Romney: No rush on death penalty bill Associated Press
03/28/2003
BOSTON -- Governor Romney yesterday pledged support for reinstating the death penalty but passed up a chance to convince skeptical lawmakers that the state should execute terrorists and cop killers.
Romney, who regularly dispatches top aides to testify before legislative panels, steered clear of a session that featured anti-death penalty testimony from families of victims of the Sept. 11 and Oklahoma City terrorist attacks.
The Republican governor also opted not to support the highest ranking Republicans in the House and Senate. Three of the four bills discussed at the joint Criminal Justice Committee hearing were authored by either Senate Minority Leader Brian Lees of East Longmeadow, or House Minority Leader Bradley Jones of North Reading.
"We are looking forward to offering our own legislative proposal in support of the death penalty in conjunction with a more comprehensive package of crime legislation to be considered later in the legislative session," Romney and Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey said in a letter to the committee.
Massachusetts banned the death penalty in 1984. The past four Republican governors have tried unsuccessfully to reinstate it, and came within one vote in 1997. Support has since slipped, proponents acknowledge.
"If we were to capture perpetrators of a terrorist incident here in Boston, if something awful were to happen, God forbid, you could see a sea change in opinion here," said Rep. Reed Hillman, R-Sturbridge. "Absent something like that, no, I don't see that we have the votes."
Romney, reiterating a campaign stance, said he wants the death penalty as a sentencing option in limited "heinous crimes," including terrorist murders and slayings of law enforcement officers, prosecutors and witnesses.
"Our death penalty proposal will recognize and apply new forensic technologies to ensure that any convictions under such a statute meet the highest evidentiary standard," he wrote.
Romney spokeswoman Shawn Feddeman would not specify when such legislation would be introduced.
"Getting the state's finances back on track has been the governor's top priority," she said.
Meanwhile, people who lost family members in terrorist attacks testified against the death penalty.
"I do not want to be a party to more killing," said Arlington resident Terry Rockefeller, whose sister, Laura Rockefeller, died in the 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center towers.
Julie Welch was among the 168 people killed when Timothy McVeigh's truck bomb blew apart the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995. McVeigh was executed in 2001 and his partner, Terry Nichols, is serving a life sentence.
"I simply wanted them fried," Bud Welch, Julie's father, told the committee, describing his initial thirst for revenge. He later had a change of heart.
"That is the very thing that killed Julie," he said, referring to McVeigh's apparent attempt at revenge for the 1993 Branch Davidian raid and deaths in Waco, Texas.
Welch, who has testified against the death penalty in 20 states, called McVeigh's execution a "staged political event."
"There was nothing about that process that brought me any peace," he said.
