Mitt Romney town hall crowd applauds death penalty

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney on Tuesday asserted that the death penalty prevented "the most heinous crimes."

During a town hall event in Grand Junction, Colorado, a man who identified himself as "the local D.A." asked Romney to respond to a recent Supreme Court ruling that banned mandatory life sentences for minors who are convicted of murder.

Instead of taking a position on the Supreme Court ruling, the former Massachusetts governor took the opportunity to express his support for capital punishment.

"I realize that this wasn't a death penalty case ... but I happen to believe that the death penalty tends to prevent some of the most heinous crimes," Romney said, pausing for the audience to cheer.

"And I also believe that the prison terms that are of the nature you describe can also prevent some of the most heinous crimes from occurring," the candidate continued. "I believe in this case, the Supreme Court was looking at the age of the offender. Boy, I'll tell you, a 17 year old, a setting like that just breaks my heart. I'll look at the particular case."

"But I can tell you, I'm someone who comes down on the side of swift and severe punishment for those who commit these serious crimes."

FACTS & FIGURES

The American Civil Liberties Union believes the death penalty inherently violates the constitutional ban against cruel and unusual punishment and the guarantees of due process of law and of equal protection under the law.

The ACLU's opposition to capital punishment incorporates the following fundamental concerns:

-- The death penalty system in the U.S. is applied in an unfair and unjust manner against people, largely dependent on how much money they have, the skill of their attorneys, race of the victim and where the crime took place. People of color are far more likely to be executed than white people, especially if the victim is white

-- The death penalty is a waste of taxpayers money and has no public safety benefit. The vast majority of law enforcement professionals surveyed agree that capital punishment does not deter violent crime; a survey of police chiefs nationwide found they rank the death penalty lowest among ways to reduce violent crime. They ranked increasing the number of police officers, reducing drug abuse, and creating a better economy with more jobs higher than the death penalty as the best ways to reduce violence. The FBI has found the states with the death penalty have the highest murder rates.

-- Innocent people are too often sentenced to death. Since 1973, over 138 people have been released from death rows in 26 states because of innocence. Nationally, at least one person is exonerated for every 10 that are executed. ACLU

-- In the first half of 2012, eight states carried out 23 executions. In the same period last year, there were 25 executions in 9 states. deathpenaltyinfo.org

-- Inmates executed so far in 2012 spent an average of just over 18 years on death row prior to execution. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the average time between sentencing and execution for those executed in 2010 was 15 years, the longest period for any single year. deathpenaltyinfo.org

-- States have continued to alter their execution protocols due to ongoing shortages of certain execution drugs. All executions in 2012 have been by lethal injection. This year Arizona and Idaho joined Ohio and Washington in using a one-drug lethal injection procedure. All executions this year have used pentobarbital, a drug not used in executions prior to December 2010. deathpenaltyinfo.org

-- According to the Death Penalty Information Center, non-death penalty states had a 25 percent lower murder rate than states with the death penalty in 2010. In fact, states without a death penalty have had consistently lower murder rates every year for the last 20 years.

-- A 2009 study published in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology found that 88 percent of the country’s top criminologists did not believe the death penalty was a deterrent.

Source: PressTV, July 10, 2012

Feb 05, 2012

July 14, 2005, Death Penalty Testimony of Governor Mitt Romney to the Massachusetts House of Representatives, in support of his April 28, 2005 filing of a death penalty bill that was ultimately rejected by the legislature.

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