Reply #69: Did you not read it? Or are you purposely making a false statement?

[Feanorcurufinwe]

Did you not read it? Or are you purposely making a false statement?

You say " the rest we he describes strengthening the defense side of capitol cases?"

As you can see below, and this is the complete context, other than saying he supports Pat Leahy’s innocents protection bill, he says nothing about strengthening the defense side of capitol cases:

" Russert: Another debatable and controversial issue is the death penalty. This was the headline in your home state paper the other day: “Dean Aligns With Bush On Death Penalty. Former Governor Howard Dean appears to be shedding some of the liberal tendencies that have won him national attention as he now expands his support for the death penalty...His shift on the death penalty...has some questioning his motives.” “‘This doesn’t surprise me. I think Dean’s willing to do what he has to do to win,’” said Frank Bryan, a political science professor at the University of Vermont and longtime observer of Dean. ‘I really believe he’s very ambitious and he wants to win badly. He has to get to the final plateau, and I think he will take risks with his inconsistencies being discovered in order to get to the next step.’... “Eric Davis, a Middlebury College political science professor,” also from Vermont, “summed up Dean’s change in two words: South Carolina. ...‘I think what’s going on here is Dean is trying to appeal to electorates in more conservative states...’” South Carolina being the third primary after Iowa and New Hampshire.
Dean: It’s a very interesting article, and turned out to be wrong, which was kind of embarrassing. In fact, I figured I was going to get asked this. In 1964—excuse me, in 1994, in the very paper that this was printed in, they ran a series of articles saying I was rethinking the death penalty. This has nothing to do with running for president. It happened while Bill Clinton—before Bill Clinton had even run for his second term. I began to rethink the death penalty in 1994 because of the Polly Klaas case. The Polly Klaas case was the case of a young girl who was kidnapped from her house, abducted and raped, and murdered by a felon who never should have been let out of jail. We had a very similar horrible case in Vermont a few years earlier, and I began to rethink my position on the death penalty as a result of that, and the article was just plain wrong.
Russert: But in terms of rethinking—let me show you what you did say in ’92 and think about...
Dean: That’s right. You don’t have to show me. I know what I said in ’92.
Russert: But I want to talk about it...
Dean: OK.
Russert: ...because I want the country to see it because it’s important. “I don’t support the death penalty for two reasons. One, you might have the wrong guy, and two, the state is like a parent. Parents who smoke cigarettes can’t really tell their children not to smoke and be taken seriously. If a state tells you not to murder people, a state shouldn’t be in the business of taking people’s lives.” The Catholic bishop up in Vermont has said this, and I’ll show you and our viewers. “I am sorry that Governor Dean has expressed second thoughts on his support for the physicians’ pledge to ‘do no harm.’ ...as Governor Dean himself said: ‘I truly don’t believe it’s a deterrent.’ What then would be the motive for the death penalty except vengeance?” Do you believe there’s still a possibility, as you said, the wrong guy could be executed?
Dean: Yes.
Russert: And number two, as you said, if a state is like a parent saying don’t kill, why is the state killing?
Dean: It’s a deeply, deeply troubling issue. Let me explain to you why I changed my position and why I’ve began that process in 1994. These were two horrible murders of young children and I oppose the death penalty in most instances. Here’s the areas I’ve changed and here’s why, and I’m very supportive for exam—we don’t have a death penalty in Vermont just so most of your viewers know that we’re one of the states that doesn’t and we don’t need a death penalty. But here’s the problem, Tim, the state executes people improperly if they’re improperly convicted— Illinois was the classic case. There were a number of people that were death row that turned out to be innocent. Deeply trouble. I came to realize because of the Polly Klaas case and because of similar other cases that sometimes the state inadvertently has a hand in killing innocent people because they let people out who ought never to have been let out. And so the judicial system’s imperfection hurts us in two ways. It executes innocent people because they were convicted and put to death, which is a terrible thing which is why I support Pat Leahy’s innocents protection bill, but they also allow people to get out of jail when they’re supposed to be in there for life and then those people go and repeat their crimes, oftentimes sex offenders. So I came to the conclusion that a person who murders a child shows a depraved indifference to life which will never be—incapable of being rehabilitated. Secondly, that a mass murderer, such as a terrorist, is someone who can’t be rehabilitated and to let these people out is too dangerous and it’s too high likelihood that they’ll repeat their crime.
And thirdly, I don’t believe the death penalty is a deterrent, but I think there may be one instance where just possibly it could be and that’s the shooting of a police officer. If you’re about to pull a trigger on a guy who’s in uniform and you know that you’re going to get the death penalty and if you don’t pull the trigger something different will happen, maybe that might save the police officer’s life. The only three instances that I support the death penalty are, one, murder of a child, two, a mass murder like a terrorist and, three, the shooting of a police officer, and that’s how I came to the position that I came and I began that process in ’94 which is...
Russert: What’s wrong with life imprisonment without parole—it’s $2 million per inmate cheaper than the death penalty when you consider and factor the cost of all of the appeals?
Dean: You know, I had said this before and I’ll say it again: I don’t think what’s cheap and what’s not cheap has a bearing on whether you use the death penalty or not. Other people have said it’s cheaper to do the death penalty because you get rid of them. You don’t have to give them room and board for life. Those kinds of arguments are irrelevant here. So I just—life without parole, which we have which I actually got passed when I was lieutenant governor— the problem with life without parole is that people get out for reasons that have nothing to do with justice. We had a case where a guy who was a rapist, a serial sex offender, was convicted, then was let out on what I would think and believe was a technicality, a new trial was ordered and the victim wouldn’t come back and go through the second trial. And so the guy basically got time served, and he was the man who murdered a 15-year-old girl and raped her and then left her for dead and she was dead. So life without parole doesn’t work either. If life without parole worked 100 percent of the time, there’d be no need for the death penalty because I agree with the bishop. Vengeance should never be a piece of this. As human beings, we all want to get revenge. That should never part of public policy, to get revenge, but the trouble is that life without parole is not perfect either and the victims in that case are 15- and 12-year-old girls. That is every bit as heinous as putting to death someone who didn’t commit the crime.
Russert: We’re going to take a quick break and come back. More of our conversation with Howard Dean about defense issues; Iraq. A whole lot more right after this."


http://www.msnbc.com/news/912159.asp?cp1=1