Post by CCADP on Aug 30, 2005 21:41:18 GMT -5
Praise and Credit to Gov. Daniels and Way He Did It
The nearly 11th hour bold decision by Governor Daniels to commute the death sentence of Arthur Baird and give him life without parole is akin to Nixon opening up Communist China over a generation ago.
It was a step that Daniels could make as a Republican while it would have been far more difficult for a Democrat as Indiana governor to do without large political repercussions. Just as Nixon could address the need to get China into the arena of reasonably peaceful relations with the world while a Democrat-liberal would have been regarded “pink” for doing so, Governor Daniels has taken a step to seek more human and humane progress on a truly grim matter.
It is well that he did it in the fashion he took the step -- not declaring it a precedent or a blanket policy.
There are many of us who would agree hands down that the state executing a mentally ill killer is wrong. However, no one should be naive enough to doubt that throngs of killers and their defense teams would be proclaiming mental illness as the murder excuse. Indeed, there are many in the population who believe, erroneous as the reason is, that a person has to be mentally ill to murder. These folks are confusing mental illness and anti-social behavior.
Even from the proper way that Governor Daniels handled the matter, there will be some surge of mental illness defenses in these matters. This isn’t all bad because ideally we should move to where we as a state execute no mentally ill persons -- and to where we execute no one, in fact.
The big obstacle to eliminating capital punishment is that the main advocates in the press and public arena for this would then move to abolishing prison without parole as inhuman and after that abolishing prison as inhuman.
Society is nowhere close to the place where we can quit removing people from open society over criminal actions that harm or intolerably threaten other citizens. It is, indeed, good that prison-jail populations are high as compared to having a lot of those people out on the streets. America’s streets and homes became unsafe when the last weakening on crime took place 30 to 40 years ago.
Advocates for abolishing capital punishment must make a strong enough commitment that the kind of people who are going to death rows now shall never see the light of a free day on the streets or open society again, so that society can feel safety in properly moving away from capital punishment.
Governor Daniels has done a good thing and he has handled it the right way.
JIM BARBIERI
The nearly 11th hour bold decision by Governor Daniels to commute the death sentence of Arthur Baird and give him life without parole is akin to Nixon opening up Communist China over a generation ago.
It was a step that Daniels could make as a Republican while it would have been far more difficult for a Democrat as Indiana governor to do without large political repercussions. Just as Nixon could address the need to get China into the arena of reasonably peaceful relations with the world while a Democrat-liberal would have been regarded “pink” for doing so, Governor Daniels has taken a step to seek more human and humane progress on a truly grim matter.
It is well that he did it in the fashion he took the step -- not declaring it a precedent or a blanket policy.
There are many of us who would agree hands down that the state executing a mentally ill killer is wrong. However, no one should be naive enough to doubt that throngs of killers and their defense teams would be proclaiming mental illness as the murder excuse. Indeed, there are many in the population who believe, erroneous as the reason is, that a person has to be mentally ill to murder. These folks are confusing mental illness and anti-social behavior.
Even from the proper way that Governor Daniels handled the matter, there will be some surge of mental illness defenses in these matters. This isn’t all bad because ideally we should move to where we as a state execute no mentally ill persons -- and to where we execute no one, in fact.
The big obstacle to eliminating capital punishment is that the main advocates in the press and public arena for this would then move to abolishing prison without parole as inhuman and after that abolishing prison as inhuman.
Society is nowhere close to the place where we can quit removing people from open society over criminal actions that harm or intolerably threaten other citizens. It is, indeed, good that prison-jail populations are high as compared to having a lot of those people out on the streets. America’s streets and homes became unsafe when the last weakening on crime took place 30 to 40 years ago.
Advocates for abolishing capital punishment must make a strong enough commitment that the kind of people who are going to death rows now shall never see the light of a free day on the streets or open society again, so that society can feel safety in properly moving away from capital punishment.
Governor Daniels has done a good thing and he has handled it the right way.
JIM BARBIERI