Post by Anja Nieser on Sept 8, 2006 7:17:11 GMT -5
Death penalty faces referendum in Wisconsin
DECISION:Supporters and opponents have waged a low-key battle about capital punishment.
BY SHARON SCHMICKLE
MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS
It was 155 years ago when more than 2,000 people in Kenosha, Wis., watched John McCaffry dangle from a noose, writhing for several minutes before his body went limp. McCaffry, who had drowned his wife, Bridgett, in a large backyard cask, was the last person to be executed in Wisconsin.
Wisconsin voters face a referendum in November asking whether the state should resume executions. Such a vote is rare nationwide.
Other states are fine-tuning their death penalty laws. South Dakota and Illinois are adjusting their laws to incorporate new technologies in DNA evidence and execution methods. But Wisconsin's showdown cuts to the essence of the arguments over capital punishment.
"It is time for this state to correct a 150-year-old mistake and bring back the death penalty," said Mike Tellier, a junior at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse who leads a College Republicans chapter. "It's a simple matter of justice. If someone close to me was killed, I would demand justice."
Tellier planned to mobilize like-minded students as classes began this week.
In Hudson, Jose Vega is joining a campaign that death penalty foes started last week.
"Reinstating the death penalty is a backward move, and it goes against the whole progressive history of this state," said Vega, who is a professor of education at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls. "If we say we truly value life, we have to value all life."
Wisconsin abolished the death penalty two years after McCaffry's hanging. It is one of 12 states that does not execute criminals, although certain federal cases can end in death sentences. Wisconsin has kept its ban even through grisly cases that would probably have sent killers to death row in other states.
In 1972 the U.S. Supreme Court in effect suspended executions after a series of cases challenged the constitutionality of state laws. States revised their laws, and the penalty was reinstated in 1976.
By 1991, national support had rebounded. Wisconsin held its course even after police found severed heads and other parts of 11 men and boys in Jeffrey Dahmer's apartment in Milwaukee. Dahmer, who had cannibalized and sodomized some of his victims, eventually confessed to killing 17 people. In 1994, an inmate beat him to death in the bathroom of a state prison.
Meanwhile, Sen. Alan Lasee, a Republican and rising force in the Wisconsin Legislature, was pushing to restore the death penalty. The rhetorical fuel for his drive was the Dahmer case and others in which children had been victims.
"It deeply troubles me that the only punishment for these killers is life in prison," Lasee said. "The punishment should fit the crime."
So far, campaigns on both sides have been low-key. Many activists were distracted by another referendum on this year's ballot to amend the state constitution to ban gay marriage.
Lasee is counting on public opinion to carry the death penalty vote. In a Badger Poll this summer, 56 percent of Wisconsinites favored his referendum while 37 percent opposed it.
But opposition is gearing up, led by a coalition called No Death Penalty Wisconsin. It includes district attorneys in Milwaukee and Dane counties, the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International and other organizations.
The group is circulating research contending that the death penalty does not deter crime, that members of minorities have been executed in disproportionate numbers, and that an execution is more expensive in the long run than locking a killer up for life.
"This is a very expensive law enforcement tool, and it would take resources away from other more effective tools," said Ann Heywood, a retired teacher who is organizing the campaign in the Eau Claire area.
Wisconsin's Catholic bishops recently issued a letter that priests around the state are reading to congregations: "We oppose the death penalty because we value human life, even when that life might seem unworthy to us."
DECISION:Supporters and opponents have waged a low-key battle about capital punishment.
BY SHARON SCHMICKLE
MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS
It was 155 years ago when more than 2,000 people in Kenosha, Wis., watched John McCaffry dangle from a noose, writhing for several minutes before his body went limp. McCaffry, who had drowned his wife, Bridgett, in a large backyard cask, was the last person to be executed in Wisconsin.
Wisconsin voters face a referendum in November asking whether the state should resume executions. Such a vote is rare nationwide.
Other states are fine-tuning their death penalty laws. South Dakota and Illinois are adjusting their laws to incorporate new technologies in DNA evidence and execution methods. But Wisconsin's showdown cuts to the essence of the arguments over capital punishment.
"It is time for this state to correct a 150-year-old mistake and bring back the death penalty," said Mike Tellier, a junior at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse who leads a College Republicans chapter. "It's a simple matter of justice. If someone close to me was killed, I would demand justice."
Tellier planned to mobilize like-minded students as classes began this week.
In Hudson, Jose Vega is joining a campaign that death penalty foes started last week.
"Reinstating the death penalty is a backward move, and it goes against the whole progressive history of this state," said Vega, who is a professor of education at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls. "If we say we truly value life, we have to value all life."
Wisconsin abolished the death penalty two years after McCaffry's hanging. It is one of 12 states that does not execute criminals, although certain federal cases can end in death sentences. Wisconsin has kept its ban even through grisly cases that would probably have sent killers to death row in other states.
In 1972 the U.S. Supreme Court in effect suspended executions after a series of cases challenged the constitutionality of state laws. States revised their laws, and the penalty was reinstated in 1976.
By 1991, national support had rebounded. Wisconsin held its course even after police found severed heads and other parts of 11 men and boys in Jeffrey Dahmer's apartment in Milwaukee. Dahmer, who had cannibalized and sodomized some of his victims, eventually confessed to killing 17 people. In 1994, an inmate beat him to death in the bathroom of a state prison.
Meanwhile, Sen. Alan Lasee, a Republican and rising force in the Wisconsin Legislature, was pushing to restore the death penalty. The rhetorical fuel for his drive was the Dahmer case and others in which children had been victims.
"It deeply troubles me that the only punishment for these killers is life in prison," Lasee said. "The punishment should fit the crime."
So far, campaigns on both sides have been low-key. Many activists were distracted by another referendum on this year's ballot to amend the state constitution to ban gay marriage.
Lasee is counting on public opinion to carry the death penalty vote. In a Badger Poll this summer, 56 percent of Wisconsinites favored his referendum while 37 percent opposed it.
But opposition is gearing up, led by a coalition called No Death Penalty Wisconsin. It includes district attorneys in Milwaukee and Dane counties, the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International and other organizations.
The group is circulating research contending that the death penalty does not deter crime, that members of minorities have been executed in disproportionate numbers, and that an execution is more expensive in the long run than locking a killer up for life.
"This is a very expensive law enforcement tool, and it would take resources away from other more effective tools," said Ann Heywood, a retired teacher who is organizing the campaign in the Eau Claire area.
Wisconsin's Catholic bishops recently issued a letter that priests around the state are reading to congregations: "We oppose the death penalty because we value human life, even when that life might seem unworthy to us."