November
2005
Gobble Gobble: Pro-life Senator Reynolds announces his pro-murder plan
Normally on this turkey day there’s talk of reprieve, pardons and thankfulness for all we have been blessed with, but Watchdog Milwaukee has learned that State Senator Reynolds has another plan.
Reynolds, an evangelical christian with a more-than-a-little quirkiness in him, has decided it would be a swell idea to bring back the death penalty in Wisconsin.
The pro-murder Senator has decided that he can still call himself pro-life, as long as he’s opposing women from making healthcare decisions to abort zygotes and embryos — but big people walking around on two feet ought to be cut down in their tracks.
In a twisted logic, pro-death penalty advocates have been buzzing that if we would have executed Steven Avery when we had the chance, he wouldn’t have killed the woman he is now accused of killing. As it turns out, Avery never committed the crime he was originally imprisoned for. The whole idea of killing a person before they commit a crime to prevent a crime they may someday commit is an excercise in flawed logic.
Prison is a training camp for criminals, not the rehabilitation farm that some politicians make it out to be. Had Avery never gone to prison, we don’t know the where his past criminal tendencies would have led him. They could have gotten worse or they could have gone away. Maybe Avery would have spent his life as a hard-working, tax-paying farmer, machinist or tradesman. We just don’t know.
But we do know one thing — even if the death penalty is introduced in Wisconsin for really heinous crimes, it will be a slippery slope toward introducing the death penalty for lesser crimes. Soon politicians afraid for their own paychecks and fearful of a minority of the public who wants the death penalty, will be searching for ways to appease that minority.
If it does happen, cowardly politicians will likely try to sanitize these state sanctioned murders. But murder is brutal and it is final. If they’re going to approve it, and they should not, they ought to make it public. If the state is going to executate people, then voters who put their slimy politicians into office ought to see the ramifications of their work.
Politicans are good at hiding their slime. If they’re going to do it, they should do it in the open. Whether it’s by guilotine or public hanging in the town square, if they public wants it, they shouldn’t be insulated from seeing what murder really is. It’s a case where murder can be committed in the voting booth and people voting for politicans that drop the blade on human beings share some of the guilt.
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Related coverage from a snippet we received today:
Wisconsin Public Radio’s Joy Cardin will discuss this proposed bill on her November 28th show between 6:00 - 7:00 a.m. Monday morning on WHAD FM 90.7. The show’s featured guest will be Arthur Thexton from the Wisconsin Coalition Against the Death Penalty
Jim McGuigan
Jim McGuigan, Reynolds Watch, Watchdogging Wisconsin
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“In a twisted logic, pro-death penalty advocates have been buzzing that if we would have executed Steven Avery when we had the chance, he wouldn’t have killed the woman he is now accused of killing. As it turns out, Avery never committed the crime he was originally imprisoned for. The whole idea of killing a person before they commit a crime to prevent a crime they may someday commit is an excercise in flawed logic”
It would seem that in your end-run around the facts (that Steven Avery was a sexual offender and that there is a proclivity of sexual offenders to recommit those offenses), that you belabor your own logic patterns in order to arrive at a preordained conclusion (similar to what President Bush is being accused of in his manipulating intelligence to go to war in Iraq).
While I personally share your opposition to capital punishment, your blind vitriol doesn’t add to the debate. Just by declaring that, “pro-death penalty advocates have been buzzing that if we would have executed Steven Avery when we had the chance, he wouldn’t have killed the woman he is now accused of killing” doesn’t make it so. Maybe I missed the news article or quote on the radio from one of these death penalty advocates, but I don’t think anyone credible or trying to genuinely advance the debate would say these things (feel free to correct me if I’m wrong).
If your goal is to really add to the debate while simultaneously expressing your disdain for capital punishment, this article/post isn’t bad, but you started it off all wrong and marginalized yourself with the aforementioned paragraph.
I think there is some hindsight about Avery, and some sense to try and connect it to headline-grabbing death penalty legislation. Avery’s case is a difficult one to connect any sort of policy to, though that may not stop a kook like Reynolds from trying. However, the GOP puts the death penalty on the table every session, and has done so since 1996, so there’s really no reason to think the Avery case is a trigger.
This is about the 2006 campaign more than anything, though one would think many Republicans have realized by now that death is a poor campaign issue in Wisconsin. People just are not clammoring for state-sanctioned murder here, but that doesn’t seem to stop the death penalty from being lumped onto the GOP platform of push button campaign issues.
Gov. Doyle will veto, of course, and it will difficult for the GOP to override. “Those Democrat liberals!” you can hear the Republicans howl on the campaign trail. “Doyle just won’t let us kill people!”
Do Republicans realize that Tommy Thompson was very unsupportive of the death penalty legislation that Democrats blocked in the state Senate in the 1990’s?
Sue, please explain again how Jim did an end-around of the facts, as you suggest. I don’t see where this occured.
It is all too typical of religiously conservative politicians to be pro-life and pro death penalty. Most states that typically favor right to life issues frequently support state-sanctioned murder. Religious totalitarians are frequently hypocrites and the ones who aren’t don’t seem to run for public office. It seems to be an unfortunate fact. The more fundamental and totalitarian a persons religious beliefs are the less moral their actions become.
Single-issue voting is becoming the bane of our political system and threatens true democracy.
At a high level I agree with you. There are an infinite number of both moral and practical reasons to oppose capital punishment. However, I think using Avery as an example is a poor choice because the proposed legislation would require DNA evidence. If anything, Avery is an example that demonstrates that today’s technology would prevent people like him from being falsely executed, thereby proving that the proposed bill would be superior previous forms of the death penalty throughout history. Also, do you really believe that more than a handful of people believe that we should have killed Avery “when we had the chance?†That’s a bit of a reach.
Your comment about executions being done more publicly is an interesting one. I agree with you that politicians should have to face the reality of the murder that they endorse. That being said, I can’t help but wonder if you felt the same way about the MSM censoring/removing images of the terrorists flying planes into the twin towers after 9/11.
As for Tom Reynolds’ motives, I disagree that this is about the 2006 campaign. There are many pro-life conservatives, myself included, who do not concur with the Republican Party on this issue. I think this is a real loser for Reynolds.
Pursuing capital punishment in the context of the election IS a mistake for many Republicans (with maybe some exceptions in the Assembly districts) — but the Republican Party of Wisconsin doesn’t seem to get it. While there are parts of Wisconsin where the issue could firm up votes against Doyle, there are very few in Wisconsin clammoring for the death penalty other than Republicans in the legislature. There will be Republicans, such as Mary Lazich, who are truly pro-life and will oppose this latest death penalty legislation just as they have voted against previous death penalty bills.
Tom Reynolds, on the other hand, seems to be testing the outer limits of just how out of touch a politician can be with the majority of his ‘Tosa-based district.
To even talk about death, state sanctioned killing, in terms of election campaigns and political strategy is terrible; it’s amoral.
Over the years, pro-life voters in Wisconsin who really believe in life and are in strong moral opposition to capital punishment have been one of the reasons that we don’t have the death penalty in Wisconsin. It’s great to hear from them in our Watchdog blog … Your voices will need to be heard again in the Legislature!
Honestly, when was the last time you heard anybody, especially a politician refer to the rehabilitative function of prison? Never. Prisons are meant to punish. Period. If rehab, or penitence, was the purpose nobody caught with a sheet of acid or a bag of weed would be incarcerated, because there was no actual crime committed for which to be rehabilitated.
The problem with the tough on crime stance is that everyone neglects to mention that 95% of all prisoners are released. No job skills and a record. Who’s going to hire them. Nobody. How do they feed themselves? Crime.
The death penalty doesn’t deter crime any more than prison does. The state is simply another link in the murder chain and the original victim remains dead.
An eye for an eye is Old Testament rhetoric that was rejected by Christ who preached forgiveness. When are Christains going to start listening to their own savior?
I heard in Feb that he wanted to bring back the death penalty and have it be carried out by drawing and quartering in the town square. Is that in this version of his bill?
For all of our thoughtful commentary here, Sens. Reynolds and Lassee are, in fact, using Avery as a straw man for their death penalty bill. It seems they feel that just the mere mention of his name is enough to make other politicians think twice about opposing the legislation.
Here’s today’s editorial on mainaining our death penalty ban from the Wisconsin State Journal, no bastion of liberalism, but the state’s second largest newspaper.
http://www.madison.com/wsj/home/opinion/index.php?ntid=63493&ntpid=0
I leave for ten days, come back and it seems that everyone has agreed with the basis of my original column — even those that normally disagree with me.
There is hope for Wisconsin after all.
Avery already had a cruel disposition as witnessed by his previous assaults and convictions …