
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, February 18, 1991                   TAG: 9102180346
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A/8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

FREELY TOOK DRUGS, AND FREELY CONFESSED

JOE GIARRATANO was 21 years old when he freely took drugs, and freely walked up to a cop in Jacksonville, Fla., and confessed to a crime he now says he does not remember committing. I am sick and tired of a society that allows drug offenders to use their chemical dependency as an excuse for what they did or do not do.

Joe is asking the state of Virginia, and the taxpayers of the commonwealth, to believe he deserves a new trial. This is probably the same type individual who, if we had offered to dry him out 12 years ago (also at the state's expense), would have told us we were interfering with his rights.

The death penalty may not be a deterrent on the outside; but it is strange that the closer it gets to Giarratano's execution date, the more he just does not believe he committed this crime.

I will continue to back the death penalty as long as there are such cases as that of Buddy Earl Justus, the sailor who took a hammer and beat to death a mother and her little daughter; and as long as there are crooked lawyers who deal in plea bargaining as crooked as the crime.

CINDY DOWNS

BUCHANAN

by CNB