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PAGE TITLE: The New York Post
ARTICLE TITLE: Death is only justice.
DATE: Wednesday 30 March
2011
AUTHOR: Professor Robert
Blecker
AUTHOR INFORMATION: Click here for more
information
URL: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/death_is_only_justice_4yQxA3Y8sdV2HiMASvENWK
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| Robert Blecker |
Death is only justice
Last Updated: 3:11 AM, March 30, 2011
Posted: 12:36 AM, March 30, 2011
As
I peeked through the window at Steven Hayes, lying on his bed on Connecticut's
death row earlier this month, I spotted a Hershey bar on his desk. I mentioned
it a few days later, while testifying in Hartford against repeal of the state's
death penalty. "So what if he has a Hershey bar?" Sen. Eric Coleman
demanded.
Yes,
even as the prosecution and defense struggle to pick a jury to try Joshua Komisarjevsky,
Hayes' alleged partner in the rape and murder of the Petit family, the Nutmeg
State is considering abolishing capital punishment -- "prospectively
only."
In
theory, this could leave Hayes on death row, condemned to die, while sparing
all future
depraved scum like him. In reality -- given the relentless appeals and
commutation campaigns that the anti-death penalty crowd are sure to engage in
-- repeal would give a new lease on life to the man who raped and strangled
Jennifer Hawke-Petit, after tying her daughters to their beds.
Remember:
With the girls still conscious and roped to their beds, the depraved sadists
doused the sisters' bedrooms in gasoline, lit the match and immolated them
both.
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Contrast
that horror to what I saw in Hayes' cell -- not just the candy bar, but his
empty bunk piled with bags of potato chips and other goodies from the
commissary.
But
my outrage failed to moved Sen. Coleman. "It's so trivial," he
countered. "So what if he has a Hershey bar?"
I
gulped: "He shouldn't experience that sweetness, that delicious taste of
chocolate. Given what he did -- who he stripped of life and how he stripped
them of it."
If
Connecticut abolishes the death penalty, Hayes and Komisarjevsky -- now on
trial and reportedly begging to plead guilty to spare himself the death penalty
-- will someday be released from death row into a prison's general population
to live out their natural lives.
And
other condemned monsters will join them. Russell Peeler, who had an 8-year-old
and his mother killed to eliminate the child as a witness. Todd Rizzo, who used
a sledgehammer to beat to death a 13-year-old boy -- to know what it felt like.
Life
without parole is worse than death,
opponents assure us. They
will die in prison, one day at a time.
But
we all die one
day at a time. The real issue is how we live.
I've
visited with the warden and corrections spokesman at McDougall Walker -- the
prison that, without capital punishment, would mostly likely house
Connecticut's condemned killers for the rest of their lives. They confirmed it:
Within one month of being (re)sentenced to life without parole for raping and
murdering a child, a prisoner in general population can expect to be out of his
cell working or playing, showering, hanging out, talking on the phone, playing
ball or board games for 10 to 12 hours a day for the rest of his life.
If
Connecticut abolishes the death penalty, death row will empty into general
population. It may take time, but it will
happen.
Thousands
of hours in prisons and over 25 years interviewing more than 100 convicted
killers (along with dozens of correctional officers) has taught me: Life
without parole can't
substitute for the death penalty.
For
those lesser criminals we do intend to release someday, prison should provide
new skills and values enabling them to live again among us as productive
citizens. But for those depraved predators who rape and kill -- who mutilate
children -- life
itself should be a punishment beyond a small cell at night without so much as a
lights-out policy. Life should be unpleasant, all day, every day.
Nearly
80 percent of Connecticut residents want Hayes and other vicious murderers
executed. Yet lawmakers seem prepared to ignore the people. Will they pay a
price?
"There
will be no huge political consequences," Barry Scheck told legislators the
same day I testified. "You're going to be shocked," insisted the
co-founder of the Innocence Project and member of OJ Simpson's Dream Team.
Never mind the courts that would have to deal with the condemned now litigating
their way off death row: "If you abolish capital punishment prospectively
only," Scheck laughed, "people are not going to even really notice
the next day."
I
refuse to believe that. The people of Connecticut must pressure their lawmakers
to reject this unprincipled bill. Meanwhile, the rest of us can only wait for
justice and wonder.
Robert
Blecker, a criminal law professor at New York Law School has spent thousands of
hours in several states documenting the lives of convicted murderers.
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