# Romney making bid to reinstate death penalty



## Irishpride (May 5, 2002)

*Romney making bid to reinstate death penalty; setting up panel to draft bill *

Associated Press 
Tuesday, September 23, 2003

BOSTON - Gov. Mitt Romney is launching his bid to bring the death penalty back to Massachusetts, creating a commission charged with drafting a capital punishment bill.

During his campaign for governor last year, Romney said he supports reinstatement of the death penalty for certain crimes, including the murder of a police officer, terrorist acts, the killing of a witness or murders committed with ``extreme atrocity.''

He was to announce members of the commission Tuesday morning.

The Republican governor faces an uphill fight in the Legislature, where support for the death penalty, which peaked after the 1997 murder of 10-year-old Jeffrey Curley, has declined in recent years.

The past four Republican governors have tried unsuccessfully to reinstate the death penalty, which was banned in the state in 1984.

Any legislation filed by Romney is expected to include strict limits on death penalty cases, including the requirement of DNA evidence connecting a convicted murderer to the crime.

``Our death penalty proposal will recognize and apply new forensic technologies to ensure that any convictions under such a statute meet the highest evidentiary standard,'' Romney wrote in a letter in March to the Legislature's Criminal Justice Committee.

In 1997, a death penalty bill came within a single vote of being approved by the House. The Senate also initially supported it and then-Gov. Paul Cellucci, a Republican, was prepared to sign the bill.

The bill was defeated when a single House lawmaker switched his vote to oppose the death penalty.

Jeffrey Curley was a Cambridge boy who was lured into a car by two men, then smothered with a gasoline-soaked rag when he resisted their sexual advances. His corpse was found encased in a cement-filled tub in a river in Maine. The men are serving life sentences.


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## mpd61 (Aug 7, 2002)

Why don't they just get those two assigned to a certain cell-block at Shirley? What a waste of money keeping those two shitbirds alive and in good health.

I am a firm believer in the death penalty. Does anybody remember the "Zanti Misfits" from the "Outer Limits"
:-k


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## 2-Delta (Aug 13, 2003)

I agree, I also feel that the number of appeals one can have after being sentenced to death should be limited. Thats why its so damn expensive.


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