Kaine, Dukakis, and Capital Punishment (Virginia Governor's Race)

Washington Times ^ | 10/21/05

[freespirited]

When it comes to the death penalty, Virginia Lt. Gov. Tim Kaine is in danger of morphing into the 2005 version of Michael Dukakis. ...

Indeed, few issues have defined Mr. Kaine's legal and political careers as much as his opposition to the death penalty. When running for lieutenant governor in 2001, Mr. Kaine supported a moratorium on executions. When Mr. Kaine moved to Richmond to practice law, he contacted death-penalty foes and volunteered to assist death-row inmates in appealing their cases. One of his first clients was Richard Whitley, who was executed in 1987 for the rape and murder of an elderly Fairfax County neighbor. Mr. Kaine, who did not dispute Whitley's guilt, said he provided approximately 1,000 hours of largely free legal work on behalf of Whitley. Afterwards, he suggested that Whitley's execution was somehow analogous to political persecution. "Murder is wrong in the gulag, in Afghanistan, in Soweto, in the mountains of Guatemala, in Fairfax County... and even the Spring Street Penitentiary," he told The Post. In 1996, he participated in a rally against the death penalty. In an interview with the Richmond Times-Dispatch last month, Mr. Kaine refused to say definitively whether he would agree that Hitler should have been executed.

This is just part of Mr. Kaine's long record of across-the-board opposition to the death penalty. The Washington Post and other death-penalty opponents have stridently denounced Mr. Kilgore for pointing out that Mr. Kaine, while in private practice, voluntarily decided to represent convicted murderers; they claim that by criticizing Mr. Kaine, Mr. Kilgore is suggesting that these defendants are not entitled to representation. This is nonsense. ...The shrill campaign to distort Mr. Kilgore's legitimate substantive points about Kaine and the death penalty strongly suggests that the Republican nominee is on the right track.

[freespirited]

I have read that Kaine explains his opposition to the death penalty as based in his Catholic faith. Yet he supports Roe v. Wade. So I'm not buying his explanation. I might be able to marshal some respect for someone who comes out and says "I am opposed to the death penalty and in favor of Roe v. Wade because I am a liberal." But this faux piousness really gets my dander up.

[geezerwheezer]

Kaine is not ABLE to lead....he is a real, dyed-in-the-wool liberal who cannot and will not do as the good people of Virginia want. He does not think that execution solves any problems and is not a deterent to crime. If it does anything at all, it definately stops the person being executed from committing any more murders, etc. I'm all for it!!