TONY FULTON: DEATH PENALTY STILL NEEDED IN NEBRASKA

  

Tony Fulton

Tony Fulton: Death penalty still needed

• Midlands Voices
• Updated Nov 3, 2016

The author, of Lincoln, is a former Nebraska state senator.

When I served in the Nebraska Legislature, I was given the great responsibility of determining whether the death penalty is an appropriate sanction of the state. It was a question I gave a great deal of thought, prayer and reflection.

Ultimately, I concluded and voted that the death penalty should not be removed outright. In my mind, it could be changed, but it would be irresponsible to remove it outright.

If all killers present and future could be incarcerated to ensure the public safety, then I could support abolishing the death penalty.

In 2008, Jayson Garrett, a man who had, just four years earlier, stabbed a Hastings, Nebraska, man to death, was able to go on a shopping trip to a mall near my children’s school. While on this shopping trip, he simply walked away, escaping the attention of the Lincoln Regional Center employees charged with his care.

It happened again in 2010 with a different killer, Shane Tilley, whose crime occurred in Omaha just three years earlier.

I’m not arguing these individuals should have received the death penalty, but rather that we cannot currently ensure that the public isn’t exposed to dangerous killers.

Could we incarcerate all killers present and future to ensure the public safety? Indeed, yes.

Do we? Clearly, no.

We seem to have this notion that we can “lock ’em up and throw away the key.” It doesn’t work this way. From the prison cell, individuals could continue killing.

One example was Nebraska inmate David Dunster, who was already serving a life sentence when he committed his second murder.

He was serving two life sentences when he committed his third. Life in prison did not disallow his continued killing.

Laddie Dittrich was serving a life sentence for a first-degree murder committed in the early 1970s. In 2013 he was paroled after the state commuted his sentence, and a year later he sexually assaulted a 10-year-old girl.

Again: Could we incarcerate all killers present and future to ensure the public safety? Yes, we probably could.

Do we? Clearly, no.

I’m a practicing Catholic, and I deeply respect the position our Catholic bishops have taken.

I was also pleased to hear my good bishop, Bishop James D. Conley of Lincoln, say recently that Catholics who support the death penalty may do so in good standing if they come to that conclusion after thoughtful consideration and prayer.

I did this in a public way as a Nebraska state senator, and I do so anew as a citizen preparing to vote on this important ballot question.

We live in a day when innocent people in schools, banks and shopping malls are gunned down, public places are bombed and law enforcement officers are targets of violence.

A sober judgment, in my opinion, is that we simply don’t meet the condition by which the death penalty should be removed.

I recognize how some may differ on this issue. I hope, however, some may see common ground such that they may recognize the rationale from which I am operating, even if we disagree.

INTERNET SOURCE: http://www.omaha.com/opinion/tony-fulton-death-penalty-still-needed/article_8ef940e0-42b1-59aa-aea3-8b8bc63d91c9.html