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| HAINE: Wants to bring back death penalty |
There
hadn’t been an execution in this state since 1999, and then-Gov. George Ryan
cleared out the state’s ‘death row’ just before leaving office early in 2003.
Then, the Legislature and then-Gov. Pat Quinn did away with the capital crimes
statute in 2011.
WHICH
MEANS THE worst of the criminal element in Illinois get locked away in prison
for life, without the option of parole. To anyone with sense, that sounds
pretty bad. You can’t get more severe than letting someone know they’re going
to grow old and die in a place that no one with sense ever wants to be in.
But
there are always those people like Bill Haine, a state senator from Alton (near
St. Louis), who last week said he plans to sponsor a bill to bring back the
death penalty.
He’s
falling into a line of logic that really doesn’t make much sense – some crimes
are so high-profile that people are entitled to know someone will die for them.
He
brought up the recent cop killing in suburban Fox Lake (which has been getting
significant news coverage largely because it’s coming at a time when there’s
little else happening – a “slow news day,” so to speak) as such evidence. He
probably will get someone with a vengeance streak strong enough to want an
execution.
NOT
THAT IT would really mean anything. Chances are that anyone with a personal
stake would be so offended that even an execution wouldn’t appease them.
My
own death penalty stance actually got solidified on that spring night in 1994
when John Gacy was put to death at the Stateville Correctional Center. I was a
reporter-type person that night, and got to see the many people who felt
compelled to see blood. I was particularly peeved at the batch who felt the
need to taunt a pair of nuns and a priest who were among the few who felt any
compassion for human life in general.
So
excuse me for not being sympathetic to those people who can’t handle the
thought that the idea of homicide in the name of ‘justice’ just doesn’t make
any sense.
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| It will be a dark day at Statehouse if death penalty actually returns |
Then
again, there will always be those people who want to think that the trends of
society moving forward is a mistake.
JUST
LIKE THOSE individuals like that clerk in rural Kentucky who did a few days in
a county jail, and thinks she’s now a victim who suffered for Christianity –
all because she can’t handle the idea that marriage for gay couples has the
support of the law.
The
people who have that hang-up are likely to focus their efforts on trying to
figure out how to thwart the concept as much as possible. In their minds, they’re
probably looking to all the anti-abortion activists who throughout the years
have been able to push for so many restrictions that there are large swaths of
the United States where it becomes next to impossible to actually obtain an
abortion.
They’d
probably like to have only certain places where gay couples could get married –
then they’ll try to restrict the ability of their local residents to even think
of going to those places.
All
issues where a 19th Century mentality is what is being sought by the
ideologues of our society.
WHICH
IS WHERE the death penalty becomes yet another issue where some people want to
live in the past.
It’s
another issue where the trend is to ditch the idea (although Wisconsin has not
had a capital crimes statute for most of its existence, and it is surviving
very well). Some 20 states have done away with the death penalty, some since
Illinois.
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| Does anyone think Dahmer got off lightly? |
Wisconsin,
of course, was the state that gave us Jeffrey Dahmer some two decades ago. He
of the cannibalistic streak whose own lengthy prison sentence came to an abrupt
end when another inmate decided to kill him for who knows why!
Somehow,
I don’t think that a similar fate for whoever winds up being arrested for the
slaying of Fox Lake police Lt. Joseph Gliniewicz would be out-of-line.
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