Prevent the return of the Death Penalty in Rhode
Island
Send a message loud and clear to the Rhode Island General Assembly: The death penalty will never return to our state.
Rhode
Islanders should be proud that our state was one of the earliest in the country
to abolish the obscene and unnecessary practice of capital punishment, having
abolished it for all crimes in 1852.
The death penalty was reintroduced in
1872, but it was never carried out before being abolished again in 1984.
The
death penalty is ethically and morally indefensible. This repugnant practice
belongs in the past, and across the world, brave people fight repressive regimes
that still deem it necessary to execute people.
Religious leaders, such as Pope Francis, have called for the abolition of the death penalty worldwide.
Rhode
Island outlawed the death penalty because John Gordon,
an innocent man, was tried, convicted and executed for a crime he did not
commit. We learned a hard lesson, but some people, it seems, never learn.
RI
State Representative William O’Brien, of House District 54 in North Providence
said, in the Valley Breeze, that "he’s planning to introduce legislation
in the upcoming General Assembly session instituting the death penalty for
anyone convicted of targeted assassinations of the state’s first responders,
such as police officers, firefighters, or EMTs."
The Valley Breeze quotes
O'Brien as saying:
“Our
first responders sacrifice their own personal well-being to protect us and it
has sickened me watching them be set-up and killed in targeted assassinations.
The penalty for such cowardly acts must be severe and there is nothing more
severe than the death penalty.
“It is my hope that such stark consequences will send a loud and clear message that our state’s first responders are off limits and if you attack them the punishment will be absolute."
Sign
this petition
and let William O'Brien and all other legislators in our state that, despite
the new regime taking power in Washington, Rhode Island will not backslide
towards barbarism and cruelty. Make it clear to O'Brien that there will never
again be a death penalty on the books in Rhode Island.
This
petition will be delivered to:
State
Representative William O'Brien