Strib editorial: Death penalty/Not for Rodriguez -- or anyone

[question everything]

(I left town last Friday and read this editorial while travelling. I thought that it sends a strong message, even five days later - QE)

startribune.com

Editorial: Death penalty/Not for Rodriguez -- or anyone
Published December 3, 2004

The holiday season will be forever changed for the family of Dru Sjodin, the effervescent young woman who was kidnapped and killed a year ago last week. There's no overstating the heartbreak her loved ones have endured -- from her disappearance to the discovery of her remains last spring. Yet as terrible as this crime was, pursuing execution of the alleged murderer will do nothing to advance justice. Quite the contrary.

Alfonso Rodriguez, a compulsive sex offender unwisely released from prison just months before Sjodin's disappearance, is the accused in this grim case. The crime with which he's charged is lamentably common, but the conduct of his trial is likely to be anything but. That's because former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft used the Rodriguez case to indulge his zeal for execution as one of his last acts in office: Since the defendant apparently drove from North Dakota to Minnesota in the course of his alleged crime, Ashcroft had cause to press prosecutors to pursue the federal death penalty in the case.

This edict puts North Dakota -- the jurisdiction in which Rodriguez will be tried -- in an odd spot. Having abolished capital punishment decades ago, the state could soon be forced to push for a penalty it has long deemed inhumane -- and for the first federal execution in its history. The same would be true had the decision been made to charge Rodriguez in Minnesota.

Given the federal courts' longtime stance that it's up to states to determine how criminals within their borders should be punished, this high-handed intrusion by the Justice Department is hard to figure. But since 2001, Ashcroft & Co. have pressed U.S. attorneys to seek the death penalty whenever possible.

Pursuit of capital punishment in the Rodriguez case seems nearly whimsical -- for its justification rests entirely on an alleged 25-mile car trip that crossed a state border -- an episode that wouldn't have occurred had the driver aimed his car in any direction but east. That happenstance raises a basic question of fairness: What is it about venturing from one state to another that makes an alleged murderer a better candidate for execution than a cellmate accused of committing the same crime in his own neighborhood?

More..

http://www.startribune.com/stories/561/5116091.html

[DFLforever]

1. Thanks for posting this piece

I live in St Paul and read the Strib but missed it entirely. I had heard the Feds were seeking the death penalty in this case and was appalled they would do so in our non-death penalty states.

I think they hope to score some political points for their Party of hate.

[question everything]

2. Another example of Republicans' duplicity

They are all for states right, except when they are not.