Re: candidate questionaire: US House

[Greg Burton <gburton@sltrib.com>]

I want to understand this statement from Butch Otter — "I support the death
penalty for serious narcotic trafficking agents."

Did he, really, in fact, say this?

Does he mean he wants to execute people who traffick in certain narcotic
agents (ie heroin, meth, cocain) or does he mean he wants to execute agents
(ie people) who traffick in serious narcotics of any kind (for instance a
couple bricks of pot).

I ask because it seems most reflective societies have either abolished the
death penalty or are reconsidering their death penalty standards because
new evidence suggests innocent people end up on death row more than we'd
like to admit. There is also this little gem from a recent and exhaustive
scientific study by a Columbia scholar: the death penalty is applied in
error in two of every three instances. That's a roundabout way of saying
the Columbia study suggests 66.7 percent of the nation's death sentences
are successfully appealed or altered on habeus corpus, which doesn't mean
the people are innocent, just that lower courts, in two of three cases,
bungled the trials.

And I know of no state in the union that kills people for selling drugs.
And I know of no state considering such legislation. And I know of no
Congress folks who suggest the United States should kill people for selling
drugs.

This is all to say, at a time when there is great debate about whether the
U.S. should even be executing murderers, is Otter really suggesting we
ought to be expanding our condemned lists to include people selling drugs?

Can Vision2020 ask Otter to elaborate?

cheers, greg