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Jewish World Review June 26, 2000 / 23 Sivan, 5760

Chris Matthews

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Death joins the debate


http://www.jewishworldreview.com -- IT'S THE EXECUTIONS that get to me. I confess some dark human sympathy for killings of passion. I sense how obsession might grab such hold of a man that he might kill out of anger, or fear, or sheer animal rage.

But how do we deal with the cruel, heartless or even joyous taker of another person's life? What should we do when one of our own, a human being, is robbed of life by another's moment of calculated pleasure?

I speak of the murder committed without regret and without pity.

For the first time in memory, the question of what to do with these people may rise this fall to the level of presidential debate. During George W. Bush's tenure as Texas governor, 131 convicted murderers have been put to death. Bush has declared his confidence that in each case the condemned earned his or her fate.

Thanks to modern science, we now have a check on such declarations of perfection. Analyzing blood or other human material, we can ascertain if the evidence used to convict matches with the convicted.

The question even the most advanced science cannot answer is whether society has the right to kill those whom science proves guilty. That query is for us resolve.

By that, I mean we Americans. We can argue for decades over the root causes but ours is a violent culture. Last year, 17,000 of us were murdered. Americans were the victims. Americans were the killers.

It does no good to shift the debate to that related, but different, question of gun control. While it's true that guns can be used to kill people, people without guns find other ways to kill. Ten thousand of those American killings last year were by firearms. Seven thousand were achieved by other means.

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So the question is not just what we do with the guns. It's what we do with our killers. In his new book "Actual Innocence: Five Days to Execution and Other Dispatches from the Wrongly Convicted." Barry Scheck, Peter Neufeld and Jim Dwyer make the case for giving all those on death row access to state-of-the-art DNA testing. They point to cases where science has shown the jury wrong, where the person found guilty was actually innocent.

Also thanks to Scheck and his colleagues on the legal "dream team" who defended O.J. Simpson, we have the stark evidence of how a rich, glamorous celebrity gets a different kind of prosecution. The pre-trial decision to exempt Simpson from capital punishment in this case of double-murder was an early signal to both jury and country that this defendant warranted special treatment.

But neither concern, the possibility of executing an innocent person or the difficulty of executing even a guilty community hero, exempts us from the stark question of what to do when we confront the opportunity to render punishment where punishment is clearly due.

What do we do when a gunman plans the robbery of a fast-food restaurant, plans the systematic execution of its low-paid workers, then carries out the crime without hesitation, error or mercy? What do we do when we catch this assassin dead to rights?

Do we hesitate? Do we fear error? Do we show mercy?

"There are many who bring an understandable passion to the new debate over capital punishment that arises from their fundamental moral opposition to the penalty itself," Vice President Al Gore said recently. "I deeply respect that position. I do not share it."

Whether Gore or Bush wins in November, I expect that one resolution of the 2000 presidential election will be to re-endorse capital punishment.



JWR contributor Chris Matthews is the author of Hardball. and hosts a CNBC show of the same name. Send your comments to him by clicking here.

Up

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