Austrian mayor urges Schwarzenegger to stop execution

AP ^ | 2.7.04 | AP

[ambrose]

Article published Feb 7, 2004

Austrian mayor urges Schwarzenegger to stop execution

By VANESSA GERA

Associated Press Writer

VIENNA, Austria The mayor of the Austrian city where Arnold Schwarzenegger launched his bodybuilding career has appealed to the California governor to stop the execution next week of convicted murderer Kevin Cooper, his party said Saturday.

Mayor Siegfried Nagl of Graz sent a letter this week to Schwarzenegger asking him to reconsider his decision to deny clemency to Cooper, who is scheduled to die by injection in San Quentin State Prison on Tuesday for hacking four people to death in 1983. He would be the first California inmate executed in two years.

Other Austrian officials in past days have made similar appeals.

In his letter, Nagl beseeched Schwarzenegger to make "urgent" use of his right to grant clemency and to also work more generally to abolish the death penalty in California, according to a statement issued by the conservative Austrian People's Party.

Schwarzenegger rejected an appeal by Cooper for clemency last week. Another attempt to stop the execution failed Friday when a federal judge rejected an argument by Cooper's defense lawyers that lethal injections are cruel-and-unusual punishment.

Nagl said he decided to write Schwarzenegger after being contacted by many residents upset over Schwarzenegger's move.

The death penalty is illegal in Austria and the rest of the European Union, and many Europeans view state-sponsored executions as a major human rights violation.

"The death penalty has no legitimate place in the penal system of modern civilized societies," Peter Schieder, an Austrian lawmaker who presides at the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe, the continent's leading human rights guardian, wrote Monday in an open letter to Schwarzenegger. Schieder also called on Schwarzenegger to reconsider his decision to let Cooper die.

Other leaders, including Foreign Minister Benita Ferrero-Waldner, have also criticized Schwarzenegger's stance on the matter.

"I was really happy when Arnold Schwarzenegger became governor of California," Ferrero-Waldner said Tuesday. "But I must say, I am really disappointed."

Schwarzenegger, 56, began bodybuilding as a teenager in Graz, a city just a few miles away from Thal, the village where he grew up.

[texasflower]

Note to Austria. He is an American governor. This is not Austria.

[Always Right]

Mayor Siegfried Nagl of Graz sent a letter this week to Schwarzenegger asking him to reconsider his decision to deny clemency to Cooper, who is scheduled to die by injection in San Quentin State Prison on Tuesday for hacking four people to death in 1983

"The death penalty has no legitimate place in the penal system of modern civilized societies," Peter Schieder

People that hack people to death have no legitimate place in modern civilized societies.

[LibWhacker]

Maybe we should send Cooper to go live with Mayor Nagl.

[Consort]

Graz

[explodingspleen]

This certainly give credit to the consitutional requirement that the President be native born.

If Germany has any decency they will censure him.

[explodingspleen]

And if they don't, they had better not quit whining about "American imperialism".

[ambrose]

I like that idea.

Arnold has been great on crime and punishment thus far. Execute scum like Cooper, but he's also cleaning house at the prisons, having requested a federal investigation of the corrupt prison guards.

[zarf]

I agree with the Austrians. Maybe we should just hack the guys arms, legs and nuts off then just roll his bloody remains onto a busy highway.

This would be an appropriate punishment and avoid the state sponsored execution that seems to piss off the Euro types all the time.

[onyx]

MYOB Austria. Governor Arnold will not stop Cooper's execution.

[EuroFrog]

Hack him up! Scum deserves to die.

[Prime Choice]

Dear Austrian Mayor:

Why are you more interested in the welfare of a convicted murderer than the welfare of those who lost loved ones at the hands of this monster?

And if you are so certain of this man's redeeming qualities, might I suggest you spend a year living with him? We'll gladly make room.

Until such time that you can do that, I believe you can go to Hell.

Love and Kisses,

Another American Who Doesn't Take Orders from Vienna

[Prodigal Son]

If Germany has any decency they will censure him.

? How does Germany enter into it?

[Prodigal Son]

So what's Arnie say after this guy gets executed?

Terminated?

Hasta la vista, Baby?

Should be interesting to seem some of the headlines after the fact.

[Travis McGee]

Send this nitwit mayor the color crime scene photos of the family butchered in their own home with a buck knife and a hatchet by Cooper. One after another, starting with the father and ending with the children. Let this mayor tell us that Kevin Cooper deserves another 20 years of TV, radio, magazines, 3 squares a day, workout time etc after what he did.

[Agnes Heep]

This is not Austria.

I fall to my knees and thank God in Heaven that this is not Austria.

[judgeandjury]

Another attempt to stop the execution failed Friday when a federal judge rejected an argument by Cooper's defense lawyers that lethal injections are cruel-and-unusual punishment.

Cooper's defense lawyers didn't think their argument through very well. Lethal injections would have to be proven to be, as a punishment, both cruel and unusual, and not just one or the other. Since I would imagine 100's of inmates have been executed using lethal injections, there is nothing unusual about it's use anymore.

[hotpotato]

Nagl said he decided to write Schwarzenegger after being contacted by many residents upset over Schwarzenegger's move.

*What* residents? Babs? Martin Sheen? Ed Asner? Or Austrians?

If anyone thinks any governor in this country is going to issue a stay of execution for a vicious murder the same week as the highly publicized horrific murder by an ex-con of a little girl taking a shortcut home, they need to get their screws tightened.

[texasflower]

Isn't that the truth!