Editorial: Right, wrong on executing

An editorial
September 27, 2003

Former Illinois Gov. George Ryan, who was the first governor in the United States to issue a moratorium on the death penalty, is leading an international campaign to convince the 118 countries that still allow some form of capital punishment to embrace a moratorium on all executions.

It is wonderful to see an American political leader -- especially a relatively conservative Republican -- taking the lead on this issue. As the honorary president of Hands Off Cain, an international anti-death-penalty group, Ryan has traveled to Europe to drum up support for a United Nations resolution that would impose a moratorium on all executions. The moratorium would remain in place until all nations could enact needed reforms to make sure that, in Ryan's words, the "unthinkable" does not happen.

The "unthinkable" event Ryan refers to is the execution of an innocent inmate. To our view, however, it should also be unthinkable for a government to execute a guilty person.

Those who commit murder ought to be punished, and the punishment should be severe -- life imprisonment without parole in most cases. But the punishment for one murder should not be another murder. And, make no mistake, capital punishment is state-sanctioned murder.

That's why it is so disturbing that Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney wants his state to get back in the killing business. With Wisconsin, Massachusetts is one of 12 states where capital punishment is outlawed.

Romney's effort to restore the death penalty in Massachusetts is ghoulish, as he suggests he would preside over executions where a "virtual certainty" of guilt exists. When a state is willing to kill those who are virtually guilty, it is virtually certain, at some point, to get an execution wrong.

But even if Romney could be certain, he could never be right.

It is the 21st century, not the dark ages. The barbaric practice of strapping human beings to a gurney, pumping them full of deadly chemicals and then watching them has as much place in America as burning witches and using leeches to cure the sick.

Published: 11:15 AM 9/26/03