Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, February 22, 1991 TAG: 9102220634
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The prisoner, under a death sentence for more than a decade for the murders of two friends in Norfolk, took the pardon. He could have declined and accepted execution - a choice that, as a suicidal derelict a few years ago, he might well have made. His other options are a life sentence, with a chance of parole in another 13 years; or waiving double jeopardy and hoping for a new trial, which would put his life on the block again.
Constitutional scholars said there was no precedent for this. Wilder expected flak, whatever his decision in this controversial and celebrated case. His conditional pardon neither gave Giarratano his freedom nor assured him his life. Rather, it left him choices - something death-row inmates usually enjoy only in picking a last meal.
Coming from the governor, that can be viewed as generous - yet, under the circumstances, also politic. Further proceedings are out of his hands.
Indeed, the issue has shifted to Attorney General Mary Sue Terry's court; she says she won't allow a new trial. That's unfortunate. Still, the important thing is that Giarratano's life was spared.
We should be careful in explaining why that is important. It is so because of doubts about the proof of his guilt, but even more because society should not show it prizes life by taking life.
Celebrating Giarratano's reprieve should not be taken to mean that the death of the slain victims is unimportant. Many people understandably find something perverse in demonstrations and outcry over convicted killers far in excess of the outcry over murders and sympathy for the victims.
Nor does celebration suggest that Giarratano is innocent of the crimes for which he was convicted. Reasonable people have found cause to raise doubts about his guilt, at least to the point of calling for a new trial. That's a reasonable response, but the likelihood remains that he committed the killings.
We should be careful, finally, not to celebrate Giarratano's pardon simply because we find it easy to identify with him. Giarratano is an articulate defender of his right to be spared, and his efforts have made him a national celebrity. He has taught himself law and attracted support in high places. Wilder's office was besieged by thousands of telephone calls and letters from across the country, asking that Giarratano be spared.
But meanwhile, many others wait on death rows around the country who are illiterate or semi-retarded, who haven't enlisted the finest legal minds on their behalf, who are poor and inarticulate - black people and other minorities, the less-favored of society, those least able to plead their own case or draw support from the influential and the well-connected. Such prisoners are far more likely to suffer the ultimate punishment than those of wealth or position or unusual ability.
When he was an abuser of alcohol and other drugs, a bum, a blemish on society, Giarratano was headed on a fast-track to execution. It was only because he broke out of his psychic prison, rehabilitated himself and became a sophisticated advocate in his defense that he is alive today.
The governor says he based his decision not on public pleas but on the merits of the case. That's the way it should be, and Wilder should be commended for his action. But who could deny the part that publicity played in forcing this matter on Wilder's attention and subjecting his decision to unprecedented scrutiny?
It's unfair that this kind of roulette is played with human lives. If there were no death penalty, it wouldn't be.
by CNB