid, and we have been using them on the
entire crime pyramid," she wrote in "Smart on Crime."
Offering a blueprint for how nonviolent offenders could be successfully
redirected, including initiatives she used in her own department, Harris
declared, "It's time to rock the crime pyramid."
Since taking office with an upset victory in 2010 over former Los Angeles
County District Attorney Steve Cooley, Harris has sought to do so by creating a
division to reduce repeat offenders, launching a pilot re-entry program at a
Los Angeles County jail and opening a bureau for children's justice.
Now as the Democrat campaigns for U.S. Senate, Harris also highlights broader
accomplishments, from fighting mortgage fraud and reducing elementary school
truancy to combating transnational gangs. She's battled for gay marriage rights
and supported a presidential order shielding unauthorized immigrants from
deportation.
Yet on issues that have reshaped the state's criminal justice system -
including historic prison realignment, an initiative changing certain felonies
to misdemeanors, and scores of public safety bills in the Legislature - Harris'
role has not been pivotal. The pyramid shook, but often it wasn't her doing the
shaking.
"Once she became attorney general, I didn't see the transition from those
initiatives: her writings and her overall philosophy," said Earl Ofari
Hutchinson, president of the Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable. Harris, he
said, could have been "a more vigorous advocate for full criminal justice
reform."
"She's been confined to (her) comfort zone and unwilling to be big and bold."
Harris' reluctance to use the state's top law enforcement office as a megaphone
to advance her earlier work has disappointed allies in the fight, some of whom
question whether she's strategically avoided topics that put her at loggerheads
with the law enforcement community she worked hard to bring around since taking
office.
Last year, retired California Supreme Court Justice Cruz Reynoso testified in
favor of a bill that would have required the attorney general to appoint a
special prosecutor to examine police officers' lethal uses of force. He said
independent probes are needed to uncover the facts. Harris' office took no
position at the time.
"I hate to speculate why, except of course that many of the police agencies
would not want that," Reynoso said. "It may be, politically speaking, that she
does not want to be on the opposite side of those folks."
In an interview, Harris said she didn't support the measure, Assembly Bill 86,
because it would have taken discretion from district attorneys. Unless they
have been shown to abuse their powers, she thinks they should retain them.
Harris disputed that her relationship with law enforcement had bearing.
"Here's the bottom line: I am trying to change the system from the inside," she
said. "They (activists) are trying to change the system from the outside. And
together, change will occur."
Harris' supporters point to the statewide policy initiatives and dozens of
bills the attorney general's office endorsed to bolster their case that she has
accomplished far more than any of her predecessors to advance major, if not
always visible, changes to the system.
She reactivated the office's dormant powers to convene closed-door meetings
with law enforcement up and down the state where she presented ways to
coordinate and combat human trafficking, the need to adopt technology such as a
digital forensic crime lab and to work on plans to implement realignment.
They believe her standard definition for recidivism allows law enforcement
agencies across the state to accurately measure repeat offenses.
Back on Track LA, an expansion of the nationally recognized program she started
in San Francisco, connects inmates with an array of services in and out of
custody, such as therapy, health care, child support, education and
job-training skills, to help them become contributing, law-abiding members of
society.
"To look at where the dialogue was in the country before, and where it has gone
on criminal justice reform, in many ways it is catching up to what she has been
saying since before it was even popular," said Lenore Anderson, executive
director of Californians for Safety and Justice.
Last year, Harris initiated a web-based public portal showing years of arrest
and crime rates, and deaths in custody, among other data sets, by department.
She helped develop statewide policies regulating the use of body-worn cameras,
saying she favors the technology, and new training on racial profiling,
implicit bias and procedural justice, also known as officer communication,
which advocates say builds trust, noted Anderson, Harris' chief of policy when
she was district attorney.
"I think it would be impossible for anyone to conclude that the attorney
general has been shy about what she thinks on criminal justice," Anderson said.
"This has been a major theme of her tenure as an elected official, both local
and statewide."
Harris touts her career as a prosecutor as preparation for the U.S. Senate, an
office she said she'll use to speak up for society's voiceless, reduce
sentences for nonviolent drug offenders and take questions about criminal
backgrounds off job applications. In California, she's worked to prevent sexual
assault, eliminate the rape kit backlog in state labs, fight cyberexploitation
and protect sensitive immigrant communities.
Harris said there's an extensive amount she's done in cases in which she didn't
invite the media, or politicians, into the room.
"In order for a lot of this stuff to work, law enforcement has to understand
the viability and appropriateness so that they will actively participate and
cooperate," she said.
"True, I haven't been engaged in a lot of grandstanding," Harris added. "I
haven't sought a lot of publicity on it. But the work has happened. These are
things that did not occur before."
Harris was not the choice of law enforcement when she ran in 2010. Most of the
leading groups endorsed Cooley, some citing his unwavering support for the
death penalty. Harris had not sought death for the 2004 killer of San Francisco
police Officer Isaac Espinoza.
Law enforcement committees alone committed roughly $1.5 million in outside
spending for Cooley, with nearly $113,000 coming from the Peace Officers
Research Association of California. 22 days after the election, Cooley conceded
the close race. Harris quickly arranged meetings with groups such as PORAC.
"She came to law enforcement and many other groups and said, 'Here's what I
want to accomplish. Help me accomplish them. And how can we best get there?'"
PORAC President Mike Durant said.
In 2014, Harris had a nominal Republican opponent but the backing of most
public safety groups.
Asked about any areas of disagreement with Harris, Durant said, "Nothing comes
to mind."
Robert Weisberg, faculty co-director of the Stanford Criminal Justice Center,
said the state AG's power over criminal issues is limited because county
prosecutors mostly operate on their own. Criminal appeals are generally handled
by deputy attorneys general, he said.
"She has seen her role as synthesizing ideas that have emerged as consensus
beliefs and tried to embed them into public discourse in a way that might
promote action by the agencies that have more direct power than she does,"
Weisberg said.
"It's just been the nature of criminal justice lately that the attorney
general, by its office, has not been the center of attention," he added.
Harris did not help shape the public safety realignment program championed by
Gov. Jerry Brown. Spurred by a federal order to reduce prison overcrowding,
Brown and lawmakers in 2011 moved to shift many state responsibilities for
lower-level felons to the counties, paying for it with a mix of sales taxes and
fees.
Harris said she created one of the first examples of successful realignment
with her program in San Francisco. Later, Brown's policy formed the impetus for
Harris' Division of Recidivism Reduction and Re-entry as a way to embed the
responsibility in the Department of Justice, Harris said.
"I think I have played quite an active role of showing how it can be done
within the system," she said.
Death penalty opponents are discouraged by Harris' performance on the issue.
Despite being a lifelong critic of capital punishment, she promised to follow
the law. In office, she defended it in court. That "raised doubts" about her
commitment to changing the system, said Hadar Aviram, professor at UC Hastings
College of the Law in San Francisco.
"It was a big disappointment," Aviram said. "I was surprised to see a
proclaimed and vocal opponent of the death penalty take steps to actively to
defend it."
Harris' office appealed after Cormac Carney, a federal judge in Orange County,
2 years ago overturned the death sentence of Ernest Dewayne Jones, sentenced
for the murder of his girlfriend's mother in 1995. In ruling it
unconstitutional, Carney said the death penalty takes too long and that
unpredictable impediments were unfair. His ruling was overturned by a panel of
the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Aviram, who at the time started a petition urging Harris not to appeal in the
Jones case, contrasted her appeal with her refusal to defend the Proposition 8
ban on gay marriage, which she said was unconstitutional.
"There is no way of knowing how that case could have come out if the attorney
general's office had put up a fight based on its ministerial role," Aviram
said. "I think the death penalty issue called for similar consideration."
Harris said she appealed the death penalty case because she wanted to ensure
Carney's arguments would not be used to hasten executions. She said the case
differed from her action on Proposition 8 because she had a duty as the state's
lawyer to represent its interest on the death penalty.
"On Prop. 8, that was in my independent capacity as attorney general," she
said. "And in Prop. 8, also, the governor agreed. So everyone was on the same
page."
Harris is cautious when ballot measures are before voters, arguing that she
should not take sides because her office prepares the title and summary seen by
voters. Her neutrality differs from recent predecessors, including Brown, Bill
Lockyer and Dan Lungren, but is consistent.
That meant she did not factor in the debate over Proposition 47, the 2014
measure pushed by Anderson and other criminal justice advocates, which reduced
certain drug and property crimes to misdemeanors.
Supporters would have liked to see Harris at their side, while some law
enforcement leaders believe she should have stepped in to oppose it. They blame
the law for a rise in crime.
Mike Ramos, the district attorney of San Bernardino County, said that while he
despises Proposition 47, calling it a "get out of jail free" card, he
understands. Making her opinion known would be a conflict, he said, given her
duties.
"Would I have loved for her to take my side against Prop. 47? Of course," said
Ramos, who is running for attorney general in 2018. "Do I understand why she
didn't? Yes, I do."
Jan Scully, former district attorney of Sacramento County, said Harris should
have been more involved from a prosecutor's standpoint. Scully and other
elected prosecutors and county sheriffs, who were unhappy with many of her
positions, wanted her to denounce Proposition 47, insisting it stood to
diminish consequences and accountability.
"We felt as prosecutors that Kamala was weak or missing when it comes to
matters of public safety or criminal justice, and far more political - always
looking for her next office," Scully said. "She didn't try to be everything to
prosecutors and law enforcement. But she didn't go so far out there on the
liberal side, either. If anything, she was nothing to anyone."
Harris has been circumspect about most legislation relating to criminal
justice, though her office sometimes provides technical assistance not
appearing on the record. She sponsored or supported about 60 bills, including 8
dealing with human trafficking, 6 with firearms and 4 with truancy. In that
time, more than 440 bills were referred to public safety committees and
subsequently passed by the full Legislature. Brown signed about 85 % of the
bills, vetoing the rest.
In addition to staying out of debate over the lethal-force bill supported by
Reynoso, Harris did not take a position on landmark racial- and
identity-profiling legislation, steered clear of a bill limiting law
enforcement's ability to confiscate property from people not convicted of
crimes, and did not support statewide standards regulating body-worn cameras by
police officers, siding with law enforcement in contending there's no
1-size-fits-all approach to the issue.
Harris did back a less-fractious bill requiring agencies to report to her
department incidents in which an officer is involved in the use of force.
Lockyer said Harris has had an "outstanding record," but one that "doesn't
necessarily involve jumping into every public controversy."
"I think she is careful, and that's a smart thing to do," Lockyer said. "Some
people want more active engagement with the issues they get involved in. And
again, that's one way people can do these things. Another is to do the job and
try to do the job well."
(source: Sacramento Bee)
USA:
Presidential Candidates and the Death Penalty
Unlike in past elections, national interest in the presidential candidates'
position on the death penalty has waned, partly due to a decline in the number
of states that no longer allow capital punishment. Also, in U.S. the rate of
violent crimes decreased steadily for 20 years, until 2015 when, according to
the FBI, the numbers rose to 1.7 % with a 6 % increase in homicides.
History has shown that when the crime numbers are up, more people are pro-death
penalty and interest in the position political candidates take on the issue
becomes more important to voters.
Lessons Learned?
A good example of this was the 1988 presidential election between Michael
Dukakis and George H.W. Bush. At the time, the national murder rate was
averaging around 8.4 % and 76 % of Americans were for the death penalty, the
2nd highest number since recording began in 1936.
Dukakis was pegged as being too liberal and soft on crime and received a fair
amount of criticism because he was opposed to the death penalty.
An incident that many believe sealed his fate as the presidential loser
occurred during an October 13, 1988, debate between Dukakis and Bush when the
moderator, Bernard Shaw asked Dukakis if he would be in favor of the death
penalty if his wife were raped and murdered. Dukakis replied that he would not
favor it and reiterated that he was opposed to the death penalty all of his
life. The general consensus was that his answer was cold and his national poll
numbers plummeted that same night.
Despite the fact that the majority of the U.S. is still in favor of the death
penalty, opposition is rising and it is now at 38 % which is the highest it has
been in 40 years.
Bernie Sanders - Against the Death Penalty
During a February 2016 MSNBC debate, Bernie Sanders voiced concerns that there
have been innocent people, particularly minorities, who have been executed.
"Of course there are barbaric acts out there, but in a world of so much
violence and killing, I just don't believe that government itself should be
part of the killing," Sanders said. "I just don't want to see government be
part of killing."
Bernie Sanders has been against the death penalty for over 20 years.
Hillary Clinton - Supports the Death Penalty
Hillary Clinton has taken a more cautious stand than her counterpart. During
the same debate, Clinton said that she was concerned about how the death
penalty is handled on a state level and that she has a lot more confidence in
the federal system.
"For very limited, particularly heinous crimes, I believe it is an appropriate
punishment, but I deeply disagree with the way that too many states still are
implementing it," Clinton said.
Clinton was again confronted with questions about her views on the death
penalty during a CNN-hosted Democratic town hall on March 14, 2016.
Ricky Jackson, an Ohio man who spent 39 years in prison and came "perilously
close" to being executed, and who was later found to be innocent, was emotional
when he asked Clinton, "In light of what I've just shared with you and in light
of the fact that there are undocumented cases of innocent people who have been
executed in our country. I would like to know how you can still take your
stance on the death penalty."
Clinton again voiced her concerns, saying, "the states have proven themselves
incapable of carrying out fair trials that give any defendant all the rights
that defendant should have..."
She also said she would "breathe a sigh of relief" if the Supreme Court of the
states eliminated the death penalty. She then added that she still supported it
"in rare cases" on a federal level for terrorist and mass murderers.
"If it were possible to separate the federal from the state system by the
Supreme Court," Clinton added, confusingly, "that would, I think, be an
appropriate outcome."
Donald Trump - Supports the Death Penalty
On December 10, 2015, Donald Trump announced to several hundred police union
members in Milford, New Hampshire, that one of the first things he would do as
president would be to sign a statement that anybody that kills a police office
would get the death penalty. He made the announcement after he accepted the
endorsement of the New England Police Benevolent Association.
"One of the first things I do, in terms of executive order if I win, will be to
sign a strong, strong statement that will go out to the country -- out to the
world -- that anybody killing a policeman, policewoman, a police officer --
anybody killing a police officer, the death penalty. It's going to happen, OK?
We can't let this go."
Trump also earned his pro-death penalty status after taking out a full-page ad
in 4 New York City newspapers titled, "BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY! BRING BACK
THE POLICE!" It was assumed that his actions were in reference to the May 1989
brutal rape of a woman who was jogging in Central Park, although he never made
reference to the attack.
Ted Cruz - Supports the Death Penalty
Ted Cruz has been a long time supporter of the death penalty and believes that
the decision should be left up to each state.
In a September 2015 interview with POLITICO, Cruz said, "I spent a number of
years in law enforcement dealing with some of the worst criminals, child
rapists and murderers, people who've committed unspeakable acts. I believe the
death penalty is recognition of the preciousness of human life, that for the
most egregious crimes, the ultimate punishment should apply."
Cruz also supported the decision to execute a man in Texas who many were
fighting to keep alive because the man was mentally ill.
"I trust the criminal-justice system to operate, to protect the rights of the
accused, and to administer justice to violent criminals," Cruz said.
(source: about.com)
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