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Mr. Lesniak Changes His Mind

By standdown

That's the title of an editorial in today's New York Times.  LINKRaymond Lesniak tells anyone who asks that he made a big mistake. The admission would not be noteworthy except that Mr. Lesniak is a state senator in New Jersey, and it is unusual for an elected official not only to admit an error but to convert it into something positive. In 1982, when he was a young member of the New Jersey Assembly, Mr. Lesniak voted with the majority to reinstate the state?s death penalty. He did so, he says, not because he thought it was right, but because he was afraid that if he did not support capital punishment, the voters would punish him. Over time, Mr. Lesniak, a Union County Democrat who rose to the State Senate in 1983, became haunted by his decision, by the immorality of putting people to death, and by the possibility that an innocent person would be executed under the law that he supported...continue to full post

Full post as published by StandDown Texas Project on June 10, 2008 (boomark / email).