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"Real death-penalty crime: Not using it"

By Douglas A. Berman

The title of this post is the headline of this notable commentary by Michael Smerconish appearing in the Philadelphia Daily News. Here are excerpts: Poor Kim Pawlowski. First, she lost her police officer husband in February 2009, allegedly at the hands of Rasheed Scrugs - a man Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey described last year as "not salvageable." Now she will endure an unavoidable murder trial. And then, assuming a conviction, she'll sit through a penalty phase that's an outright sham. We have the death penalty in this state in name only. And we owe it to Kim Pawlowski and scores of other grieving families to either use it or lose it. If we were being honest with them, we'd explain that convicted cop-killers have a better chance of dying from bedbugs than lethal injection...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on October 07, 2010 (boomark / email).