“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.”- Professor Robert Blecker
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Robert Blecker
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SOURCE: http://nypost.com/2011/03/30/death-is-only-justice/
Death is
only justice
By ROBERT
BLECKER
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.
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.
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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. - Robert Blecker [PHOTO SOURCE: https://quozio.com/quote/w5nrb666kwks/1236/thousands-of-hours-in-prisons-and-over-25-years] |
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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