Punishment is a Language
TUCKER, WILLIAM
Punishment Is a Language by William Tucker On March 14, Kathleen Weinstein, a 45-year-old special education teacher in Middle-town, New Jersey, stopped to buy a sandwich on her way to take a...
...That Nappi, the surviving witness, testified repeatedly that Summers acted alone made no impression on the editors...
...The last person executed in New York state was a petty criminal who robbed an East Harlem bar...
...Weinstein's murder, an African immigrant supporting a wife and family was shot in front of his house in Queens by two teenagers who wanted-his car...
...When she returned to the parking lot, she was forced into her car by a youth who claimed he had a gun...
...Early criminal reformers were exquisitely aware of the need to draw a bright line between robbery and murder...
...I'll make you a promise that I won't tell anybody," Mrs...
...The search quickly led to Michael LaSane, a 17-year-old living in a South Toms River housing project...
...It is society's way of communicating with its members...
...Although don't be too sure...
...In truth, Edward Summers probably never intended to kill anyone the day he went "shopping" for a jeep to replace one whose motor had burned out...
...He probably carried the gun to seem more convincing...
...They do, of course, every day...
...As a rookie patrolman in the 1950s, he spent several years protecting store owners along Brooklyn's Flatbush Avenue...
...As the tension wore on, Weinstein became more personal...
...At the trial, the defense actually produced a 42-year-old Bronx barber named Deno, who testified as a friendly witness...
...Now look at the advantages...
...For my life...
...Three days later, a hiker found the body...
...People used phrases like "going to the chair" and "hanging for it" as checks against their potentially murderous impulses...
...Not so fast...
...Once upon a time, it was part of everyone's consciousness...
...You haven't done anything yet," she reasoned with him...
...she pleaded...
...All you have to do is let me go and take my car...
...These searches often turned up guns-which meant an immediate arrest under the old Sullivan Law...
...Then he drove them to a secluded area and shot both in the head...
...One woman was slow in handing over her pocketbook, and he shot her in the head...
...Then, in a sensational move, Summers's attorneys wound up their case by charging that the friendly barber was in fact the Dino who had forced Summers to commit the crime...
...Weinstein had carefully solicited details about the youth-his first name, his age, where he went to school, what his father and mother did for a living...
...Commit a robbery, and you let yourself in for three years in prison, the median time served according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics...
...Surely, for the public security, some difference should be made in the punishment...
...Mrs...
...Time and history have proved this spectacularly wrong...
...She told her abductor of her six-year-old son and the foster child she and her husband hoped to take in...
...Crimes of passion"-murders of relatives or friends in the course of arguments- were punishable by prison sentences...
...He didn't notice the tape recorder...
...Unfortunately, liberals missed this point...
...In America, this view was taken to heart...
...But the real question posed by these cases is, Why does the liberal press, and the popular culture in general, have such a difficult time acknowledging that feral young men are committing such brutal crimes...
...In Russia, where the punishment of robbery and murder is the same, they always murder...
...These people know me," the criminal says to himself...
...Often the victim is more rational...
...Would that have made a different impression...
...Two months before the trial began, New York magazine ran a cover portrait of Summers, together with an "exclusive jailhouse interview" that lovingly detailed his alibi and mocked Rockland County prosecutors for not trying to find the mysterious Dino...
...At the time, we were allowed to stop and frisk anyone who the store owner believed was 'casing' the place," says Coughlin...
...According to the BJS, the median time actually served for murder in this country is now eight years...
...But who can believe that...
...They knew a robbery meant jail, while a murder meant the electric chair...
...Members of the jury nearly fell out of their chairs laughing and convicted Summers on all 23 counts in an hour and 20 minutes...
...Two years ago, in an almost identical case, Edward Summers, a 22-year-old Bronx college student, took a bus to a shopping mall in suburban Rockland County and hijacked a jeep from two Nyack teenagers, Michael Falcone and Scott Nappi...
...Only days after Mrs...
...He had never heard of the death penalty...
...Yet crimes of passion have declined to less than half the total...
...A routine crime today, hardly worth note in the newspapers, but in 1963 it got you the electric chair...
...It was to no avail...
...The simple message of a swift and sure death penalty is: Your life is worth the same as everyone else's...
...The jeep was spotted on the Bronx River Parkway...
...We were much more civilized now...
...The failure to draw that bright line between felonies and felony murder is particularly consequential for youthful amateurs-exactly the offenders the liberal press finds so sympathetic...
...Summers fled the car but was captured after a wild chase through the woods...
...the New York Times Magazine lamented the fate of an unfortunate Texas inmate on death row for several felony murders he had committed as a teenager...
...Despite all the "life sentences" being handed down, the real risk is roughly doubling a short prison stay...
...For my life...
...The simple calculus is this: With murder no longer punishable by death in most parts of the country, an armed robber can improve his chances of getting away with his crime by killing the victim...
...Although he professed no knowledge of the crime, he was put on the stand to prove that police had not checked out all the possible Dinos in the Bronx...
...True enough...
...When arrested he was in possession of Mrs...
...Holding the pair at gunpoint, Summers assured them over and over, "I'm not going to hurt you...
...Now it is the criminal himself who is getting scared...
...What surprises Coughlin in retrospect is how often the guns were unloaded...
...But what if she had been able to say: "For your life...
...Not at all...
...William Tucker, a writer living in Brooklyn, contributed "A Little Girl Murdered" to the December 18 issue of The Weekly Standard...
...He had told everyone he bought it for $1,500 for his birthday...
...Today no one carries around this internal logic...
...It is a great abuse amongst us to condemn to the same punishment a person that only robs on the highway and another who robs and murders," wrote Montesquieu in The Spirit of the Laws (1748...
...But the name had a nice Italian ring to it and conjured up visions of the Mob...
...For the next half-hour, the machine recorded their conversation as they rode around Toms River and it became increasingly obvious the youth intended to kill her...
...I want to give something to somebody . . . give something back...
...And so the victim can only beg for mercy...
...In fact, it was nothing more than a "barbaric relic" of an earlier era...
...Weinstein had not had a tape recorder in her pocket, would Michael LaSane be facing murder charges...
...The aftermath was instructive...
...A few years ago, in an article entitled "Too Young To Die...
...Right on cue, the Times sounded the inevitable question: Why would such a promising young man kill someone just for a car...
...Most executions now are for crimes committed in the 1980s and 1970s...
...A cut-and-dried case of felony murder...
...The death penalty won't prevent these murders," they argued...
...Another cut-and-dried case...
...The dead, they say, tell no tales...
...I think somebody is playing him for a sucker," ventured one acquaintance...
...Unknown to the young assailant, Mrs...
...In most states throughout our history, felonies and felony murder were differentiated...
...Weinstein's car...
...If Mrs...
...Portions of the New York press went for it, hook, line, and sinker...
...Describing LaSane as "an average teenager who liked to play basketball," the story quoted numerous friends, relatives, and schoolmates pondering whether LaSane was really capable of such a horrible act...
...As soon as I let them go, they'll run and tell the police...
...He made it to a neighboring house and called the police...
...It's a nice, democratic principle...
...Summers, who had apparently watched a lot of television, had a ready alibi...
...Without a doubt...
...He should know...
...At least a third of the time, there were no bullets in the gun, or the firing pin was missing, or the gun had somehow been disabled...
...Fewer than half the felony murders in this country are ever solved...
...Murders committed in the course of other crimes were punishable by death...
...One of the favorite statistics cited by death-penalty opponents in the 1960s was that 90 percent of all murders resulted from arguments between relatives and friends...
...Have we been down this road before...
...They've seen my face...
...None of us want to believe that any student in our community is capable of something like this," lamented his high school principal...
...Even in the states that do have capital punishment, the process is so slow and tortuous that people on death row may die of old age before they face their sentences...
...rape will get you five years...
...Don't you think I should be concerned and let you take my car...
...He had been forced into the whole carjacking by "Dino," a mysterious drug lord who supposedly held his entire neighborhood in thrall...
...His complaint...
...Furman was scheduled to be executed for rape...
...These murders were being deterred by an effective death penalty...
...Do you really think taking this car is worth your life...
...The youth took her to a remote wooded area and smothered her with her own coat...
...Not likely...
...So what happens if you eliminate the principal witness to your crime...
...This is exactly what liberals and media fantasizers refuse to face...
...Weinstein's killer will probably not get away with it, either...
...They're committed without forethought...
...Summers couldn't even provide a physical description of Dino, who supposedly was at his side during the entire crime...
...The day after the story broke, the New York Times sounded what will undoubtedly be the theme of the defense: "Abduction Suspect Wanted a Car, But Would He Kill for It...
...Weinstein had a voice-activated tape recorder in her purse...
...Punishment is a language...
...If Edward Summers had been more professional and finished off Scott Nappi, would he still be in college...
...He bought the car from someone who is letting him pay for the crime...
...By murdering your victim, you greatly increase the chances that there will be no one to alert the police or eventually testify against you...
...But once an armed robbery begins, a fatal logic sets in...
...John Coughlin, a retired New York City police detective, often speaks out for the death penalty...
...Weinstein told her kidnapper...
...When the Supreme Court overturned all state death penalties in Furman v. Georgia (1972), it was because this punishment was used unevenly from state to state...
...According to the latest FBI statistics, more than 50 percent of all killings are now "stranger murders," committed in the course of another crime...
...Punishment Is a Language by William Tucker On March 14, Kathleen Weinstein, a 45-year-old special education teacher in Middle-town, New Jersey, stopped to buy a sandwich on her way to take a graduate-course exam...
...All this filters down...
...We certainly have...
...In Florida a few years ago, the tape of a murder, accidentally recorded on a telephone answering machine, was ruled inadmissible because it unconstitutionally invaded the defendant's privacy...
...Unfortunately, since that time, the murder rate has nearly tripled...
...Miraculously, Nappi survived...
...These guys wanted the fear the gun would bring, but they didn't want even the chance that someone might accidentally get killed during the stick-up...
...The price of a human life has been bid down as low as a leather jacket or a pair of designer sunglasses...
...But liberals argued that the death penalty wasn't necessary anyway...
Vol. 1 • April 1996 • No. 29
