If the ACLU truly believes that the death penalty should be abolished everywhere, that is what they should focus their resources on. Eliminate it as an option. Not incendiary op-ed articles that are nothing more than virtual signaling. IMHO. This man does not deserve their consideration. And I can name a few more if pressed. ~Summer
PS - This is an author review of the op-ed, so no hate for reporting on it.
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Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/GettyThe American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) opposes capital punishment in all cases, considering it an “intolerable denial of civil liberties [that] is uncivilized in theory and unfair and inequitable in practice.”It was therefore...
www.yahoo.com
Steven Lubet
Wed, July 5, 2023 at 9:15 PM EDT
Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty
The American Civil Liberties Union (
ACLU) opposes capital punishment in all cases, considering it an “intolerable denial of civil liberties [that] is uncivilized in theory and unfair and inequitable in practice.”
It was therefore unsurprising when Yasmin Cader and Jeffery Robinson—the current and past directors of the ACLU’s Trone Center for Justice and Equality—published an
op-ed arguing against imposing the death penalty on
Robert Bowers, the convicted murderer of eleven Jewish worshipers at Pittsburgh’s
Tree of Life Synagogue.
Their argument is compelling, premised on the “morally bankrupt and inescapably racist” nature of the death penalty, and pointing out the one-sided judicial procedures that allow prosecutors to obtain a “death-qualified” jury.
As a long-time ACLU member, and former criminal defense attorney, I needed no convincing. Others in the Jewish community, however, understandably feel
differently about punishing the perpetrator of the greatest massacre of Jews in U.S. history. Cader and Robinson would have been more persuasive to that audience if they had given more attention to the community’s concerns, instead of skipping past them.
The problems begin in the essay’s first paragraph, when Cader and Robinson refer to the attack as “seemingly motivated by white supremacy and antisemitic hatred.” Whatever the authors’ intention, the use of “seemingly” signals uncertainty, as though Bowers might have had some objective other than killing Jews because they are Jews.
There is no world in which the invasion of a synagogue on Shabbat morning, and the murder of the minyan, is anything other than antisemitic. My family and friends (not all Jewish) gasped out loud when I read that passage to them.
I realize that Bowers’ defense against the death penalty is that mental illness and a “
markedly abnormal brain” caused him to act on “
delusional beliefs.” One of those beliefs, which Bowers
expressed to an arresting officer, was that “all Jews had to die.”
Defense attorneys are ethically required to raise any plausible argument to save a client’s life, even if that calls for recasting an obvious motive as only seemingly antisemitic. But Cader and Robinson were under no such obligation. The jury will never see their op-ed, and their categorical argument against ever imposing the death penalty does not rest on mitigating Bowers’ determination to kill Jews.
No matter how delusional he may have been, Bowers’ beliefs did not come out of nowhere. In the days before his attack at Tree of Life, he
repeated the internet meme that the “filthy evil Jews” of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) were bringing “hostile invaders” into the U.S.
Some relatives of the murdered victims seek the execution of Bowers, and some do not. Cader and Robinson understand that they all “deserve justice,” but criticize the prosecutors for refusing to accept Bowers’ offer to plead guilty in exchange for a life sentence without parole. They fail to recognize that a guilty plea would have precluded Bowers’ trial, which fully exposed his anti-Jewish rantings, and their sources on the internet, in nearly three weeks of widely reported testimony.
Cader and Robinson may see little comparative value in the lengthy public accounting of Bowers’ crime, but they would have done well to at least acknowledge that it was meaningful for the survivors.
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More at link. ~Summer
www.cbsnews.com
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