Call Governor Markell. Have His Back.
Evidently Gov. Markell is receiving lots of criticism from blood thirsty conservatives on his brave decision to grant clemency to Robert Gattis.
If you supported and approved his decision, and if you would have criticized him if he did not grant clemency, then you owe it to yourself, to us, and to Governor Markell to take at most five minutes and email him your thanks and support.
His email is governor.markell@state.de.us
His phone #s are
Dover (302) 744-4101
Fax: (302) 739-2775
Wilmington (302) 577-3210
Fax: (302) 577-3118
Markell lost my vote and my respect. He is spineless. Gattis should have been executed years ago.
No, if Governor Markell were spineless, he would have allowed Gattis to be unfairly executed without taking any action. That would have been the politically safe thing to do, and that is what spineless politicians do: be politically safe.
Preston, ask yourself this: whether or not you support the death penalty, is it fair that a rich white murderer named Tom Capano had his death penalty revoked while a poor black murderer named Robert Gattis did not? Both are identical circumstances. The only difference is race and wealth. Both were sentenced to die by non-unanimous juries. That was found to be unconstitutional. Capano’s sentence was reduced by the Court. Gattis’ was not.
It is an issue of fairness, and the Governor made the right decision.
Don’t worry. I am sure someone else will be executed shortly so you can satisfy your immoral blood lust.
Execution is a barbaric and immoral act. It doesn’t prevent violent crime and it doesn’t cost less to rid ourselves of a criminal than to keep him incarcerated.
I have my differences with Gov. Markell, but he has shown that he isn’t spineless both with this decision and his decision on fracking. Both decisions that went against the grain.
Since I have no problem telling him when he’s wrong…I guess I will tell him when he’s right as well.
Wow, how truly pathetic is this? The ideologues here actually have stooped to recruiting anti-death penalty people to call or write our notoriously thin-skinned Governor to give him an ego boost? He is clearly not the brave man PLUS full of self esteem guy you think he is…..truly pathetic.
He is playing big boy politics with decisions like this, he shouldn’t need sad efforts like the one suggested here. If he does, it’s time for a new line of work….
Thanks Occupy Mom.
Positive reinforcement also works to encourage more acts that earn the positive reinforcement. We as a progressive community must learn to compliment and thank our elected officials when they do the right thing as least as strong as when criticize them for doing the wrong thing.
Puck, what are you trying to say? That you are a NCC elitist?
Pathetic, anon? People on both sides of the aisle (including yours) tell people to call their officials to register their approval or disapproval all the time, especially when the other side is making their voices known.
Markell thin skinned? I have never seen any evidence of that. Quite the opposite actually.
This is my iniatitive, anon. This is about making sure our voices are heard along with immoral blood thirsty killers like yourself.
Somebody needs to accidentally drive a backhoe through the phone lines from Sussex.
DD,
keep calling the other side immoral blood thirsty killers for simply wanting the law, the system and the verdict to hold. Say it enough so it becomes true…..now that’s sad.
Beau defends jurisprudence:
Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden maintains that there were no court errors in the Gattis case. “Shirley Slay was a wholly innocent victim who, until her brutal and premeditated murder, did everything possible to protect herself from the years of abuse by Robert Gattis,” Biden said in a statement. “We respect that this was a weighty decision for the Governor after much review and deliberation.” He added, “Over the past twenty years state and federal courts on sixteen separate occasions unanimously determined there was no legal, factual, or procedural error in this case. Each reviewing court has upheld Robert Gattis’ conviction and death sentence.”
Now there’s a Dem with a spine and conviction, unlike our jellyfish Governor.
Jason, be honest now, Mitt never had your vote, just like Jack never had Preston’s
“keep calling the other side immoral blood thirsty killers for simply wanting the law, the system and the verdict to hold.”
The verdict has held. He is no less guilty today than he was last week. The truth is that only a handful of countries in the world impose the death penalty, none of them countries you would choose to live in (with the possible exception of China). I don’t think you’re immoral, but you certainly are bloodthirsty, as evidenced by your insistence on twisting the truth to fit your self-justifying agenda.
Immoral or not, your arguments certainly are pathetic.
I just emailed to express my support. While the Governor leans heartlessly Republican on fiscal matters, his administration has expressed the values that the state should embrace humanity and decency wherever it can.
And by the way, Markell lost Preston’s vote due to this the same way Romney lost my vote by having a 15% effective tax rate.
Geezer, I’ll accept your parsing. The Sentencing should hold, as Beau implies. Not after blood, just justice. It is not immoral to hold the other side of this argument and even though I don’t believe PReston personally, many many votes will be lost by this call. DL needs a blog post telling those voters to please go fuck themselves and self righteously decalare that you not only don’t need their votes, but do not want their votes because they are “bloodthirsty”
Keep saying it so it magically becomes true! Weak, Alinsky”esque” tactic.
“I just emailed to express my support. ” =lemming, AND believer that Markell is thin-skinned and lacks conviction and self esteem
I got a plot in Florida for sale if interested…..let me know….
anon, “because the court says so” is a pretty weak argument.
The courts used to say things like “sure, go ahead and pay that black woman less” and now they say things like “sure, go ahead and spend a millions dollars anonymously attacking a candidate with no fact checking”
you can be pro death, just have a better argument.
“..many many votes will be lost by this call” My George Soros funded Alinsky training allows me to spot wishful thinking by a desperate DE GOP.
Barbaric? I think not. Gattis was convicted by a jury of peers who found that the appropriate sentence was death. He’s lived for 20 years on the tax payer teet and now the tax payers have been sentenced by the Gov. to support the immoral arse of an admitted murderer for the rest of his life.
Many have had traumatic childhoods. There comes a point when we must become responsible for ourselves and our actions. Gattis has not taken that responsibility – had he, he would never have asked for commutation. Gattis believes he has a right to his life and that Sherry Slay did not have a right to hers. The Governor has defiled our justice system by over-riding the will of the jury of peers and granting leniency to a man who failed to do the same to someone he supposedly loved. It’s sickening.
There is a greater context to all of this that speaks to the Governor’s character – he claims to struggle with the decision to commute Gattis’ sentence yet cuts the state’s education funding for children in the bat of an eye. He’s eliminated reading specialists. He’s pushed transportation costs onto local district that in at least one instance is breaking a district in lower Delaware. He refuses to invest in more teachers and smaller classrooms. Our Governor has limited the state’s investment in children and in the process is creating a culture that will raise more children to be like Gattis because they will not receive the interventions they need to overcome many of the same problems Gattis has called upon as a reason to spare his life.
The Gov. fails to see that education and the justice system are a continuum. If we fail to expend the monies necessary in education to even come half way close to mitigating the horrors some children experience, we will undoubtedly expend that money on the back end when many of these children grow up to become criminals.
The Gov’s action belie the heart of a coward.
For disclosure purposes – I am a democrat and not a bleeding-heart, blood-thirsty conservative. And I believe that Tom Capano should have faced the death sentence that he so richly deserved. It was a failure of our judicial system to not pursue the death penalty in the second round. There are men whose hearts know no compassion, monsters like Earl Bradley, the pedophile pediatrician, who have not earned the right to mercy in this world. Gattis and Capano are both among them – regardless of their race or their wealth.
A family denied justice displays grace: http://is.gd/P5H9E5
Bless the Slays because Markell didn’t.
Uh oh, I sense banishment coming? Is that the DL way? If I want to keep commenting I need to change my mind? my opinions? become a Liberal?
We’ll have to agree to disagree about the ethics of state sponsored murder, but I have to admit that it is refreshing to hear from a non-racist death penalty advocate.
Thanks for commenting.
Why is this troll continuing to bother us? What does he get, $5.00 for each post he puts up on a liberal blog?
Jack did the brave thing. He followed the advice of his Board of Pardons, which voted overwhelmingly to recommend clemency. Gattis will spend the rest of his life behind bars, to think everyday of the crime he committed, not being able to hold his sons or grandchildren, to walk outside as a free man.
“Barbaric? I think not.”
And I think so, so there we. “There are men whose hearts know no compassion” might be true, but you are not the arbiter of who those people are.
I think you have the wrong idea about mercy. Nobody “earns the right” to mercy. Mercy is something that comes from you, not something that is “earned.”
“Not after blood, just justice.”
Does that mean that all murderers who receive life sentences have escaped justice?
“Hitler discovers Gattis is not executed as planned”
$10.00, I think.
LOL. True enough Ben at 10:13
Geezer, I cannot grant mercy to a man who kills another with murder in their heart. I am further offended b/c both Capano and Gattis killed people with no thought to their victims or the families and even more – both men had young children. They didn’t even take into account the young lives of the own children and how the world would change for them.
I stand by my statement – neither has “earned mercy” from me. The judicial system worked the first time around. And in Gattis’s case another 15 rounds. The Gov. has made an error in judgement. It’s not his first and certainly won’t be his last. But, my tax dollars will be paying for this one til Gattis dies.
He’s got every right to be upset and angry and to voice his anger. The same thing is done to our Republic(DINO)an senators and congress-wimp by people who are voicing support for Markell. I think i have a better idea on where i stand on the death penalty… That there are some cases where life in prison is not a just punishment. This is not one of those cases. Supporting the death penalty for Gattis means you should support the death penalty for most convicted murderers…. there is Texas for that.
In any case, it didnt take long for civility to disappear on this thread.
Honestly i feel like a good 40% of discussion here can be summed up by this
Person 1: i feel this way about something
Paerson 2: I feel a different way about that something.
Person 1: WELL YOU’RE A HEARLTESS BLOOD THIRSTY TEABAGGER
Person 2: Listen up lib-tard, AT LEAST I DONT ABORT A BABY EVERY MORNING!!!!
(persons 1 and 2 agreed on the last 4 topics)
Puck @ 10:03 – lol.
Trying to figure out how commuting the sentence of a murderer (and not even a warm and fuzzy one at that) is “spineless,” “thin-skinned,” “cowardly,” etc. Au contraire. It is probably the most politically courageous thing our Governor has ever done or will do.
“I cannot grant mercy to a man who kills another with murder in their heart.”
Fine. But don’t dress it up as something other than a lack of mercy.
For what it’s worth, most murders are crimes of passion — that is, they’re not pre-meditated — which is why murderers have the lowest rate of recidivism of all types of criminals.
Geezer –
“…murderers have the lowest rate of recidivism of all types of criminals.”
Please explain serial killers like Stephen Brian Pennell to me and his victims – including his children?
They make up an infinitesimal percentage of total murderers.
Why would that explanation change for the families of the victims? You are making an appeal to emotion, not reason.
Elizabeth, my comment was directed at the troll, Anon.
Anon – why do yuo think yuo’re going to be banned? We love to have you post your BS here so we can point out how much of an utter failure you and it are.
“…murderers have the lowest rate of recidivism of all types of criminals.”
One reason murderers have such a low recidivism rate is that so few of them get a second chance. When the standard penalty is death or life in prison, there aren’t many convicted murderers out on the streets.
Also, most murderers are spouses of the murdered.
Not all murders are first-degree. The average murder sentence is a little difficult to research today, but some sources give it as less than 10 years; the highest average I found was 19 years.
I am buying you ALL a beer tonight.
so, if Governor Markell utters: Slay, Gattis, clemency, or commutation in the State of the State tomorrow, will the DLers agree this was a pure coward pol move?
Lee Ann,
coward and spineless is inferred by the ridiculous notion that he needs political cover for a “brave” decision like this. This suggests wrtongly that the bloggers here are the ones who think he’s thin skinned.
So, a hundred people crowded around for the signing of a wonderful, progressive civil union bill as a legit press event is brave….then what is dropping ink on a fundamentally and hugely progressive medicinal marijuana law in the privacy of his office sans a press event?
Answer: cowardly and spineless.
Now on the Gattis thing, I won’t go 100% spineless, he did meet the family first. That’s balls. But defending his AG and the order of the court and the sentence of a jury: weak.
Just glad it wasn’t my decision to make. Markell wasn’t going to earn stock either way. It’s one of those horrible, everyone loses decisions he had to render.
And as far as being bloodthirsty–how unfair. Juries have to do society’s dirty work, then you scream and point fingers when they do as instructed, and legislated? Our society created our legal and penal system. Our society created the clemency/commutation caveat. Doesn’t mean anyone is spineless, merciless, brave, bloodthirsty, liberal or conservative. It just means our society is still human enough to realize these decisions can’t be held to narrow prescriptive consequences. Let it be.
yawn.
I didn’t see this posted here today, so I apologize if this is a repeat, but the NYTimes weighs in on the Governor’s decision here with approval.
NYT: “Imposing the death penalty in his case, as in any case, would have been grossly unjust.”
No bias there…..
I commented on it on my blog and contrasted it with my own waffling on the death penalty. I didn’t contrast it with my repeated (and unsuccessful) efforts to persuade the former Governor to commute the life-without-parole sentence of Judith McBride, whose murder trial I covered as a reporter. With the mitigating circumstances of abuse – and the fact that someone else killed her husband, not her — the sentence was way out of line. She would not budge, not while she chaired the Board of Pardons and not when she was Governor when her lieutenant governor recommended commutation. Markell finally commuted McBride’s sentence.