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with his ideas on the death penalty. Supporting them for Killing children and police and sometimes other circumstances, only when a fair trial has been assured. But as Governor, Dean significantly cut money for public defenders, stated that he thought that the state should not pay to defend people conviced to crimes. Dean said that 95 percent of them were guilty anyway, and his damage control people tried to pass that off as a joke, but Dean still requested steep cuts for the public defenders office while requesting large increase to the budgets of the poice and prosecutors. When his defender general found grants and other funds to enable him to make up for the cuts Dean enacted, Dean had even more differnces with the defender general, and would not let the state of Vermont accept a grant from the Justice Department that the defender arranged for the state to defend mentally ill defendants. The Vermont Supreme Court ruled that the Governor did not have the authority under the state constitution to prevent the defenders office from accepting grants to replace funds he cut. Dean lost that fight, but decided that to prevent such finds from being sought again, to not reappoint defender general, and replace him with someone who would be less active in trying to raise the funds to run the department adequately. Dean was criticied by the editors of the local newpapers for creating an imbalanced system of justice, and the supreme court ruled that his cuts violated the bill of rights amendment requiring right to fair trial.
So Dean's attitute was to support the death penalty, but not provide adequate funding for the defense of those accused of serious crimes, denying access to good enough attorneys to handle their cases, His denial and refusal of fund to assist the mentally ill who were accused of murder was overwhelmingly inhumane, in my opinion, and his entire record of cutting funds for to provide the poor and mentally ill with proper legal support totally makes his argument for the death penalty if a person is assured of a fair trial somewhat suspect.
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