Jerry Kilgore: the candidate for governor who just can’t catch a break. First the Washington Post slammed him for the second time in two weeks, yet again on his position on the death penalty, and today, the Virginian Pilot does the same:
As Virginia’s top elected law enforcement official, Kilgore should be interested in more than just hiking the number of executions. His indifference to the need for reforms to protect against false conviction reflects poorly on his judgment.
That he pushes only one side of the equation exposes “The Death Penalty Enhancement Act” as an election-year sham.
As the Pilot points out, “‘enhancement’ doesn’t mean better. It just means ‘more.'” We’ve just had one very high-profile case of a man on death row being exonerated by DNA evidence, in addition to seven other less-well-known cases. Why doesn’t Kilgore’s “enhancement” include protections against executing the wrong person? After all, that is the most well-known problem with the death penalty.
It’s not just Northern Virginia and Tidewater that have come out against Kilgore’s election-year pandering, though. The Roanoke Times, in Southwest Virginia, did likewise on Wednesday:
Just the name of Jerry Kilgore’s proposal gives pause.
The “Death Penalty Enhancement Act”? How does a civilized society enhance the ultimate sanction? Burn ’em at the stake? Draw and quarter ’em? Well, no. But what Virginia’s attorney general – and, not coincidentally, probable Republican candidate next year for governor – does have in mind smacks of a pandering to blood lust that speaks ill of his leadership potential.
[…]
Kilgore’s proposals appear to have less to do with unanimity or strong consensus than with the 50 percent plus one it takes to get elected governor.
Pity Mr. Kilgore. He just can’t seem to do anything right!
Yes, but …
I learned a while ago that all the editorials in the world, in Virginia politics, don’t amount to a bucket of warm spit. So the “Death Penalty Enhancement Act” amounts to a bunch of piffle without substance — pure sloganeering, an election year fraud. So? The same went for the abolition of parole and “no car tax!” — yet people got into the governor’s office on those platforms. So why not death?
This race comes down to how well Kaine parries the death talk to define the race on his own terms. If the death penalty — which, of all issues facing Virginia, has to rank pretty damned low on an objective list — if that becomes the main issue in the race, we’ve already been beat. [See, e.g., fmr. atty. gen. Mary Sue Terry talking about crime in ’93, or auto mogul Don Beyer caught speechless on the car tax in 1997.]
The difference is that abolition of parole and the elimination of the car tax are not likely to be closely linked to the state-sponsored murder of innocent people. Kilgore’s proposed modifications to the death penalty are — as the Roanoke Times, the Virginian Pilot, and the Washington have said — intended to kill more people with less concern as to whether or not they, by whatever criteria, have it coming to them.
Yes, it’s mere election-year sloganeering. But this is not about a tax. Kilgore wants to kill people. There’s nothing more serious than that.
Oh, and I forgot to say: you’re absolutely right on the matter of the importance of the death penalty. On one particular scale, yes, life-and-death is as important as it gets. But with regard to the degree to which the death penalty affects the average Virginian, and the other concerns that we all face daily, the death penalty is way, way down there. Kilgore has selected this issue as a way to be strong on Kaine — there’s simply no way to select an issue as inconsequential as the death penalty (again, within the above parameters) as the chief issue for a campaign with the best interests of Virginia in mind.
Looking back, I probably sounded like I half-endorsed Kilgore’s ‘whatever works’ approach to politics. I don’t. You just caught me venting a cynicism which, in the case of Virginia politics, is borne of experience.
The death penalty sickens me. I lived in Illinois when the exonerations that led to the moratorium happened, and wrote a brief pro bono in my days as a lawyer for a Canadian tried and convicted in Texas without the benefit of his treaty-guaranteed consultation with his consulate. Our system is riddled with flaws, and administered by flawed people — and until such time as both of those facts change, I think the death penalty ought to be disowned.
As a political matter, however, irresponsibility works. Gilmore and Allen proved that. We have to head the debate off before Kilgore gets us talking about having our irresponsibility triple-decked with a cherry on top — or we lose, plain and simple.
So, do we spend the next 11 months talking economic development, transportation, elementary and secondary education, health care, and the state’s colleges and universities? Or do we spend them talking about how the machinery of death could stand a coat of wax and a good lube job? Let’s hope for the former.
You’re quite right. It’s unfortunate, but you’re right.