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Death Penalty
The Governor is sadly mistaken if he thinks that science holds the answer to what is, at heart, an ethical and social question. As one of my constituents, writing to me in opposition to the Governor's commission put it, it is sheer hubris to hold to the notion of error-free, science-based judgment. Judgments, like those who make them, are inherently and all-too-humanly flawed.
Equally absurd is trying to define, as the Governor proposes to do, the characteristics of the crime or of the victim that justify the death penalty. So if a terrorist is convicted, he can be put to death, but if an angry spouse commits murder, his life is spared. Is not an angry, murdering husband terrorizing his victim, his (and her) children and his community? And why the death penalty for cop killers and not killers of teachers, firefighters, judges or legislators? Are we going to get into the business of saying, as a matter of state policy, that one person's life is worth more than another's because of their job?
I have voted against the death penalty four times since coming to Beacon Hill, and will certainly do so again if the Governor's ill-advised proposal makes it to the House floor for debate. Beyond the folly of thinking there is a perfect death penalty law, the Governor's proposal reflects what I consider poor judgment about the wisdom of having the death penalty in the first place. The death penalty is nothing short of state-sanctioned, premeditated murder, and it reduces us as a society to the level of the most anti-social amongst us. It simply has no place in a modern, civil state. It doesn't work and it's just wrong.
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