Mr. Clinton: What About Rickey Ray Rector?

[David Zephyr]

I am happy to learn today that Bill Clinton will now join Senator Obama and Hillary Clinton next week in a symbolic march over the Edmund Pettus Bridge to commemorate where civil rights workers were beaten by state troopers back in 1965.

I hope that someone will take a moment to ask the former President about his thoughts today about his cruel decision to execute Rickey Ray Rector, a mentally disabled black prisoner in 1992, twenty-seven years after the events at the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Then Governor Clinton, in the heat of his presidential campaign apparently felt he needed to look "tough on crime" and that executing Rickey Ray Rector was the means to achieve that goal.

Amnesty International provides any here the Democratic Underground a brief history surrounding the savage execution of Rickey Ray Rector at their sterling website: http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/engamr510032006

Here's hoping that someone, maybe even one voice, might speak up for Rickey Ray Rector when Bill is up on the bridge.

[Proud2BAmurkin]

1. Didn't he become retarded DURING the cop shootout he got convicted on?

That makes a big difference.

[David Zephyr]

2. "Become retarded"?

You write: Didn't he become retarded DURING the cop shootout he got convicted on?" And say that this makes "a big difference". Really?

Does your moral caliper allow you to approve of a white politician murdering a black man in the south who suffered severe mental impairment?

-------

"Ricky Rector had shot himself in the head prior to his arrest. The bullet wound and subsequent surgery resulted in the loss of a large section of the front of his brain. As his execution approached, the death watch log maintained by prison personnel at the Cummins Unit in Varner revealed an inmate displaying clear signs that he was seriously mentally disabled. The log’s entry for 21 January 1992, for example, described Ricky Rector as "'ancing in his cell.... Howling and barking while sitting on his bunk.... Walking back and forth in the Quiet Cell snapping his fingers on his right hand and began noises with his voice like a dog.' Whether or not to proceed with his execution, a journalist later wrote, 'became a test in Arkansas of the lengths to which a society would pursue the old urge to expiate one killing by performing another – and a test of the state’s highest temporal authority, the governor, who alone could stop it.'

"The Arkansas governor, who at the time was seeking the highest office in the country, chose not to stop it. Breaking off from presidential campaigning, Governor Bill Clinton flew back from New Hampshire for Ricky Ray Rector’s execution. This calculated killing, when it came on 24 January 1992, had a final outrage in store. The execution team had to search for 50 minutes to find a suitable vein in which to insert the lethal injection needle. Rector, apparently not comprehending what was happening to him, helped them in their macabre task. Earlier, as was his daily habit, he had left the slice of pecan pie from his final meal "for later". And shortly before that, catching a glimpse of Governor Clinton on the television news, Ricky Rector told one of his lawyers, 'I’m gonna vote for him for President'."

http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/engamr510032006

[The Magistrate]

3. The Man Committed A Murder, Sir

There was no question raised about his guilt; the sentence was within reasonable application of the law.

Calling the execution murder is nonesense.

[David Zephyr]

4. All but a handful of the planet's nations consider it "murder".

The death penalty is murder.

The death penalty for a black man in the south suffering from brain damage is worse than murder.

[The Magistrate]

5. Nonesense, Sir

A killing is a murder if it meets conditions defined as murder in an applicable law. State execution is legal in the United Sttaes. It is not banned by any applicable international treaty or conbention. People in other places may frown upon it, but that does not make it murder, and calling it murder when it is not carries no weight at all.

The bottom line of the thing id that if the man had not killed another human being, he would today be alive and whole.

That the Gov. Clinton saw this sentance carried out did not trouble me in the slightest, and does not trouble me today. It was cold, certainly, but a bit of ice in the soul is required for competent leadership.

[David Zephyr]

6. Lynching was "legal" too.

"State execution" is the nice euphemism for the barbaric act of state sanctioned murder.

Lynching was "legal" too.

Beating up black people on bridges, much like the one Bill will stand on next week, was legal, too.

That's my point.

Bill Clinton did not have to enforce the death penalty, did he?

He chose to.

[The Magistrate]

8. Not So, Sir; It Merely Went Un-Prosecuted

Every law against mob assembly, heinous battery, murder, etc., was there on the books to be enforced, the leaders of the communities simply declined to enforce these laws in these instances of mob murder, and did so so routinely no one had any expectation they would do otherwise. That is a very different thing from being legal.

The sentence was legal and proper, its execution is nothing to be troubled over. It is not as if there was a question of the man's guilt. The racialist hyperbole you are engaging in concerning this is just that: rhetorical flourush without grounding in realities.

[David Zephyr]

9. Then please, by all means, start your own thread championing the death penalty.

Make your heart happy and launch a pro-death penalty thread.

[The Magistrate]

10. You Asked A Question, Sir

There is no guarantee answers to it will be to your liking. My predisposition is to defend Democrats from assault, from whatever quarter it originates.

[H2O Man]

12. Perhaps it would

be beneficial to substitute the word "homicide" for "murder." I think we would all agree that translates to "homo/man" plus "-cide/to kill." When one or more people kill a human being, that is homicide.

There are various ways that we can view individual instances of homicide. There are examples of what the law considers "justifiable homicide." In some states, capital punishment is considered a justifiable form of homicide. In theory, society believes that there are some crimes that are so bad that the legal system is justied in killing the man (or woman) who they believe is guilty of that crime.

Significant portions of our society do not believe that the death penalty constitutes justifiable homicide. In fact, if an innocent person has been killed due to an error in the court system, that person's death is still "legal" -- and thus "justifiable homicide" to boot.

And in cases where the person being put to death is indeed guilty, there are many people who view capital punishment as a brutal and unjustified form of homicide.

One need not rely only upon Hitler's Germany for an example of where homicide was "legal" yet clearly unjustified" and indeed evil. This nation has an ugly history in regard to its treatment of groups of people, including significant numbers that were victims of "legal" homicide. And there are many people who believe that the policy of the Bush administration today, in Iraq, involves unjustified homicide -- indeed, murder -- no matter if it is "legal" or not.

While I am anti-capital punishment, I can appreciate that others sincerely hold beliefs that are very different than my own on this topic.

[The Magistrate]

13. Quite True, Sir

But it is a neutral term, and hence lacks the denunciatory emotive 'punch' persons engaged in propagandas crave in their terminology. The criteria for justifiable homicide are also legal statements, and as you observe, legally, even the execution of a man properly convicted and sentenced would be justifiable homicide by any legal deginition even were his innocence proved. Scalia made not long ago perhaps the most self-damning statement a judge could make, in an opinion on a death sentence appeal, that mere innocence meant nothing against a properly reached verdict. Such a statement tempts me to religion, in the hope there really is a hell for the damnable.

It is true that the paying of death for death does not trouble me as a general rule. It does not strike me as immoral, and claims the state should not kill strike me as humorous: states are engines of violence, and killing is what they do. Against this, there is the certainty vouchsafed us by the prophet Murphy that any system is bound to fail on occassion, and even if the most stringent concievable safe-guards are in place and enforced, conviction and sentence of someone innocent is certain to occur. As the system is actually put in practice, there are numerous instances of shabby dealings, even malice on the part of prosecutors and police. There can be no question injustice does occur, and no reason to believe it is always, or has always been, remedied.

The two larger matters you raise are interesting examples, that deserve at least some brief seperate treatment.

The killing in the Reich of those deemed racial undesireables, political opponents, etc., was indeed perfectly legal under the laws of that nation, and in fact, mandated by them. No one would ever have been tried for murder for such acts by a Reich court. Trials for these acts came about only when a greater coalition of states, having conquered the Reich, imposed their own notions of law and justice upon people who had, under the Reich, obeyed its laws.

Some of the killing, and other behavior of U.S. forces in Iraq today, clearly violates both existing U.S. law, and relevant international treaties the U.S. has accepted as having the force of law for its behavior as a government. Those things certainly are, and ought to be regarded as, crimes.

[Proud2BAmurkin]

11. That entry is misleading. "Shot himself prior to his arrest." He did it DURING the crime

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricky_Ray_Rector

In 1981, Rector decided to rob a convenience store. During a stand-off, he shot and killed a civilian, and police officer Robert Martin. He shot himself in the head, but did not die. Later, his I.Q. would be measured at around 70.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

7. A heinous act carried out for political expediency.

From the AI report:

The Arkansas governor, who at the time was seeking the highest office in the country, chose not to stop it. Breaking off from presidential campaigning, Governor Bill Clinton flew back from New Hampshire for Ricky Ray Rector’s execution. This calculated killing, when it came on 24 January 1992, had a final outrage in store. The execution team had to search for 50 minutes to find a suitable vein in which to insert the lethal injection needle. Rector, apparently not comprehending what was happening to him, helped them in their macabre task. Earlier, as was his daily habit, he had left the slice of pecan pie from his final meal "for later". And shortly before that, catching a glimpse of Governor Clinton on the television news, Ricky Rector told one of his lawyers, "I’m gonna vote for him for President".

[mdmc]

14. peace

:kick: