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When Governor Rounds stayed Elijah Page's execution last night, the news carried comments from relieved protestors, including one woman on KELO TV who said she knew that the Governor had it in him to spare Page's life. She averred that Rounds is a good man, as demonstrated by his support for the abortion ban (now Referred Law 6 on the November ballot). Others now may draw the conclusion that Rounds holds a consistent pro-life vision.
Nothing could be further from the truth. In his press conference yesterday laying out his reasons for the stay, Rounds said absolutely nothing about sparing Page's life or even sparing the convict cruel and unusual punishment. Rounds couched his decision entirely in terms of the particularities of South Dakota statute. South Dakota's death penalty law, written in 1984 (and evidently not reviewed by the governor until yesterday afternoon around 4 p.m.), specifies the use of a two-drug combination in the lethal injection chamber. Board of Corrections officials had made plans to use the 3-drug combination that apparently has become the standard in other states. The only reason Governor Rounds postponed the execution was his concern that state employees participating in the execution might have faced legal penalties afterward. He thus has stayed the execution until July 1, 2007, by which time he expects the legislature will have addressed the issue in its winter session and cleared the way for the execution to take place in a legal fashion.
As he did on the first abortion ban to come to his desk in 2005, Governor Rounds has avoided making a moral decision and instead played the bureaucrat. He has successfully delayed the execution, South Dakota's first since the 1940s, until well after the election, when he can calmly oversee the state's killing of a man without facing any awkward questions from his voters on their way to the polls about the depth and consistency of his pro-life stance. Governor Rounds has not answered anyone's prayers besides his political consultants, who know that the two-drug mix of abortion and the death penalty, while perhaps not guaranteed lethal, could cause Rounds some cruel and unusual punishment at the hands of his fellow Catholics and other riled voters in his effort to be re-elected governor.
The debate on an issue as serious as the death penalty, the state-sanctioned pre-meditated killing of individuals who have already been contained and deprived of their state-given rights, should not center on technicalities. True political leaders would engage us in a conversation about the fundamental values involved. True political leaders would face up to and either defend or resolve the apparently contradictory position of forbidding a rape victim from seeking an abortion because of our dedvotion to the sanctity of life but allowing a brutal criminal to dictate the terms of his punishment and assisting in a suicide. Governor Rounds is failing to show that leadership on this moral issue.
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Poops couldn’t resist to say the sky is falling in front of all of his
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9 hours ago
Cory, I think you're spot on. It does appear Rounds has taken the easy way out, by going the bureaucratic route.
ReplyDeleteI for one have a hard time reconciling how someone can be staunchly pro-life on abortion and yet be a law and order Republican who's all for capital punishment.
Maybe it's not as incongruous as it seems on the surface, but it would seem to be problematic to be for life on one end and for state-sanctioned execution on the other.
"I for one have a hard time reconciling how someone can be staunchly pro-life on abortion and yet be a law and order Republican who's all for capital punishment."
ReplyDeleteI hold the same views on abortion and capital punishment. The issue isn't about being "pro-life"... it's about responsibility. It's irresponsible to have sex without planning for the outcome of pregnancy. And it's irresponsible to murder a person without without forfeiting all respect for your own life. (It's also irresponsible for the state to weigh the life of the victim differently than the life of the perpetrator.)
I think that the "Sanctity of Life" argument is based on faulty reasoning. And while Cory's right that Rounds did make this decision for technical reasons, I also think it was the right decision. For a rare event like this, it's important to correct the laws governing it in advance.
Life lived differently is valued differently. If somebody commits true evil, our decision about what happens to them should only be a matter of determining the most effective and efficient way to pluck the tumor from society. Whether we kill them or lock them away doesn't matter and revenge has no meaning. The suffering of evil people deserves neither sympathy nor pleasure. Society should only care that people are protected. The decision to maim and torture another human for pleasure renders their very existence nearly worthless. Life itself is only of limited value compared to the life lived.
ReplyDeleteWhy is it so hard for people to understand the republicans that believe in capitol punishment and against abortion?? It doesn't seem hard to fathom that more people are comfortable killing sadistic murderers than there are people comfortable with extinguishing a life unborn. Is it a surprise that abortion is more politicized than the death sentence when the death sentence hardly ever happens and abortion happens in every state every day in the country? I'm ambivalent about abortion but at least I have enough perspective to understand other people's beliefs about it.
Re: I understand the positions of Phaedrus and Bergan completely and agree that individuals who reject the value of another person's life reject the value of their own. On a personal level, I certainly value and seek out the company of indviduals who live good lives over that of evil-doers. There are all sorts of vita philosophical points involved in sorting out positions on capital punishment and abortion. One of my problems with Governor Rounds's behavior is that he isn't confronting those philosophical issues, at least not in a vocal fashion. Instead of offering philosophical and moral leadership, he hides behind technicalities and shifts the responsibility to the Legislature after the election. When explaining his decision to stay the execution, Rounds doesn't talk about big moral issues; he instead expresses his concern for the mental well-being of state employees who might have witnessed an execution that violated state statute. The commenters to this blog express much more admirable and useful moral viewpoints than our governor, who seems to engage in Clintonesque triangulation, carefully choosing language that will leave his moral position ambiguous and his voter approval undamaged.
ReplyDeleteI would think a governor wouldn't really be involved in deciding the morality anyway. They are neither part of the legislature writing law, nor judicial in determining constitutionality or guilt.
ReplyDeleteWhat place does the state executive have in any of it? They have only the ability to stay execution if there is possible innocence or because of technicalities. A governor that involved themselves in a case because they have a moral problem with capital punishment would be abusing their power.