Loretta Lynch v. Connecticut

This week the Attorney General finally made up her mind.

Following the department’s rigorous review process to thoroughly consider all relevant factual and legal issues, I have determined that the Justice Department will seek the death penalty,

That's Dylan Roof, the kid who's charged with killing 9 people at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina last year.

Roof, who's already facing capital charges in South Carolina courts - trial currently set to begin in January - now risks the possibility of another death sentence.  From the feds.  Because he didn't just kill 9 people.  He did it for bad reasons.  Teach that rotten kid a lesson.

It took a year of dithering rigorous review to determine that this was an appropriate use of federal resources.  So that we can get him killed twice. Or maybe it's because the AG doesn't trust those racist hicks in South Carolina to kill a white guy who killed black folk for kicks.  So the AG needs to arrange for a back-up.  You know, just in case.

Sigh.

Meanwhile, in Connecticut.  

• Where the legislature abolished the death penalty going forward but left it in place so that Joshua Komisarjevsky and Steven Hayes (and incidentally the 9 other folks on death row there) could still be killed.  
• Until State v. Santiago the Connecticut Supreme Court said that the death penalty violated the state's constitution and said that the 11 guys on death row couldn't be executed, either.
• And then, after the personnel on the court changed, put Santiago on hold while reconsidering the matter in the case of Russell Peeler, which was not a good sign if you thought they had it right the first time.

Yesterday, the court spoke.  There are concurrences and dissents, but in its brief and unsigned opinion (footnotes omitted), the court said it would follow its precedent.

A jury found the defendant, Russell Peeler, guilty of, among other things, one count of capital felony in violation of General Statutes (Rev. to 1999) § 53a-54b (8) and one count of capital felony in violation of General Statutes (Rev. to 1999) § 53a-54b (9) in connection with the 1999 shooting deaths of a woman and her young son, and, following a capital sentencing hearing, the trial court, Devlin, J.,rendered judgment imposing two death sentences. This appeal of the defendant’s death sentences is controlled by State v. Santiago, 318 Conn. 1, 122 A.3d 1 (2015), in which a majority of this court concluded that, following the enactment of No. 12-5 of the 2012 Public Acts (P.A. 12-5), executing offenders who committed capital crimes prior to the enactment of P.A. 12-5 would offend article first, §§ 8 and 9, of the Connecticut constitution. See, e.g., Conway v. Wilton, 238 Conn. 653, 658–62, 680 A.2d 242 (1996) (explaining scope of and rationale for rule of stare decisis). Our conclusion that the defendant’s death sentences must be vacated as unconstitutional in light of Santiago renders moot the defendant’s other appellate claims. The judgment is reversed with respect to the imposition of two sentences of death and the case is remanded with direction to impose a sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of release on each capital felony count; the judgment is affirmed in all other respects. 

Connecticut is known, among other things, as The Constitution State.

The Attorney General is named Lynch.

You can't make this shit up.

From Out of the Macabre Muck - UPDATE

And so, it seems, Dr. Petit won't get his revenge.  Steven Hayes and Joshua Komisarjevsky won't be killed by the decent people of the State of Connecticut for the horrific invasion of the good doctor's home, the mother raped and strangled, the girls, 11 and 17, killed in a scorching blaze after gasoline was poured on them.  (And those are just the highlights.)

Hayes and Komisarjevsky were among the 11 men left on Connecticut's death row after the legislature repealed the death penalty in 2012.  Prospectively only.  They'd have done it sooner, but put it off so Dr. Petit could have his way and Komisarjevsky could be sentenced to die.  But they did it.

But what to do with those 11?  Republicans made a point of it during legislative debate.  Peter Applebome in the Times from back then.

Republican critics of the bill said the exemption for those currently awaiting execution cast a cloud over the vote, both because it undercut the moral argument of death penalty opponents and because future appeals or government action had the potential to spare the 11 men.
“Let’s not mislead the public; let’s not mislead ourselves” said the House minority leader, Lawrence Cafero Jr., of Norwalk. “If it is the will of this chamber that this state is no longer in the business of executing people, then let’s say it and do it. You cannot have it both ways.”

Well, maybe you could.  But not, as it turns out, in Connecticut.

Yesterday, by a vote of 4-3, the Connecticut Supreme Court said enough.  In State v. Santiago, litigation over whether the prospective elimination of the death penalty in Connecticut made its retroactive application unconstitutional, the court said that it did.  Near the start of the 92-page lead opinion, Justice Palmer quoted Santiago's counsel setting forth the base claim.. 

[T]he death penalty is no longer consistent with standards of decency in Connecticut and does not serve any valid penological objective.

And then, Palmer gave the answer

Public Act 12-5 not only reflects this state’s longstanding aversion to carrying out executions, but also represents the seminal change in the four century long history of capital punishment in Connecticut. Accompanying this dramatic departure are a host of other important developments that have transpired over the past several years. Historians have given us new chronicles of the history and devolution of the death penalty in Connecticut. Legal scholars have provided new understandings of the original meaning of the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishments. Social scientists repeatedly have confirmed that the risk of capital punishment falls disproportionately on people of color and other disadvantaged groups. Meanwhile, nationally, the number of executions and the number of states that allow the death penalty continue to decline, and convicted capital felons in this state remain on death row for decades with every likelihood that they will not be executed for many years to come, if ever. Finally, it has become apparent that the dual federal constitutional requirements applicable to all capital sentencing schemes—namely, that the jury be provided with objective standards to guide its sentence, on the one hand, and that it be accorded unfettered discretion to impose a sentence of less than death, on the other—are fundamentally in conflict and inevitably open the door to impermissible racial and ethnic biases. For all these reasons, and in light of the apparent intent of the legislature in prospectively repealing the death penalty and this state’s failure to implement and operate a fair and functional system of capital punishment, we conclude that the state constitution no longer permits the execution of individuals sentenced to death for crimes committed prior to the enactment of P.A. 12-5.

Which is it.  The Connecticut Constitution won't allow it.

Eleven men now have their sentences commuted from execution to death by natural means.  And under particularly horrific conditions, one assumes, since that's what P.A. 12-5 set up going forward for those who might have otherwise been sentenced to be killed.

There were three dissenting opinions (here, here, and here - Connecticut's court website doesn't provide a single link to the whole thing, sorry).  Each, excoriates the majority for what might charitably be called lawlessness.  Which maybe it is and maybe not.  Depends on where you stand, I suppose.  What the court does, pretty much by definition, comports with the state law because the state law is what the court says it is.  And the justices in the majority surely thought, just as strongly as those in dissent thought otherwise, that they were doing what the law told them to.

There were also two concurrences.  The first, by Justices Norcott and McDonald, bemoans what the issue before the court does not allow them to do, and its resolution will never allow them to do (though they go ahead and do it): take on the racism that inherently infects and at least in part controls the death penalty, and implicitly the whole criminal justice system.

[W]e write separately to express our profound concerns regarding an issue of substantial public importance that will never be resolved by this court in light of the majority’s determination that the imposition of the death penalty is an unconstitutionally excessive and disproportionate punishment. Specifically, we cannot end our state’s nearly 400 year struggle . . .  without speaking to the persistent allegations of racial and ethnic discrimination that have permeated the breadth of this state’s experience with capital charging and sentencing decisions.

In the second, Justice Eveleigh cuts to the heart of the moral issues involved, though he addresses them in legal terms.

Vengeance has no place in the orderly administration of justice by a civilized society. It certainly can never serve as the justification for the death penalty in today’s world. My review of the text and legislative history of the public act under consideration, No. 12-5 of the 2012 Public Acts (P.A. 12-5), leads me to the inescapable conclusion that vengeance was the motivating factor underlying the enactment of the provisions allowing the eleven men on death row to be executed while eliminating the death penalty for crimes committed in the future. Because I conclude that there is no longer any valid penological purpose justifying the retention of the death penalty for prerepeal defendants, and that our capital sentencing statutory scheme no longer guards against arbitrariness, it necessarily follows that the portions of P.A. 12-5 that allow the men on death row to be executed are violative of the federal and state constitutional bans against cruel and unusual punishment. 

A friend, who's done a lot of capital litigation over the years, told me once that "the death penalty brings out the worst in everyone."  I'm not sure he's wrong. Ending it is no panacea for our bad instincts.  The system is still racist, still driven by vengeance, still unimaginably cruel, still far more concerned with getting it done than with getting it right, still . . . .

But in this one way, by this act, Connecticut moves forward just a bit.  Out of what Norcott and McDonald call (in the words I purposely omitted from the quote above so I could quote them for the first time here) "the macabre muck of capital punishment litigation," 11 lives are saved with the stroke of a pen.  The Talmud teaches (and there's argument about it, as there is about pretty much everything the Talmud teaches) but go with this version:

[W]hoever preserves the life of a single human being . . . it is as if he had preserved an entire world.

Eleven times over, Connecticut.

Amen.

UPDATE
And see Connecticut's own, Gideon and Norm Pattis.

And in the Next Cell

Meet Richard Roszkowski.

In August 2009 he was sentenced to die for the murders of Holly Flannery and her daughter, Kylie, and of Thomas Gaudet. Daniel Tepfer, of the Connecticut Post, gave some details.

Roszkowski, a former neighbor of Flannery, shot her and Gaudet each once in the head on Seaview Avenue and then chased the girl down the busy street, shooting her in the back of the thigh, the face and finally the side of the head at close range as she begged for her life, police said.
. . .
Holly Flannery had been having an affair with Roszkowski, a former neighbor, but broke off the relationship a few weeks before the murder, according to witnesses. According to testimony, Roszkowski continued to stalk Flannery, and on the day of the killings, accused his former roommate Gaudet, who did not know Flannery, of having an affair with her.

Because the judge screwed up the jury instructions, Roszkowski gets to have a new sentencing trial (not a whole new trial - the guilty verdicts stand) with a new jury.  

Before that could happen, Roszkowski was found incompetent to stand trial.  He was sent to a mental hospital which decided he was too dangerous to deal with and sent him away.  And although he was born in the US, the Polish government says he's also a Polish citizen.  Poland, of course, has no death penalty.  And it's asked to have Roszkowski's life spared.  Still, he's back now for the new trial.  

And he's got a new lawyer.  Meet Michael Courtney.

Courtney's the chief public defender in Danbury, Connecticut.  It's his job to convince the jury to spare Roszkowski's life.  To do that, he has to dig and dig, investigate.  

He looks into every aspect of Roszkowski's life.  His family, his history.  He gathers records from schools, from government agencies, from doctors, from prisons, from anywhere he can.  He interviews everyone who's ever known Roszkowski, who's ever interacted with him.  It's a big job, but it's what the lawyer (with assistance from investigators and practitioners, psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, doctors, lawyers, indian chiefs, anyone who can help provide insight and understanding.

Then he sifts through it all.  He's looking for patterns, for explanations.  Why, he wants to know, is Roszkowski the way he is?  Has he been damaged?  How?  When?  What's the effect?  Did he lead an upstanding life before these crimes?  If so, what made him snap?  Eventually, he'll come up with a theme - maybe with subthemes - that he'll present to the jury to try and get them to understand, to see Roszkowski as a person, as an individual, not as a monster.  As someone who's worth saving - or who's not worth killing.

But along the way, he investigates.  And the investigation led him to this guy.

Or maybe it was this one.

Or this one.

I don't know who he is, either.  Because, see, it's this guy.

He's in witness protection from some other case, and Courtney reached out to him to be a witness for Roszkowski. Apparently, the two of them once had adjoining prison cells.
Anyway, Courtney got in touch with ____________ (don't ask how or they'll have to kill you), and as a result -- Here's Tepfer from earlier this week.

The lawyer for a Trumbull man facing a death penalty trial for the execution-style murders of a local woman, her 9-year-old daughter and a Milford landscaper in 2006, said he fears being arrested before the case can reach a verdict.
. . .
"My weekend was ruined because I was worried about being arrested," Courtney told state Superior Court Judge John Blawie. "I can't sleep at night because I don't know what they (the state attorney's office) are going to cook up, and that's not fair to my client."

For his part, the prosecutor said that he's hasn't found a basis to arrest Courtney. Yet. But he didn't say he won't turn something up.

Wisely, Courtney's hired a lawyer.  But that doesn't really solve the problem.  How does Courtney concentrate on saving his client's life when he's staying up nights wondering if the gendarmes will be coming to arrest him in the morning?  

Which is why he asked the judge to let him off the case.  To which the judge said,

I'm ordering you, Mr. Courtney, to continue to represent Mr. Roszkowski,

Because, you know, fair trials are nice, but nothing's more important than keeping the case going smoothly.  Priorities, don't you see.

If Roszkowski gets sentenced to die again, that order is likely to be the first issue on appeal.

Abolition Now, Abolition Forever

Just waiting on the governor now, and he said he'll sign.

But the Senate voted last week, and the House on Wednesday, and once the governor gets it done, it'll be over.

That's the death penalty and the State of Connecticut.

It's history.

Sort of.  Because there's the great compromise.  Those 11 guys on death row?  Kill 'em.  But from now on . . . .

LWOP, which as I've said before is death in prison.  And a particularly nasty form of LWOP.  Peter Applebome explains for the Times.

The legislation will make life in prison without possibility of parole the state’s harshest punishment. It mandates that those given life without parole be incarcerated separately from other inmates and be limited to two hours a day outside the prison cell.

Lovely.  Here's Governor Malloy.

Going forward, we will have a system that allows us to put these people away for life, in living conditions none of us would want to experience. Let’s throw away the key and have them spend the rest of their natural lives in jail.

And Representative Patricia Widlitz.

I think in many ways, that is a death sentence, with no chance of parole, no chance of doing anything with your life.

So LWOP.  Which is life but also death.

Except for those 11 guys.  They can still be killed.  The proponents of death tried to make an issue of it.  Daniela Altimari in the Hartford Courant, gives an example.

House Republican leader Larry Cafero called the measure "a fraud on the public" because the repeal is prospective and would not apply to the 11 men currently on death row.
"How can you say in your heart and with your vote that it should no longer be the policy of the state of Connecticut to commit anyone to death and yet at the same time say, 'except for these 11 guys?''' Cafero said. "How do you justify that?"

Applebome quoted him, too.

Republican critics of the bill said the exemption for those currently awaiting execution cast a cloud over the vote, both because it undercut the moral argument of death penalty opponents and because future appeals or government action had the potential to spare the 11 men.

“Let’s not mislead the public; let’s not mislead ourselves” said the House minority leader, Lawrence Cafero Jr., of Norwalk. “If it is the will of this chamber that this state is no longer in the business of executing people, then let’s say it and do it. You cannot have it both ways.” 

But of course politics, as Bismarck was apparently the first to say, is "the art of the possible." Altimari again.

Rep. Gary Holder-Winfield, one of the most vigorous supporters of the repeal effort, didn't dispute Cafero's view that the prospective part of the bill was born as a compromise. "But the reality is I am in a room with 150 other people and I'm not so young that I believe … I know everything,'' said the New Haven Democrat. "Part of what we do here is, we figure out how do we make things happen."
Holder-Winfield said he favors complete abolition, even for the 11 occupants of death row. But, he said, "If I can't get the state to stop executing people that are already on death row, at least I can stop the state from executing people that may be on death row in the future."

Which is no small thing.  Even with a moral compromise along the way.

We cannot confront darkness with darkness and expect to have light

New Jersey

New Mexico

Illinois

New York

Coming soon to Connecticut

It's abolition, and it's time.

Yesterday morning, Judge Frost told Ohio it could kill Mark Wiles.  Just after 2 o'clock this morning, the Connecticut Senate voted to stop sending people to their death.  Let's hear it for the Nutmeg State.

Word from there, from the Land of Steady Habits, is that there's no question the House will pass the bill and that the Governor has announced his intention to sign it.

Oh to be in Connecticut.

It's not perfect.  Kill the ones already on the row, they said.

But no more.  Never again.  Finito.

I've said over and over here that clemency isn't about them, it's about us.  That mercy isn't about the recipient, it's about the giver.  That grace is a gift, not a reward.

So, too, of the death penalty.  About us, not about them.

Senator Slossberg

Here's a small bit of what Senator Gayle Slossberg said during the debate on the Senate floor. (The whole statement is here.)

I want something better for our families. I want to know that in the face of terrible evil, we will hold on tighter to our humanity; that when our faith in each other is challenged, we will work harder to fulfill our obligations to one another as human beings; that we will stand for justice for all; that we will raise each other up, and not descend to the level of criminals. We cannot confront darkness with darkness and expect to have light.

She followed that, with this.

I hope that one day, when my children look back on this vote, they will view it with pride and know that today we took a step towards being a more civilized and just society for all. I am proud to support the repeal of the death penalty.

Which really is the point.

I didn't watch the debate.  Gideon did, with tears in his eyes by the end.

By the vote.  Which really does signal the end. 

Slossberg began her talk on the floor of the Senate this way.

A few years ago, I was waiting for the train to New York and I sat down on a bench next to an elderly man. We started to chat. Elections were coming up, so our conversation naturally turned to politics and the state of our country. We ran through the usual topics and then he turned to me and said something I have thought about over and over again ever since: He said that between the tough economy, the rise of hate crimes, the vilification of this group or that by otherwise good, moral people and the seemingly chronic need to blame someone for society’s problems, he said he was afraid – not for himself, but for our children. It is only a short step from here to there, he said – to think of some people as less than human. And once we think of people as less than human, it becomes okay to kill them and then what kind of society do we have?

Indeed.

Because it really is about us, not them.

As Judge Frost reminded yesterday, we're not there yet in Ohio where there's still too much belief in them.

But we really are heading that way.  And one of these days.

More Weeks, More Voices

We've heard from Ohio Supreme Court Justice Paul Pfeifer, the "Father of Ohio's Death Penalty," and now-former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell who signed 119 execution warrants.  We've heard from Terry Collins, the former director of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections who witnessed 33 executions.  Last week we heard the family of Chong Mah tell the Parole Board what they told the prosecutors 15 or so years ago:  They don't want Johnnie Baston killed Mr. Mah's murder.

Ohio's Catholic Bishops have now weighed in.

The Catholic Bishops of Ohio agree with recent comments made by both Ohio Supreme Court Justice Paul Pfeifer and former Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections Director Terry Collins that Ohio's elected legislative leaders ought to debate and ultimately abolish the death penalty.

Here's the whole press release.

Catholic Conference Presser

And it's not just the church in Ohio.  In Connecticut, where repeal is a real possibility this year despite the fact that the second trial for the horrific killings of the Petit family is to begin, the church takes the same view.

Michael C. Culhane, the chief lobbyist for the Catholic Church in Connecticut, said he feels enormous compassion for Petit and his family. But he also said the church will actively work to support the repeal effort.

"The church's position is grounded in its firm belief in the sanctity of life, as we view life as being sacred from conception to natural death," Culhane said after Wednesday's press conference.

That's from a report by Daniela Altimari in the Hartford Courant.  The press conference?

More than two dozen families of murder victims came to the state Capitol complex Wednesday to make a case that the death penalty constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.

Not for those on death row but for the families of their victims.

In the Connecticut Mirror, Mark Pazniokas quotes Gail Canzano, a Connecticut psychologist whose brother-in-law was murdered in 1999.  She understands, she said, Dr. Petit's anguish and anger and desire to see the killers of his family killed.  But in fact, the death penalty system he so avidly embraces actually makes things worse for him.

"There is no healing in this," Canzano said. "The death penalty ensnares people in the criminal justice system, where mandatory appeals, constitutional challenges and never-ending media attention result in notoriety for the murderer and years of suffering and uncertainty for the families left behind."
. . .

Canzano questioned the point of capital punishment in Connecticut, where the only man executed in the past half-century was Michael Ross, who waived his appeals and chose death over life in prison without possibility of parole.

"If we have any real empathy for the families of murder victims, we'll tell them the truth," she said. "The death penalty doesn't work, and it's not possible to fix it. We'll tell them that it's an archaic process, already abolished in most of the world and on it's way out in the United States. If we have any real empathy for the families of murder victims we'll stop putting them through this."

If there were a couple of dozen at the press conference, a larger group, sent a letter to legislators.  From the Courant.

"In Connecticut, the death penalty is a false promise that goes unfulfilled,'' states the letter to lawmakers signed by the victims' family members. "And as the state hangs on to this broken system, it wastes millions of dollars that could go toward much-needed victims' services."

Of course, Connecticut isn't Ohio.  They put far fewer folks on the row and don't kill them with the same enthusiasm we do here.  Ultimately, though, those are trivial differences. Murder by the state is murder by the state.  It takes years.  It serves nobody except legislators and judges and governors who can declare themselves tough on crime.  It takes money and resources that could be better spent, far better spent on providing services to victims and on crime prevention.  And, of course, it's wrong.  

Connecticut isn't Ohio, but those things are true everywhere.

Voices are being heard.

Even in Illinois, by the way.  Governor Quinn, we're still waiting.

Gideon for Governor

They came so close.

In March, by a vote of 25-15, the Judiciary Committee of the Connecticut House of Representatives passed out a bill repealing the state's death penalty.

On May 13, repeal passed the House by a vote of 90-56.

On May 22, at 4:11 a.m., the Connecticut Senate passed repeal by a vote of 19-17.

And then the Governor vetoed it.

Almost.

Of course, almost doesn't save lives. Almost doesn't end anything. But almost does keep you going.

And now the Governor is going. Last week, Governor M. Jodi Rell has announced that she will not seek reelection.

This pleased many, including lots of potential candidates who now see themselves as having a shot.

Among prospective candidates, one stands out. His (her?) anonymity may complicate the voting, but he has my endorsement. Why? He's a public defender. He's a person of some seriousness. He goes by the name "Gideon," and here's what he wrote on the news of her decision.

So while I wish her well in her personal life and hope that her health remains strong, I will not be sad to see her become former Governor Rell. I’m not sure there was a person less equipped to take on that job.

And now, on to the big question. What needs to be done? The first response is obvious: abolish the death penalty. But there are so many more things that need to be changed about the criminal justice system in our State. In my mind, there’s only one candidate who is qualified to do that. So, you guys can be the first to hear it: I am hereby announcing my candidacy for the Governor of the State of Connecticut and I will be running on the Smart on Crime platform for the “It must be easy; she did it for so long” party.

So there you have it. Candidate for Governor running on the "Smart on Crime" platform that begins with abolishing the death penalty.

It's a bit complicated, not being in the Nutmeg State and all, but I hereby offer my endorsement. Here's hoping it's not the kiss of death to his candidacy.

BAD DAY FOR THE ABOLITIONISTS

Two death penalty stories of note. First, New England, then Guantanamo.

New England:

In May 2000, then Governor of New Hampshire Jeanne Shaeen vetoed a bill that would have ended the state's death penalty. Yesterday, just over nine years later, Connecticut Governor Jodi Rell vetoed her legislature's abolition bill. (Stories here and here.) She's not new to this. In December 2004, when Connecticut was getting ready to kill Michael Ross (it happened in May 2005), she announced that she would veto any abolition bill. (Story here,)

In a message accompanying yesterday's veto (you can read it here), Rell said what is clearly true (there are passionate retentionists and passionate abolitionists) and what is clearly nonsense ("There is no doubt that the death penalty is a deterrent" [the emphasis is mine]).

She also took the opportunity to condemn the legislature for having "largely ignored" a study commissioned by the legislature and issued in 2003 (available here).

The report made significant and thoughtful recommendations that have been largely ignored by the Legislature, including training for public defenders and prosecutors. The goal of the report is to ensure that each decision to seek the death penalty is based upon the facts and law applicable to the case and is set within a framework of consistent and even-handed application of the sentencing laws, with no consideration of arbitrary or impermissible factors such as the defendant’s race, ethnicity or religion.

Yet at the same time she chastised the legislature for ignoring the study's recommendations, she said that she opposed them.

I believe that the current law is workable and effective and I would propose that it not be changed.

There will be an effort to override, at least in the House, but there aren't likely to be enough votes. So despite the votes of their legislatures, Connecticut and New Hampshire will, for the time being, remain the only states in New England that have the death penalty.

Guantanamo

You'll recall that back in December, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Ramsay Bin al-Shibh, Mustafa al Hawsawi, Walid Bin Attash, and Ali Abdul Aziz Ali the five prisoners at Guantanamo who were facing capital charges over the 9/11 hijackings all tried to plead guilty and accept execution. (Stories here and here.) The Military Commission has yet to rule on whether guilty pleas would be allowed.

Now it's reported (here) that the administration is drafting legislation that would specifically allow them to do that. Why? Because it would be really hard to convict them if we held real trials (or even sham trials). So we're going to encourage them to commit suicide by Military Commission. That way the world will see how fairly we're treating them and they won't become martyrs.

Sigh.