Don Peterson and Pete Schwartzkopf on the death penalty
The Cape Gazette asked the candidates a series of questions including this one on the death penalty.
6. GOP lawmakers plan to introduce legislation keeping the death penalty in Delaware. Will you support it?
Peterson: No, I will oppose any such move! The one thing we should kill in the name of the people of Delaware is the death penalty. Liberals, libertarians, conservatives and thoughtful people in between are all coming to the same conclusion: the death penalty should be abolished. It is not a deterrent, it is inordinately expensive, and it is applied unjustly and disproportionately to people of color and the poor. My opponent believes that the death penalty keeps police and correctional officers safer. In fact, the deadliest states for law enforcement officers in recent years are all states that actively use the death penalty. In the name of justice, heinous crimes should be met with severe punishment. I support sentences of life in prison without parole.
Schwartzkopf: I have not talked to the GOP lawmakers about this issue but I have read the newspaper articles detailing their intent. Let’s be clear about what the State Supreme Court said in their ruling. They did not strike down the death penalty itself as being unconstitutional. They ruled that the relationship between the jury and the judge was unconstitutional. I suspect that, when the General Assembly convenes in January, there will be a bill introduced by the supporters of keeping the death penalty to make the law constitutional again by directing the jury to make the final decision. If that bill is introduced, I would push for it to be a unanimous jury making that decision. I also suspect that the repeal supporters will introduce legislation to remove the death penalty entirely from the code like they tried and failed to do this past year.
First and foremost, Pete Schwartzkopf is a cop, and cops are heavily pro-death penalty.
If he wanted to act like a Republican, he should have been honest and joined the GOP. He’s smart enough to realize they can’t gain a majority of either house in Dover, so he pretends to be a Democrat instead. His only evidence is his willingness to wave the rainbow flag.
Ask him what bathroom he thinks transgendered people should use. See if he gets that one right.
Never met a cop who didn’t like seeing people on death row.
“Ask him what bathroom he thinks transgendered people should use. See if he gets that one right.”
Pretty sure that was answered a couple years back, here’s a link in case you forgot:
http://legis.delaware.gov/LIS/lis147.nsf/7712cf7cc0e9227a852568470077336f/4d42a9cb3e86e11b85257b8e007e17db?OpenDocument
No thanks necessary, you’re totally welcome!
I don’t care how he voted. I want to hear him say the words. I want to drive as much of a wedge between Pete and his state cop cronies as I possibly can. He pretends to be a Democrat, but we know who he carries the water for: The downstate Dixiecrats. He’s a phony, and it’s high time everyone knew it.
You seem to have lots of inside information, Heather. How many state cops are gay and out?
“Heather” = Sarah
That name means nothing to me, either. Whoever he or she really is, she’s so far up Pete’s butt she could chew his food.
Notice Pete always says “equal rights.” He can’t choke out LGBT. And he says things like “I don’t have a problem with that.” lol
That is why I would never vote for Pete again. He does not care what HIS constituents want, only what his police friends would think of him. No wonder the people in this country are angry.
If you actually talk to Pete he is for the death penalty. Period.
Doing nothing to get repeal passed is all the evidence you need.
Just like minimum wage. Action speaks louder than any words he could say.
As a person who has supported repealing the death penalty for as long as I can remember, I have to say I find it incredibly frustrating that this issue has stagnated all other criminal justice reform efforts, or so it appears, since this is the only one getting any real attention over the last four years.
I’ve always been bothered by the fact that the bills’ sponsors were willing to compromise the lives of those currently on death row, for the sake of getting the bill through the Senate, but unwilling to consider compromising to something like a unanimous jury recommendation to get it through the House. If the death penalty is wrong, it’s always wrong regardless of when the sentence was handed down. Personally, I am 100% supportive of repealing the death penalty for everyone, including those currently on death row. But I am also a pragmatic person and was willing to accept that certain concessions were necessary to get a bill passed. This issue is one that I can appreciate may need more time to get done because people feel so strongly about it.
Now it looks as if we are gearing up for another couple of years where they are hashing it out over the death penalty. Meanwhile, we continue to keep poor people who are arrested for nonviolent crimes locked up for no other reason then they can’t afford bail. We also desperately need to reform our juvenile justice system considering recent findings that show the differences between adult and juvenile offenders’ brains. There are countless things we could be working on which will once again take the back burner to repeal. Repeal is incredibly important, but we are prioritizing an issue that impacts a fraction of those impacted by just the two I referenced above. I think there is an appetite to make some headway on those broader reform efforts, but if history tells us anything it’s that the legislators are incapable of working on repeal and any other reforms at the same time.
I say all of this because I’m pretty certain that Delaware does not currently have access to any medications that would be used in an execution. If that were to change, then my position could change as well.
Don Peterson supports a broad criminal justice reform agenda. Pete does not. .There is a clear choice to be made.
Emma, I’ve read Don Peterson’s candidate piece or whatever it’s called, that highlights how he supports criminal justice reform. This isn’t a knock against him, but there are lots of candidates – from both political parties these days – that make that same assertion. Personally, I’d like to know which efforts Don, (and other self-identified criminal justice reformists like him), supports. I have no clue if Don has formed his opinions and positions for what this means and where reform begins, but it would be nice to hear more specifics from him (and all the others) about what this reform entails and how we go about getting it done.
Also, I think you missed my overall point, which was that repeal will once again be a focal point for this upcoming session, and if the past serves as an indicator of what to expect in the future, there won’t be much room for any other reform initiatives so long as repeal is still on the table.
If I were part of the official repeal team, I think I’d tell them it’s completely unnecessary to introduce competing bills. The death penalty doesn’t have to be removed from the code with a new bill, it’s effectively dead now. They should just work to kill the bill to restore the death penalty and keep the unconstitutional language in the code for now. Plenty of other unconstitutional laws have remained in our code long after they were struck down, but the only thing a new repeal bill would do is further compromise any chance for other criminal justice reform efforts to get off the ground.