"As a policy matter, I do not agree (with Pope Francis’s opposition to the death penalty). 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."- Ted Cruz
Official
portrait of U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX).
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Unit 1012 awards the Rayner
Goddard Act of Courage Award to Ted Cruz for defending the death penalty.
INTERNET
SOURCE: http://theslot.jezebel.com/as-an-attorney-death-penalty-enthusiast-ted-cruz-reall-1754039789
As an
Attorney, Death Penalty Enthusiast Ted Cruz Really Loved Describing Brutal
Crimes
Texas Senator and presidential
candidate Ted Cruz has never exactly hidden his passion for the death
penalty—it’s a love that speaks its name over and over whenever he talks in
public. As the New York
Times lays out today, his passion took a somewhat more unseemly
form when he was a Supreme Court Clerk, where he seemed to take unusual relish
in laying out the details of violent crimes.
Cruz has always been pro-death penalty
and a staunch advocate for keeping the system churning along just as it
currently kills people (except, as Mother Jones pointed out, in 2010, when as a
private practice attorney, he represented a wrongfully convicted man who spent 14 years
on death row). He may have gotten some of that from his father; Rafael Cruz
has argued from the pulpit that God himself is pro-death penalty.
That enthusiasm made itself evident
when he was clerking for Supreme Court Justice William H. Rehnquist in 1996,
the Times writes,
and became known for his colorful briefs on death penalty appeals, which “often dwelled on the lurid details of murders that other
clerks tended to summarize in order to quickly move to the legal merits of the
case.”
That’s unusual for a dry,
dispassionate SCOTUS brief, and really made old Ted stand out at the office, a
fact he himself was not unaware of. Per the Times:
“I believe in the death penalty,” Mr. Cruz wrote in his book “A Time for Truth.” As he saw it, it was his duty to include all the details and “describe the brutal nature of the crime.”“Liberal clerks would typically omit the facts; it was harder to jump on the moral high horse in defense of a depraved killer,” he wrote.
Cruz’s love of death began even before
that, in fact, during a clerkship at federal appellate court in Virginia with
Judge J. Michael Luttig. Luttig’s father was killed by a 17-year-old would-be carjacker named
Napoleon Beazley in 1994. The horrible incident created a bond between Cruz and
Luttig, who began working for the judge soon after. A very strong and slightly
macabre bond, again, per the Times:
Mr. Cruz became devoted to Mr. Luttig, whom Mr. Cruz has described as “like a father to me.” During his clerkship, he presented his boss with a caricature of him and other clerks pulling a stagecoach driven by the judge. According to someone who saw the illustration, there was a graveyard behind them with headstones representing the number of people executed in their jurisdiction that year.
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