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Thread: Minnesota Capital Punishment News

  1. #1
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Minnesota Capital Punishment News




    Execution 150 years ago spurs calls for pardon

    Mankato: On December 26, 1862, thirty-eight doomed Dakota Indians wailed and danced atop the gallows, waiting for the trapdoors to drop beneath them. The square scaffold, built here to accommodate the largest mass execution in United States history, swayed under their weight.

    "It seemed that the purpose of the singing and dancing was only to sustain each other in their last ordeal," a witness observed. "As the last moment rapidly approached, they each called out their name and shouted in their native language: 'I'm here! I'm here!' "

    Thirty-seven of the men were among the "most ferocious" followers of the Dakota leader Little Crow, according to the federal government. They stood accused of killing approximately 490 settlers, including women and children, in raids along the Minnesota frontier.

    But one man, historians say, did not belong there. A captured Dakota named We-Chank-Wash-ta-don-pee, often called Chaska, had had his sentence commuted by President Abraham Lincoln days earlier. Yet on the day after Christmas 1862, Chaska died with the others.

    It was a case of wrongful execution, Gary C. Anderson, a history professor at the University of Oklahoma and Little Crow biographer, said last week in an interview. "These soldiers just grabbed the wrong guy," he said.

    Although the story of the mass execution in Mankato is well-known locally, scholars say the case of Chaska -- spared by Lincoln, then wrongfully executed -- has been long overlooked by the federal government and all but forgotten even by the Dakota.

    Now, an effort to keep the story alive is taking root on campuses and even on Capitol Hill as the 150th anniversary of the execution, in 2012, approaches. Commemorative events will include symposiums, museum exhibits, monument re-dedications, book publications and an original symphony and choral production.

    "It's time to talk about it and time for people to know about it," said Gwen Westerman, a professor of English at Minnesota State University at Mankato and a member of the Dakota who is planning to investigate Chaska's case and the cultural context of the conflict with a class. She says she is hoping her students can "put together some more pieces of the puzzle."

    "Because there is a historical record" for Chaska's commutation, Ms. Westerman said, "that's a good place to start."

    A move to award Chaska (pronounced chas-KAY) a posthumous pardon has drawn some initial support. Before his defeat in November, Representative James L. Oberstar, Democrat of Minnesota, said a federal pardon would be "a grand gesture and one I think our Congressional delegation should support."

    "A wrong should be righted," he added.

    Senator Al Franken, a Minnesota Democrat who sits on the Committee on Indian Affairs, issued a statement last week signaling that he might move the issue forward.

    "Senator Franken recognizes that this is a tragic period in history," said his press secretary, Ed Shelleby. "The senator will continue to look into this incident in the next Congress."

    Tension between the Dakota, historically called the Sioux, and the influx of settlers had been mounting for years before the Civil War, which further strained United States resources, disrupting food and supplies promised to the Dakota in a series of broken peace treaties. One local trader, Andrew Myrick, said of the Indians' plight, "If they are hungry, let them eat grass."

    Enraged and starving, the tribe attacked and plundered the new state's settlements. Of the 400-plus Dakota and "mixed blood" men detained by Brig. Gen. Henry Hastings Sibley, 303 were sentenced by a military court to death. But Lincoln found a lack of evidence at most of the tribunals, and he reduced the number of the condemned to 38.

    We-Chank-Wash-ta-don-pee's case was No. 3 and not listed in the execution order handwritten by Lincoln, but his fate may have been the result of mistaken identity. The man he died for was No. 121, identified by Lincoln as Chaskey-don or Chaskey-etay, who had been condemned for murdering a pregnant woman.

    But historians say something far more complex may have been responsible for Chaska's death: rumor. During the raids, Chaska took a white woman, Sarah Wakefield, and her children prisoner -- not an uncommon occurrence during the Dakota War.

    What was uncommon, however, was Wakefield's defense of her captor at his military tribunal. Chaska defended her and her children, she said, and kept them from certain death and abuse at the hands of his fellow tribesmen. "If it had not been for Chaska," Wakefield said, "my bones would now be bleaching on the prairie, and my children with Little Crow."

    One prison chaplain wrote to her after the hanging: "Dear Madam: In regard to the mistake by which Chaska was hung instead of another, I doubt whether I can satisfactorily explain it."

    Wakefield firmly believed that Chaska was executed on purpose, in retaliation for her testimony and in reaction to rumors that she and Chaska were lovers. General Sibley, who appointed the tribunal that convicted Chaska, privately referred to him as Wakefield's "dusky paramour."

    Wakefield denied any sexual relationship in the booklet she wrote the year after his death, titled "Six Weeks in the Sioux Teepees." She wrote, "I loved not the man, but his kindly acts."

    Some details of the conflict have been willfully buried or forgotten, by both sides of the war. The Dakota conflict came in 1862, which historians have described as Lincoln's "darkest year" during the Civil War. It was the year the president lost his 11-year-old son, Willie, to typhoid fever. Thousands died on the battlefields at the Battle of Bull Run and at Fredericksburg, as Lincoln fought with his own generals. In large part, the narrative of mass execution in Mankato was lost in the United States' struggle to preserve the union.

    Lincoln himself was distressed at the speed of the military tribunals that condemned 303 men, and his decision to commute most of the sentences was politically dangerous. But he said, "I could not afford to hang men for votes." The 265 Dakota Indians Lincoln spared from the gallows were either fully pardoned or died in prison.

    Modern Mankato, once a prairie outpost, is now a city of 37,000, where a modest downtown struggles for survival, competing against outlying strip malls and chain stores.

    The only reminders that 38 Indians died here is a Dakota warrior statue and plaque outside the local library. The location of the actual scaffold is now called Reconciliation Park.

    Glenn Wasicunna, a Dakota language teacher and husband of Ms. Westerman, said that for decades, his people would not even drive through Mankato during the day. The place carried too many memories, too much cultural trauma, he said.

    "These were our family," Ms. Westerman added. "These were people my great-grandparents knew. They have a direct effect on who we are."

    Each year on Dec. 26, the annual Mankato memorial run acknowledges those who died in the mass execution. But Wayne Wells, a Dakota language teacher on the nearby Prairie Island reservation, said there would be a range of response to a pardon just for Chaska. Many Dakota, he said, "consider all of them to be innocent martyrs -- people who stood up and died for us."

    However, Leonard Wabasha, a local Dakota leader, said a federal pardon for Chaska would "shine a light."

    "It would cause people to read and research into it a little deeper," Mr. Wabasha said. "It would be a step in the right direction."

    http://www.ndtv.com/article/world/ex...r-pardon-72485

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    Member Member giallohunter's Avatar
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    Famous cases

    Between 1860 and 1906, the State of Minnesota executed twenty-seven people by hanging, although more were executed under territorial government . The exact number of state-sanctioned executions is unknown because the Office of Governor Execution only has complete records from 1889 to 1910. Below are three of the more famous cases.

    Ann Bilansky: One of the earliest recorded executions in Minnesota’s history was Bilanksy, who was convicted of murdering her husband by arsenic poisoning. Though even the prosecuting attorney in Bilansky’s case told Governor Alexander Ramsey the day before Bilansky’s execution that he had “grave and serious doubts as to whether the defendant had a fair trial,” the Governor refused to stay the execution. On March 23, 1860, Bilansky was executed by hanging. The execution took twenty minutes.

    Mass Execution of the Dakota: On December 26, 1862, thirty-eight members of the Dakota tribe were executed by the federal government in the largest mass hanging in United States history. Though three hundred and three people were originally sentenced to death in rushed criminal trials that had, in some cases, lasted less than five minutes, President Lincoln stayed the execution of all but thirty-eight. Of those thirty-eight, some were later determined to be victims of mistaken identity.

    William Williams: Williams was convicted of a controversial 1905 double murder of a mother and her 16-year-old son. Sentenced to death by hanging on February 13, 1906, Williams’ executioners failed to consider the stretch length of the rope. Newspapers of the day published the gruesome details of Williams’ feet hitting the ground, the frantic efforts of deputies to haul the rope upward, and the fourteen and one-half minutes it took for Williams to die by strangulation. Public interest in the botched execution set in motion a six-year movement to abolish the death penalty, culminating in Representative George MacKenzie’s impassioned introduction of the successful 1911 abolition bill in the Minnesota State House.

    Attempts at Reinstatement

    Minnesota has seen a number of unsuccessful attempts to reinstate the death penalty since 1911, including bills in 1913, 1915, 1919, 1921, 1923, 1927, 1931, 1933, 1937, 1974, 1975, 1986, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1995, 1996, 1999, 2001, 2003, 2004, and 2005. Many of these efforts arose out of high-profile homicides. For example, the 2003 reinstatement bills were introduced in response to a triple murder in Long Prairie, Minnesota. Nevertheless, due to the efforts of legislators and organizations such as The Advocates for Human Rights and Minnesotans Against the Death Penalty (MNADP), attempts at reinstatement have thus far failed to pass the legislature.

    http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/minnesota-0

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    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    Death penalty politics enters the governor's race

    Minnesotans haven't heard a governor pledge support for the death penalty in over a decade, but if Republican gubernatorial candidate Jeff Johnson wins in October, that could change.

    Johnson, who first proposed reinstating capital punishment for some violent crimes during his unsuccessful bid for attorney general in 2006, said he still supports it. His views contrast with those of Gov. Mark Dayton, a Democrat who does not think Minnesota needs the death penalty.

    When Johnson was a state legislator, he supported a broad death penalty bill that failed to pass during the 2004 session. That was the year then-Gov. Tim Pawlenty pushed to reinstate capital punishment, following the kidnapping and murder of college student Dru Sjodin.

    During his bid for attorney general two years later, Johnson narrowed his death penalty focus to those convicted of murdering a child as part of a sex crime. At the time, he described it as "proper punishment."

    "I think it's a question of allowing a jury of someone's peers to have that as an option," said Johnson, a Hennepin County commissioner. "Might it be a deterrent? Yes, but that would not be my reason for proposing it. It's an issue of justice."

    Johnson is not bringing up the death penalty this year as he campaigns for governor, and he said it's not one of his top priorities. But in a recent interview, Johnson said his position on the issue hasn't changed.

    "I would still support the death penalty for someone who kills a child as part of a sex crime," he said. "It's not something that I'm going to advocate as governor. I've got some pretty specific goals and that's not one of them. But it's something I would support if it happened to come up."

    Capital punishment is just one of many issues where Johnson and Dayton, who is pursuing a second term, have differing views.

    Dayton is not flatly opposed to the death penalty. As a U.S. senator, he voted to expand the use of the federal death penalty for acts of terrorism and the killing of law enforcement personnel.

    "Well, I'd say there are circumstances where personally I think, yes, that person deserves the death penalty for a terrible crime committed," the governor said.

    But Dayton is not interested in ending Minnesota's century-long prohibition on capital punishment. For one thing, Dayton said after comparing Minnesota's relatively low murder rate to the higher rates in death penalty states, he's not convinced that it's a deterrent. He said he's also concerned about the impact of lengthy appeals on victims' families and the cost to the state.

    "From no death penalty to a death penalty in Minnesota would be an enormous undertaking, a very costly undertaking," he said. "We'd need a special prison facility. We'd need a special execution chamber. The question is, who is that benefiting?"

    Minnesota abolished capital punishment in 1911, five years after a botched hanging that would be the state's last execution.

    There are currently 32 states with a death penalty. During the past decade, the list shrunk by six states, largely due to concerns over wrongful executions.

    Hannah Nicollet, the Independence Party candidate for governor, is strongly opposed to capital punishment. She said she would never enact such a law. Nicollet said the state should lock up dangerous criminals, not kill them.

    "I would not want to have that kind of mistake on the hands of law enforcement," Nicollet said. "We've had a lot of people executed over the years who've been exonerated after the fact. I wouldn't want to be responsible for that as a state."

    Legislators have also shown little appetite for bringing back the death penalty. There have been several bills introduced over the years, usually in the wake of high-profile crimes, but they haven't made much headway. That was the case in 2004, when despite Pawlenty's public support, a Minnesota Senate committee soundly rejected a bill to put the death penalty question to voters as a constitutional amendment.

    http://www.mprnews.org/story/2014/09...-death-penalty

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    Now that would be interesting. My neighboring state of Minnesotta reviving the death penalty. That would be amazing, and also startling. What methods would they use I wonder?

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    Banned TheKindExecutioner's Avatar
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    These days lethal injection is really the only choice. Unless they bring back the firing squad!

    Native Americans NEVER should've been executed like that. THEY were the victims here who had their land stolen and were wiped out by the MILLIONS! ENTIRE tribes were even wiped out for Pete's sake!

  6. #6
    Senior Member CnCP Legend JimKay's Avatar
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    Minnesota board won't set rules on execution drugs

    By BRIAN BAKST
    The Associated Press

    ST. PAUL, Minn. -- Minnesota pharmacy regulators declined Wednesday to set a pioneering policy sought by death-penalty opponents that would explicitly bar the manufacture of lethal drugs for use in executions elsewhere.

    The state Board of Pharmacy put the request aside without voting on it. Its leaders said they saw little need to be dragged into an emotional debate when they weren't aware of any cases in which Minnesota pharmacists supplied execution drugs. They say that possibility is remote and likely would run afoul of existing law.

    "We haven't had the death penalty in Minnesota in 100 years," said board president Stuart Williams. "This is not an issue that is confronting any of the pharmacies or pharmacists in Minnesota."

    A coalition of advocacy groups seeking the formal policy chose Minnesota - and will head next to other no-execution states like Wisconsin - because they are looking for a sympathetic launching pad for a restriction they hope will catch on. Their goal is to deny capital punishment states vital ingredients for putting condemned inmates to death.

    Several drugmakers, including many abroad, have stopped selling drugs common in lethal injection. So death-penalty states have turned to compounding pharmacies for substitutes. Some won't disclose where they get the drugs, leaving open the possibility that they're coming from other states.

    National associations for doctors and anesthesiologists have codes of ethics restricting credentialed members from carrying out executions. The national association for pharmacists hasn't adopted one, stirring the state-level campaigning.

    Rosalyn Park, research director at The Advocates for Human Rights, recounted recent executions that had problems as she urged the Minnesota regulators to be trailblazers.

    "This is tantamount to torture and pharmacists should in no way have to be put into that position of having to make, sell or otherwise provide these drugs for purposes of such an execution," Park said.

    No one testified against the proposal, though Dudley Sharp of Texas, a defender of the death penalty, wrote to the board in opposition.

    "No one believes that the state execution of murderers is a medical procedure between doctor and patient, regardless of the method of execution," Sharp wrote.

    Even without a new policy, it would be difficult for Minnesota pharmacists to produce lethal injection drugs without putting their professional licenses in peril.

    Cody Wiberg, the pharmacy board's executive director, said strict protocols surround compound pharmacies, which are distinct from neighborhood drug stores. For one, state law would demand a specific prescription for a specific inmate that would also require an in-patient physician examination for it to be valid.

    "When I take a look at the totality of laws and rules in this state, I think it would be incredibly difficult for a pharmacist to legally participate in this process and not violate one of the rules and statutes involved," Wiberg said.

    http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...RUGS_MINNESOTA

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    Minnesota's 1st execution still a tantalizing tale

    Editor's note: This story was originally published in the Pioneer Press on March 23, 2000. Jim Ragsdale was a Pioneer Press reporter from 1984 through 2011. He died in November 2014 after a year-long battle with pancreatic cancer; he was 64.

    On the morning of March 23, 1860, a convicted murderer mounted a scaffold in downtown St. Paul, said a few last prayers as the noose was fastened, and stepped onto the drop.

    When the sheriff released the platform, the sad, spectacular story of Ann Bilansky passed into Minnesota history. Her body was allowed to hang for about 20 minutes, long enough for 1,500 to 2,000 people who blocked Wabasha Street with their carriages and hay wagons to get a glimpse of the swaying woman at the end of the rope.

    "I die a sacrifice to the law,'' the newspaper, the St. Paul Pioneer & Democrat, quoted Bilansky as saying seconds before she stepped into eternity.

    In an age of O.J. and court-TV crime entertainments, her words still have an eerie reverberation.

    Bilansky was convicted of killing her husband, Stanislaus Bilansky, by mixing arsenic in his food and drink in their rat-infested cabin. She did it, prosecutors said, so she could take up with a fair-haired, blue-eyed carpenter named John Walker.

    Her lawyers said Stanislaus, habitually drunk and in poor health, could have died of any of a number of ailments. They said John Walker was not her lover, but her nephew, who summoned her to St. Paul so she could care for him during an illness.

    Between her arrest in March 1859 and the hanging a year later, Bilansky's case sorely tried the limits of 19th-century forensic science; became one of the new state Supreme Court's first appeals; triggered an eight-day "woman-hunt'' when Bilansky escaped from a basement window of the city jail and headed west with John Walker; became a cause celebre for St. Paul society figures, who flocked to her jail cell; triggered a showdown between the pro-Ann Legislature and Gov. Alexander Ramsey; became the first execution under statehood, and the only time Minnesota ever executed a woman; and, finally, was one of our state's first sensational newspaper stories.

    "Bad enough to be a harlot, and bold enough to be a murderer,'' the Pioneer & Democrat said in a story about Bilansky's last day. It was headlined "EXECUTION! - Her Dying Words.''

    I am not an innocent bystander in the story. For several years now, I have been involved in (and have been paid for) a project with the Great American History Theatre. The result is "A Piece of the Rope,'' a play that brings all the actors in that dark March drama back to life.

    Mary Ann Evards Wright arrived in St. Paul in the spring of 1858. She was in her late 30s or early 40s and said she was originally from North Carolina, where her parents still lived and where her 1st husband died in a railroad accident. She said she had never borne children and came here to care for her nephew, John Walker, during an illness.

    A police handbill issued during her escape described Ann as "tall in stature ... sharp-visaged, teeth a little projected ... very talkative, uses good language ... grey eyes, light hair, Roman nose.'' Walker had "light curly hair, blue eyes, light complexion'' and had been here for several years before Ann arrived.

    Perhaps through Walker, Ann soon met Stanislaus Bilansky, a "Polander'' in his early 50s who had come to St. Paul in 1842 and had run a bar and grocery in his lowertown cabin. Stanislaus went through several wives before he married Ann and was described as a short, heavy-set man with brown hair and a less-than-winning personality - "melancholy, abusive, unlovable,'' and also frequently ill, convinced he would die in March.

    It was only a few months after their wedding that Stan took to bed with a violent abdominal illness. He died at 3:30 a.m. Friday, March 11, after drinking a tumbler of liquor brought by his son. The next day, at an inquest in the cabin, his was ruled a death from natural causes, and the body was freed for burial Saturday evening.

    A neighbor and friend of the Bilanskys, Lucinda Kilpatrick, then made the report that turned the old pioneer's death into a murder case: She went to the police chief and said she and Ann had purchased arsenic a few weeks before the death. She said Ann Bilansky called her aside during the first inquest and asked that Lucinda not tell the coroner about that trip. With that new information, Stan Bilansky's body was exhumed and a second inquest a few days later ruled that he died by arsenic poisoning "administered by Mrs. Bilansky.''

    Kilpatrick became a key witness against Bilansky in her trial in late May and early June. (One of the jurors was Justus Ramsey, whose brother, Alexander Ramsey, would be elected governor later that year and would have Bilansky's life in his hands.) Kilpatrick and Rosa Scharf, the Bilanskys' maid, brought out suspicious remarks and behavior by Ann, painting her as a woman who wanted Stanislaus out of the way so she could flee with John Walker, who (prosecutors alleged) was her lover, not her nephew. Local scientists offered an array of tests to suggest there was arsenic in Stanislaus' stomach.

    Ann Bilansky did not testify. John Walker did, said Ann was his aunt, and denied there were any improper relations. Others said Stanislaus was depressed and worried about debts, suggesting a motive for suicide. Kilpatrick, the neighbor whose testimony sent Ann to jail, was asked about her own relationship with John Walker, and about letters, a breast pin and a ring that she allegedly gave to Walker. She refused to give an answer - an answer that could have cast a new light on her accusation - and the trial judge did not force her to.

    The jury deliberated for 5 hours on June 3, 1859, before finding Bilansky guilty of 1st-degree murder. On July 21, the state's new Supreme Court upheld the conviction. 2 days after this last legal appeal was exhausted, Bilansky was visited in jail by Walker, and later that evening, she escaped through an open window and disappeared into the countryside.

    "In a very short time, every policeman in the city was made aware of the escape,'' the Pioneer & Democrat reported. "Watchmen were placed on all the thoroughfares leading out of town, and every vehicle inspected. A general search was also made throughout the city, but without success.''

    For most of the next 8 days, John Walker and Ann Bilansky hid out near Lake Como and made preparations to escape. (They holed up for a time at the farm of a fellow jail inmate, George Lumsden, who had befriended her. 4 years later, Lumsden would be pardoned on the condition that he enlist in the Union army. He did, and was promptly killed at the Battle of Nashville.) Bilansky, wearing men's clothes, and Walker were finally captured on their way to St. Anthony, walking west.

    A month later, Walker appeared in court on a charge of aiding in her escape. According to the Pioneer & Democrat, there was insufficient evidence to convict him, and he was released. He disappeared forever from the city and the story. Bilansky was sentenced to death by hanging on Dec. 2. She "sobbed audibly while the judge was addressing her, and on receiving her sentence, she burst into tears,'' the Pioneer & Democrat reported.

    Between the sentencing and the execution, legislators and other prominent citizens paid their respects in Bilansky's cell. Cynics viewed her comments on her trial as wholly untrustworthy; they used the phrase, `You have been to see Mrs. Bilansky,' when someone was suspected of stretching the truth.

    On Jan. 5, 1860, Rosa Scharf, the maid whose testimony helped seal Bilansky's fate, was found dead in her bed. The night before, she had visited Lucinda Kilpatrick and was worried about what was happening to Bilansky. A coroner's jury ruled that Rosa took an overdose of laudanum, suggesting suicide; the physician said she died of apoplexy.

    Pressure began to build on the new governor, Alexander Ramsey, to commute Ann Bilansky's sentence. Ramsey signed the death warrant in late January, setting March 23, 1860, as the date of the execution. The Legislature passed a bill commuting the sentence to life. Ramsey vetoed the measure.

    In his message, he colorfully expanded on the evidence of the trial, suggesting, as no one at the trial did, that someone had actually seen Bilansky administer poison.

    "She sat by the bedside of her husband, not to foster, but to slay,'' Ramsey wrote. "She watched without emotion the tortures she had caused, and, by and by, administered no healing medicine, no cooling draught, but ever, under a guise of love and tender care, renewed the cup of death.''

    In the days before her death, petitioners urging that Ramsey commute her sentence included the prosecutor, Isaac Heard, who said he had "grave and serious doubts'' about whether Bilansky had a fair trial, and Supreme Court Justice Charles E. Flandreau, who participated in the opinion denying her a new trial. Flandreau wrote that while he supported the death penalty, "it rather shocks my private sense of humanity to commence by inflicting the extreme penalty on a woman.''

    In an excellent article on the case in Minnesota History magazine, author Matthew Cecil noted that Gov. Ramsey must have heard arguments for Bilansky's guilt from his brother, Justus, who had been on the jury and who was in business with the governor. Cecil also notes that commuting the sentence would be "likely to anger a public skittish about criminal justice.''

    On the day of the execution, the town was clogged with gawkers, including an unusually large number of women, many carrying children. As soon as the body was cut down, the newspaper reported, "We noticed an individual making strenuous efforts to secure a portion of the rope, and succeeded, and there were many present who endeavored to get a piece of it as mementos, or as a remedy for disease.''

    (source: twincities.com)
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    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    Jacob Erwin Wetterling was a boy from St. Joseph, Minnesota, who was kidnapped from his hometown at the age of 11 on October 22, 1989. His disappearance remained a mystery for nearly 27 years.




    Opinion:

    We Need the Death Penalty for Jacob Wetterling's Killer

    By Walter Hudson
    pjmedia.com

    Few things bring a community together like tragedy. It's a sad aspect of the human condition. We tend to ignore each other until a moment when our essential sameness manifests. Minnesotans find themselves in such a moment, having recently learned chilling answers to long held questions in the Jacob Wetterling case.

    Wetterling was 12 years old when he was abducted at gunpoint on a dead-end rural road, snatched while 2 of his friends were forced to look away. For 27 years, his family and the broader community held out hope that he might somehow remain alive.

    Alas, a vile creature recently led authorities to Jacob's remains. In court on Tuesday, that killer detailed his actions, as reported by the Minneapolis Star Tribune:

    It began with a question: "On Oct. 22, 1989, did you kidnap, sexually assault and murder Jacob Wetterling?"

    "Yes, I did," Danny Heinrich said.

    The hushed courtroom - packed with family members, reporters and law enforcement officers - began to buzz. Sitting in the front row, Patty and Jerry Wetterling listened, stoically at first, as Heinrich described that warm October night.

    How he spotted the 3 boys on the dead-end road. How he put on a mask and reached for his revolver. How he warned Trevor and Aaron not to look back.

    With a clear, low voice, Heinrich said he then handcuffed Jacob and put him in the passenger seat. At that point, the prosecutor asked, what did Jacob say to you?

    "What did I do wrong?'" Heinrich answered.

    A few in the courtroom gasped. Several began sobbing.

    The only justice for Jacob would be Heinrich's death. That will not happen. Minnesota has no death penalty. On top of that, authorities presumably have these answers in the Wetterling case because Heinrich cut a deal. Faced with life in prison due to conviction on other charges, Heinrich reportedly seeks accommodations that will protect him from other prisoners. The irony is that those other prisoners understand something which the rest of us increasingly don't. Monsters must be put down.

    The death penalty has lost much of its support over the past few decades, even among conservatives. Here are a few objections to the death penalty floating around conservative circles, and why they are wrong:

    1. Government Cannot Be Trusted

    Conservatives don't trust government to run health care or fix the economy. Why would we trust them with something as important as a human life? There have been improper convictions in the past, and an innocent person might be killed.

    Let's just shut the whole thing down then. Seriously. Why have government at all? If they can't get anything right, why trust them with any of it? This is silly. If people are being wrongly convicted, let's stop that! We don't fix that problem by nerfing sentences.

    How is it better for someone to be falsely convicted to a life sentence than to be falsely convicted to a death sentence? Either way, it's a false conviction. Are we to regard the world as a better place because an innocent person might spend his life in prison rather than be executed? Is that really the standard?

    How about we focus on minimizing mistakes? How about we focus on making sound convictions? That seems like a much better plan than settling for a world where innocent people spend their remaining years in hell, and guilty people don't get what they deserve.

    2. Death Is Not an Adequate Punishment

    If you kill someone, that's it, it's over. They don't suffer. They don't have to pay with the lifetime of horror which prison presents. Let's make them suffer by keeping them alive.

    This is odd in light of the first argument. If a lifetime in prison proves so much worse than death, why should we be okay with errant life sentences while objecting to errant death sentences? If killing someone gets it over with, while letting them live makes them suffer, wouldn't we rather kill the wrong person than imprison them for life? You can't have it both ways.

    A life sentence in a case which warrants death comes at a financial and moral cost. Why should taxpayers foot the bill to keep a murdering rapist alive? More importantly, why should we suffer a murdering rapist's continued existence? Each breath he draws insults life itself. But more on that later.

    3. It's Cheaper to Keep Them Alive

    "Cases without the death penalty cost $740,000, while cases where the death penalty is sought cost $1.26 million." That's from the Death Penalty Information Center. Therefore, some conservatives argue, it proves more fiscally responsible to pursue life sentences rather than death sentences.

    The cheapest option would be to let them back out onto the street and be done with it. Let's concede, first and foremost, that our goal is justice at whatever cost.

    The reason that it is more expensive to prosecute a death penalty case is because we have made it more expensive. In a long forgotten past, getting the death penalty meant that you were actually going to die, and soon. Today, getting the death penalty means that you are going to spend an untold number of years in prison while your case goes through seemingly infinite appeals. On the one hand, it is understandable why we would want a vigorous appeals process in a death penalty case. At a certain point, however, there is a diminishing return.

    How about we strengthen the process by which initial convictions occur, then limit appeals to something more reasonable. It shouldn't cost $1.26 million to kill a murdering rapist. Rope is cheap.

    4. Death Is Not a Deterrent

    The presence of a death penalty, or lack thereof, has no effect upon the rate of violent crime.

    Accepting that premise for a moment, so what? Deterring crime is not the point. A death sentence is an administration of justice. You kill a murdering rapist because he deserves to die, not to strike fear in the hearts of other murdering rapists.

    Even so, let's consider some anecdotal evidence which affirms the deterrent value of the death penalty. Recall that the reason we now have answers in the Wetterling case is because Heinrich seeks protection from fellow inmates. That suggests that he values his life. Weird, huh? Indeed, the one instance in which forgoing the death penalty proves acceptable is when such clemency can be leveraged to secure a broader justice. But doing so clearly demonstrates the value in the death penalty as a means for securing that justice.

    It also reveals hypocrisy. Let's not kid ourselves. Whether there is an official death penalty on the books or not, this whole case hinges on the fact that throwing Heinrich in with the general prison population effectively assures his demise. Clearly, we're already benefiting from a de facto death penalty. Why pretend we have a problem with it? If we truly objected to the death penalty as such, we would protect Heinrich on principle regardless of his cooperation.

    5. Life Is Precious

    As conservatives, we're pro-life. We believe that life is precious and ought to be preserved. How can the same people who wring hands over the death of an unborn child be perfectly content with injecting a lethal chemical cocktail into grown adults?

    This is face-palming dumb. If I have to explain the moral distinction between an unborn child and a murdering rapist, we have bigger problems than criminal justice policy. I'll do so anyway for the sake of argument.

    Being pro-life is not, and has never been, blind and equal support of any life in every context. This is the PETA mentality. A chicken lives, they note, therefore it is as valuable as a human being. No, it isn't. A chicken and a human being have two different natures which define their relative value.

    Human beings make choices. Unlike lesser animals, we cannot get by on instinct. We have to think. We have to act on that thought in order to survive and thrive. We stand accountable for the consequences of those choices. Obviously, an unborn child has not made any choices which might warrant death. A murdering rapist clearly has. His nature, defined by his choices, defines his relative value.

    Indeed, blind and equal support of any life in every context is explicitly anti-life. It is because life is precious that we must kill those who take it, certainly when the crime proves heinous and wholly intentional. That is what justice requires. By killing the killer, you affirm the value of his victim's life. It says that the victim's life held value which demands the ultimate price. To do less is to diminish the victim, to effectively victimize her again, to say that her life was worth less than the monster who killed her.

    To oppose the death penalty on the grounds that life is precious is to say that Danny Heinrich proves as precious as Jacob Wetterling. He doesn't. Jacob deserved to live. His killer deserves to die.

    https://pjmedia.com/trending/2016/09...rlings-killer/
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

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