Governor Mitt Romney pledged his support for reinstating the death penalty in Massachusetts, while many opponents of capital punishment made their cases before a Joint Committee on Criminal Justice at the Statehouse yesterday.
Several anti-death penalty panels, including members of the clergy, murder victims’ families and legal analysts testified before the Criminal Justice Committee against bringing capital punishment back in Massachusetts, which has not executed anyone since 1947. Romney, however, noted in a letter sent to the committee that ‘our administration is committed to the passage of legislation calling for the death penalty as a sentencing option.’
At issue were four bills currently in the state legislature: House Bill 319, which proposes the death penalty for violation of certain drug control laws; House Bill 3295 and Senate Bill 193, which both propose to reinstate the death penalty in the state and Senate Bill 194, which proposes the death penalty for certain first degree murder convictions.
Romney said his administration plans to offer its own legislative measures reinstating the death penalty, but he approved of capital punishment as an option in ‘a limited number of heinous crimes, including, but not limited to, homicides resulting from terrorism, and the assassination of law enforcement officers, prosecutors and witnesses.’
Romney will introduce this proposal later in the legislative session, the letter said, but did not offer a specific date.
Many of those who spoke at yesterday’s hearing, however, showed strong opposition to the bills, objecting to capital punishment’s costs and application and questioning its moral validity.
Robert Cushing, a member of Murder Victims’ Families for Reconciliation (MVFR), an organization comprised of victims’ relatives who do not support the death penalty, as well as families of those whose deaths resulted from capital punishment, decried the death penalty.
‘A ritual killing by the state dishonors the memory of our loved ones,’ he said.
Cushing urged the Commonwealth to pursue alternative avenues to help victims’ families by allocating its resources to financial assistance programs rather than capital punishment. He suggested lifting the statute of limitations regulating the amount of money victims’ families receive and increasing eligibility for compensation.
‘The state of Massachusetts ought not be in the business of killing its citizens,’ he said.
State Representative Byron Rushing questioned capital punishment’s fairness, ‘the problem of having whole groups of people … receiving the death penalty more than other groups,’ he said.
‘I suspect no one on this committee could name for me a multimillionaire convicted of a capital crime who has received the death penalty,’ he said.
Rushing also noted how capital punishment, ‘mistakes cannot be undone.’
Romney’s letter, however, said his administration’s death penalty proposal ‘will recognize and apply new forensic technologies to ensure that any convictions under such a statue meet the highest evidentiary standard.’
Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, D.C., cited the high cost of capital punishment as justification for the Commonwealth not reinstating it.
‘Both the death penalty and life imprisonment are costly,’ he said, noting, however, that death penalty trials are typically much more expensive than non-capital cases. Death penalty trials, he said, require additional lawyers, court documents and appeals all of which take a toll on public finances.
He said, however, that the worst system is one that conducts capital trials and then ends up not executing any of those convicted, which happens with two-thirds of cases nationwide.
Dieter said Massachusetts’ capital punishment system would be more akin to New York’s, which has not executed a single prisoner since reinstating the death penalty in 1995, than a state like Texas, which has executed nine people this year alone.