The Republican Crusade for the Delaware Death Penalty

What can fire up a normally sedate group of  Delaware Republican Legislators with a call to action, this, even, during the Legislative off season?

Other than an attempt to take away the right to bear arms by the gun control crowd, it would be the taking away of the death penalty. This will solicit a (normally sedate) riotous group of Republicans who are otherwise subservient to the Legislative whims of Senator Blevins and her posse. 

Last week, the Delaware Supreme Court ruled the state's death penalty law is unconstitutional. The top court said the capital punishment statute violates the U.S. Constitution by giving judges, and not juries, the final say to impose a death sentence. 

In other words, if a jury does not feel right about a verdict that would put someone to death, a Judge should and would not be allowed to supersede the decision, and sentence the person to death.

Delaware was one of only two other states that allowed a Judge such discretion, Alabama being the other.

My purpose in this blog is not to be either for or against the death penalty. 

I would like to address and ask the 15 of the 25 Republican State Legislators who have vowed to fight to get their death penalty up to constitutional speed, and have it back on the books, a question.

But before doing so, allow me to share my own personal experience with losing a family member to (vehicular) homicide -  

I was only two years old when my 17 year old brother was killed by a drunk driver. He was the MVP of his football team, well loved by all who knew him; he had just taken his girlfriend home after a date when the drunk driver slammed into his white Corvair, killing him instantly. My mother was working as a nurse at the hospital the night they brought his lifeless body to the hospital. She saw her first born son laying there with his neck broken and with his face badly disfigured. 

My mother would suffer a nervous breakdown and would never be the same. My father would drift off into alcoholism. I would know him only through the memory of others.

The individual responsible for his death would only receive 6 months in prison before they were released.

My heart goes out to the families who have lost their loved one at the hands of another, and the anger that it kindles deep inside toward the perpetrator.

Mr. and Ms. Republican Delaware State Legislators - Your Criminal Justice system is plagued to the core with both misfeasance and malfeasance. 

- There is an admitted pedophile judge who for over 30 years was allowed to sexually molest little boys, but the one victim who successfully brought suit against the monster had to fight his way through the protectors of the system in the Delaware Attorney Generals's Office, who , I might add refused to criminally investigate the Judge. He was allowed to retire from the bench with no prosecution and no sex offender registry.

- The Delaware Forensics Division continues to spiral downward as the recently appointed Director Michael Wolf resigned, his reasons:

"Wolf quietly resigned in late July – and told The News Journal he did so because the state of Delaware has failed to provide the staffing and resources that are essential to running the division.
The lack of funding has left the lab, marred by evidence thefts and mismanagement in 2014, struggling to keep up with rising rates of homicides, rapes and drug deaths, especially those caused by heroin and Fentanyl, according to the division's 2015 annual report (Jessica Reyes, Delaware News-Journal.  August 6, 2016)."

These examples are just the tip of the iceberg regarding your broken system

On a national level -
156 Death Row inmates have now been exonerated.The time time spent on death row ranging from one year to thirty-nine years

Time Magazine conducted a study and determined as many 120 of the 3,000 individuals currently on death row are in all probability innocent. That's 120 innocent human beings who are scheduled to be put to death. If we scale that down to the 13 people currently on Delaware's death row, that would be roughly one of them being a wrongfully convicted innocent man.

That one (theoretically) wrongfully convicted death row inmate might take on greater significance if it were the son or daughter of one of the fifteen Republican State Legislators.

 Here’s the first line of a Washington Post story about Glenn Ford, who was exonerated last month:

“My sons, when I left, was babies,” Louisiana’s longest-serving death row inmate told reporters after his release late Tuesday. “Now they’re grown men with babies.”

Suddenly you realize and the question hits you as you reflect on this mans story, this man who lost his family, who spent decades in some awful cell believing he was going to be electrocuted. And then you think that other frightening thought: How many other Glenn Fords are still behind bars? How many will die there? Just how often does our venerated justice system fail?

If one loses a family member to homicide, or as a wrongfully convicted victim who is put to death by the state, both are equally wrong, devastating and unacceptable to we who adhere to the rule of law in our society.
Currently, Delaware lags behind many other states, who have adopted the following measures to help safeguard against wrongful convictions:

Eye Witness Identification Reform Policy:
Delaware has no statewide eyewitness identification reform policy.

Recorded Interrogations Policy:

Delaware has no state law requiring recorded interrogations.

Post Conviction DNA Testing:
Defendants convicted of crimes in Delaware may apply for DNA testing using newly developed technologies (including Y-STR and mitochondrial). Effective: 2000. However, this option is very much under utilized.

Preservation of Evidence:

Delaware has no state law requiring preservation of evidence.

Exoneree Compensation:
Delaware has no exoneree compensation law.



Mr. and Ms. Republican  State Legislator - To help prevent wrongful convictions, start working to reform all aspects of the criminal justice system in a comprehensive fashion (death penalty included) and maybe, just maybe, I would feel better about your death penalty crusade and have a little more respect for you as "Lawmakers".