Can a Politician Be Pro-Victim and Anti-Death Penalty?

From MVFHR’s Executive Director Renny Cushing:

In yesterday’s post, we described the Sacco and Vanzetti commemoration that MVFHR took part in a couple of weeks ago. I enjoyed seeing former Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis at that event, and as I listened to him read the proclamation that he had delivered thirty years ago clearing the names of Sacco and Vanzetti, I thought about the role that the death penalty has played in the political arena over the years.

The 1977 proclamation, which Governor Dukakis reread at this year’s commemorative event, concluded with these words: “I … declare that any stigma and disgrace should be forever removed from the names of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, from the names of their families and descendants, and so, from the name of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts; and I hereby call upon all the people of Massachusetts to pause in their daily endeavors to reflect upon these tragic events, and draw from their historic lessons the resolve to prevent the forces of intolerance, fear, and hatred from ever again uniting to overcome the rationality, wisdom, and fairness to which our legal system aspires.”

Eloquent words, then and now. The other day I came across a 2005 article about the Sacco and Vanzetti case in The (Braintree, Mass.) Patriot Ledger that referred to Dukakis’s proclamation. Interestingly, the focus of the article was on the victims whom Sacco and Vanzetti were convicted of murdering. In addition to telling the stories of those victims, the piece says:

“Dukakis now acknowledges that his administration erred - not in its decision to clear Sacco and Vanzetti's names - but by not also reaching out to the families of Frederick Parmenter and Alessandro Berardelli, the two men who were robbed, shot, and left to die on a Braintree street on April 15, 1920. He said one reason for the oversight was that concerns about victims' rights were not as strong in the 1970s. ‘It was a terrible gap in my judgment; we didn't seem to focus on that,’ said Dukakis, now a professor at Northeastern University. ‘I think so much of the focus has been on [Sacco and Vanzetti] and the possibility that other people did it that I'm not sure how much time and attention we paid to [Parmenter and Berardelli.]’”

Pretty interesting reflections on his part. The victims’ rights movement was indeed at a more nascent stage in 1977 than it is today, but managing to embrace an awareness of the victims while also focusing on the fate of the offenders remains a challenge for many people, particularly when there are big questions about the fairness of the trial and the possibility of wrongful conviction as there were in Sacco and Vanzetti’s cases.

I also can’t help thinking of Dukakis’s famous gaffe during the 1988 Presidential debates, when he was asked how he would respond if his wife Kitty were raped and murdered. Dukakis expressed his opposition to the death penalty in his response, but he didn’t express enough of the ordinary outrage and agony that any family member feels in that situation. That debate took place only a few months after my father was murdered, and I knew I was against the death penalty, but after Dukakis took such an enormous hit for his response, it seemed as though a politician couldn’t be anti-death penalty and pro-victim.
Four years later, Bill Clinton made a big show of leaving the presidential campaign trail to return to Arkansas and preside over the execution of Ricky Ray Rector, a prisoner so brain damaged that he saved the dessert from his last meal to eat after the execution. Clinton had clearly learned from Dukakis’s mistake that you’d better come out “tough on crime” from the start, and supporting the death penalty was the obvious way to do that.

Then in 1995, New York Governor Mario Cuomo was harshly criticized by his opponent George Pataki for being against the death penalty, and the first bill that Pataki signed into law when he took over as governor was one that would reinstate the death penalty in New York.

What I remember so vividly is that at the signing of that bill, Governor Pataki had at his side the brother of a police officer who had been murdered. The message was clear: tough on crime means supporting the death penalty, and supporting the death penalty means supporting victims.

And then in 1998, the shift began to occur. Jan Schakowksy, running for Congress in Illinois, was criticized for her opposition to the death penalty – as Cuomo had been, as so many politicians had been. Her opponent ran ads featuring scenes of the Oklahoma City bombing as a way of condemning Schakowsky’s position on the issue. This time, though, the voice of a victim’s family member entered the debate in a new way. Bud Welch traveled to Chicago to speak at a press conference, during which he expressed his outrage at his daughter Julie Marie’s death being used as part of a political campaign and demanded that the ad be taken off the air. Bud’s public support of Jan Schakowsky, as a family member of a murder victim, allowed her to demonstrate that it was possible for a candidate to be both pro-victim and anti-death penalty. Schakowksy won the election and credited Bud’s speech with neutralizing the attacks on her.

And so, listening to Mike Dukakis a couple of weeks ago, I thought about how, if he had had an understanding of the experience of those of us who were family members of murder victims opposed to the death penalty, he could have responded to the 1988 debate question in a way that was pro-victim and anti-death penalty, and he could have neutralized the argument. I thought about how Jan Schakowsky’s campaign really did represent a kind of turning point, after which the death penalty issue has had less political traction. And, increasingly, politicians cannot assume that having a victim at their side automatically conveys a pro-death penalty message.