"To say that there is a pattern of racist comments coming out of the Hillary campaign is ridiculous," said Ohio Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones. "All of the world knows the commitment of President Clinton and Sen. Clinton to civil rights issues — and not only the commitment in terms of words but in terms of deeds."
http://www.politico.com/...
Track records have a way of speaking for themselves.
By 1992, Bill Clinton was insisting that Democrats "should no longer feel guilty about protecting the innocent" and took a position strongly supporting capital punishment. To make his point, he flew home to Arkansas mid-campaign to watch the execution of Rector. Some considered it a turning point in that race, hardening a soft public image.[citation needed] Others tend to cite the execution as an example of what they perceive to be Clinton's opportunism, directly influenced by Michael Dukakis and his response to CNN's Bernard Shaw when asked during a campaign debate on October 13, 1988 if he would be supportive of the death penalty were his wife to be raped and murdered.
The courts decided Rector was mentally competent to be put to death by lethal injection. Rector's prison guards called him "the Chickman" because he thought the guards were throwing alligators and chickens into his cell. He would grip the bars and jump up and down like an ape. On the night of his execution, Rector saved the slice of pecan pie to be eaten before bedtime, not realizing his death would come first. He also told his attorney that he would like to vote for Clinton in the fall.
Rector was subject to a unique overlap of controversies in 1992 during his execution in Arkansas. A question of the morality of killing someone who was functionally retarded. An oft-cited example of his mental insufficiency is his decision to save the dessert of his last meal for after his execution.[1] In 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court banned the execution of people with mental retardation in Atkins v. Virginia, ruling that the practice constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. Rector was African-American, adding to racial questions relating to the death penalty.
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
SPRINGFIELD, Illinois (AP) -- Barack Obama can honestly claim to have made a difference on a matter of life and death.
Obama cites his role in Illinois' death penalty debate as proof he can solve problems through compromise.
While an Illinois state senator, Obama was key in getting the state's notorious death penalty laws changed, including a requirement that in most cases police interrogations involving capital crimes must be recorded.
The changes enacted in 2003 reformed a system that had sent 13 people to death row, only to have them released because they were later determine to be innocent or had been convicted using improper methods.
"Without Barack's energy, imagination and commitment I do not believe the very substantial and meaningful reforms that became law in Illinois would have taken place," said author Scott Turow, a member of the state commission that recommended many of the changes.
Obama often cites his role in Illinois' death penalty debate as evidence that he can resolve thorny issues through compromise.
"We brought police officers and civil rights advocates together to reform a death penalty system that had sent 13 innocent men to death row," he declare in a recent presidential debate.
Enactment of the 2003 law was a huge political achievement in a state that had been deeply divided over problems with capital punishment.
http://www.cnn.com/...