Posted on December 10, 2011 at 12:36 pm

Komisarjevsky Jury Didn’t Take Elie Wiesel’s Advice

By Carolyn Yeager

Jury decides that death is the answer.

On Friday, December 9, the jury deciding the fate of home-invasion rapist/murderer Joshua Komisarjevsky rejected mitigating circumstances presented to them by Defense Council and decided for death on all 6 counts.  This was hailed by the general public (as noted in immediate comments to newspaper stories1), while it was a disappointment to the state of Connecticut’s largest newspaper The Hartford Courant, some Connecticut lawmakers and Elie Wiesel.

 

Above: Dr. William Petit, sole survivor of the brutal 2007 home invasion by Stephen Hayes and Joshua Komisarjevsky that took the lives of his wife and two daughters, watches as his sister Johanna Chapman thanks the jurors for taking their time to come to the “right decision” in this painful and disturbing case. Chapman attended all the court sessions with her brother.

Left: The father of murdered Jennifer Petit, Rev. Richard Hawke. on left, embraces Christopher Komisarjevsky (right), the uncle of Joshua Komisarjevsky, outside the courtroom after the verdict was read. The elder Komisarjevsky, who strongly resembles Nikita Khrushchev in this profile pose, has written that his father, Theodore Komisarjevsky, was a renowned theater director from a famous Russian theatrical family. His mother was a leading figure in modern dance, a teacher and a writer. He, himself, is the former chief executive of the prominent public relations firm Burson-Marsteller. Joshua Komisarjevsky was adopted as an infant by Christopher’s brother Benedict; mother unknown. Christopher was the only family member to attend the sentencing trial, during which time he made friends with the Hawke and Petit families.

On Oct. 26, 2010, Wiesel made a speech in Connecticut while the trial for Steven Hayes was in session, calling on the jury to not give the death penalty to either Hayes or Komisarjevsky for their brutal torture/killing spree. In his speech Wiesel repeated the words “Death is not the answer.”  I posted this article about it in October on Elie Wiesel Cons The World.

In that speech at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn. (which was organized by the B’nai B’rith Lecture Bureau, by the way, as are most of his public appearances), Wiesel indulged in his usual vague, high-sounding rhetoric. Lines such as “Moral societies should not be the agents of death” and “Death should never be the answer in a civilized society” flowed from his lips. This was his first direct address on capital punishment in the U.S., and it was a last minute change of topic, apparently when he and his handlers realized the widely publicized murder trial was underway nearby.

Wiesel: Death penalty can’t bring them back

Earlier in the day, while addressing the media, Wiesel spoke more directly about the case, acknowledging he had no business butting in … but did so anyway. “It would be almost obscene for me to comment about morality to the father,” Wiesel said. “I would only ask, do you really think that death could bring them back to life?” How insulting to William Petit, the father and lone survivor, to imply that his wish for the perpetrators to be put to death was because that would somehow bring his loved ones back to life. I would wager that Dr. Petit’s IQ and reasoning powers are above Wiesel’s and he understands the purpose for the death penalty is deterrence and  justice appropriate to the crime—the latter being a concept that Wiesel reserves for Jews only.

Wiesel then made the ludicrous comment that he might change his stance if the death penalty could bring back victims. Knowing that no punishment can bring people back from death, this is a dishonest argument against the death penalty.

He went on to say: “It is not easy, but a civilized society needs to face such challenges. That father deserves a different language. We must find the words, the proper words, to deal with it.” Of course, he doesn’t come up with them. Wiesel is famous for failing to adequately explain or describe his claims and statements, and blaming it on language itself!

Even some Jews are unhappy with Elie Wiesel in this instance. On an Orthodox Jewish website, the comments were overwhelmingly against his interference, and his position, in the case. One commenter (#22) said simply, “Elie Wiesel is CREATING anti-Semitism by his sticking his nose in this case.”

The anti-death penalty campaign

An editorial by the liberal and Jewish-owned Hartford Courant immediately after the death sentence was passed quoted Elie Wiesel’s words from a year ago calling for the abolition of the death penalty. In a Dec. 9 editorial titled  “With the Cheshire trials over, let’s stop sending people to death row,” they quoted an earlier editorial in which they stated:

We believe the better answer is to repeal the death penalty as immoral and bad public policy. Speaking at Wesleyan University last year, Nobel Peace laureate Elie Wiesel, who lost his parents and sister in the Holocaust, said moral societies should not be the agents of death. We aspire to be a moral society.

What hollow words coming from any mainstream media outlet in the United States! They aspire to be moral? The U.S. mainstream media generally refuses to do the moral thing.  The Hartford Courant is part of The Tribune Company, which is owned by Sam Zell (aka Zielonka) whose Jewish parents immigrated to the U.S. from Poland in 1939. It’s not surprising, therefore, that it presents Elie Wiesel to it’s readers as someone whose words are important and should be heeded.

But I also want to respond to the Courant’s above statement by saying, once again, that we do not know for sure what became of Wiesel’s parents and sister. There is no solid evidence that they were “lost in the Holocaust”—only the statements of belief by family members. I realize that most people are shocked by a statement like that from me, but it is the truth. The Courant editorial goes on to give their reasons for wanting life imprisonment over the death sentence:

 The two men were willing to plead to sentences of life in prison without possibility of parole. Because of the lengthy delays built into Connecticut’s death penalty, they will most likely serve life without parole. The trial becomes just a ritual in Connecticut death penalty cases, a kabuki play about justice instead of actual justice.

The Courant brings up unnamed “studies” in Maryland, North Carolina and New Jersey that found evidence that “killers of white victims are more likely to be sentenced to death than killers of nonwhite victims.” They don’t tell us the race of the killers, only of the victims. But the killers are probably overwhelmingly nonwhite. It also doesn’t tell us the nature of the killings, i.e. whether the crimes that received the death penalty contained aggravating circumstances that the others didn’t.

The Courant also argues the death penalty is too expensive. Finally,  they argue the death penalty is about revenge. These are the identical arguments put forth by the Connecticut Network to Abolish the Death Penalty (CNADP). Who do you think is behind it? On their website, they state:

The death penalty is poor public policy. The death penalty does not deter crime, it is not cost efficient, it kills the mentally ill, it is economically and racially biased, it kills the innocent, and it does not provide closure to families – it is simply revenge, not justice.

I disagree. I believe the death penalty, especially if it were really carried out as it should be (within two years at the most) is a deterrent to the most gruesome capitol crimes … which are sadly becoming more common. As someone who lost his 19-year old daughter to a murderer correctly put it in an earlier Courant editorial:

The problem with the death penalty, as it is currently constituted, is that it is not carried out swiftly. There are murderers on death row who have been there for more than two decades. Their appeals are mainly stalling tactics as they offer no new evidence to claim innocence.

Elie Wiesel is wrong, and thankfully the jury for the Komisarjevsky sentencing phase thought so too. Long live the Jury System.

1. A Hartford Courant poll, as of 10 p.m. Dec. 9 with 660 votes so far, was running 86% in favor of the death penalty and only 13% opposed. Abolishing the death penalty is just another one of those fuzzy, wuzzy ideas being pushed onto average, normal Americans by the globalist ruling elite.

 

5 Comments to Komisarjevsky Jury Didn’t Take Elie Wiesel’s Advice

  1. by rjg

    On December 12, 2011 at 10:17 pm

    The Death Penalty is for Victim-Justice, not reducing crime.

    It is easy to get emotional about situations like this, when provoked by the Jewish liberal media circus.

    The “death penalty” is NOT designed to reduce crime. When the guilty person truly IS guilty, the death penalty is a lawful means of establishing justice in the name of the person murdered, the one whose life was “interrupted” by another’s actions. Since the victim is dead, and not by their own desires, our lawful taking the life of the one who wrongfully, unlawfully took the life of another is just. Otherwise, one person murdering someone else has no real penalty. “Life in prison” is to have a “life” nonetheless, while the victim has no “life” at all.

    The “real risk of error” in a capital punishment case is when there is no justice for the victim; the “irrevocable nature of the consequences” of the murder should equally as important for the victim as for the perpetrator. That should be the “decisive importance” to all of us. Sometimes the death penalty really pays back big, when the guilty deserves to get what the perpetrator gave the victim. In fact, our present execution methods are far more “compassionate” than the hurtful ways the victim endured, as the victim desperately hoped to the very end they would not die. But they did.

    So now where is the “fairness” in no death penalty, no lawful retribution for such criminal acts of ultimate hate?

    The death penalty is not “pointless,” as U.S. Sup.Ct. Justice Stevens suggests; and it does not “represent a needless extinction of life with only marginal contributions to any discernible social or public purposes.” Quite the opposite, it confirms life as valuable and sacred, and assures proper punishment for the violators thereof.

    Want to get rid of the death penalty? The guilty can respond. WHAT ABOUT THE VICTIM?! Ask them. But they’re all dead. So don’t wait up for their answer: their blood on ground cries out for justice.

    Think on this a while. Until it happens to those promoting abolition of the death penalty, or to someone close, the idea of outlawing the death penalty will sound very compassionate. Have some compassion for the victim, and the victim’s family. Then, know the facts.

    The “death penalty” is NOT designed to reduce crime. It is a lawful means of establishing justice in the name of the person murdered.

     

  2. by Carolyn

    On December 13, 2011 at 10:28 pm

    rjg,
    Thanks for this well-thought out comment.

     

  3. by Carolyn

    On December 16, 2011 at 10:09 am

    Update on Connecticut death penalty debate, taken from http://avon.patch.com/articles/working-to-create-a-death-penalty-law-that-actually-works-in-the-name-of-justice-polls-3f36e4dd
    From this we can see how the Elie Wiesel-type thinking confuses the public mind. Does anyone consider that this is a nullification of the jury process on which our constitutional justice system is based? The jury decision is supposed to be final, but our higher courts (run by whom?) find a way around it.
    * * * * *

    Both men convicted of carrying out one of the most heinous crimes in Connecticut’s history have now been sentenced to death. But, under current laws, chances are slim that Cheshire home invasion killers Joshua Komisarjevsky and Steven Hayes will ever be executed by lethal injection.

    Currently in Connecticut there is no limit to the amount of appeals someone sentenced to death can file. “They can literally file these appeals for the rest of their lives,” said State Rep. David K. Labriola, R-Oxford, one of the state’s foremost death penalty advocates who has led the fight on the House floor to both keep the death penalty despite attempts to repeal it and to streamline the appeals process.

    He said other states have reasonable time limits – between seven-to-10 years – on appeals, and he believes there’s no reason Connecticut cannot follow suit. “We can do it here, and we should do it here,” he said, adding that arguments against the death penalty that abolishing it would save money are false because “if we abolish the death penalty, people will fight just as hard to avoid life in prison. And certainly housing these inmates for the rest of their lives is going to cost more.”

    Petit has put a face on the death penalty debate in Connecticut, and he’s become one of the state’s most powerful voices in the fight to preserve state executions. The following is Petit’s response outside the federal courthouse in New Haven on Friday, minutes after Komisarjevsky was sentenced to death:

    “I think the Connecticut legislature needs to get its act together. I think other states like Virginia do it appropriately. And there really should be expedited appeals to the state Supreme Court. If that is denied, then I think an execution date should be set. And if that’s appealed, I think the state and federal habeas appeals should be done simultaneously. If those are found to not have any merit, then I think an execution date should be set again.”

    State Rep. Alfred Adinolfi, R-Cheshire, said, “Ninety nine percent of the appeals that go in are thrown out before they even get to a judge. It’s just a way of delaying things forever. Perhaps we should limit it to say five years, especially when the individuals have pleaded guilty and there is no doubt about their guilt.” He said the current laws favor murderers instead of the people they should support – victims and their families. “We have tried to change that many times over the years in the way of amendments, but we haven’t been successful,” he said. “We need to keep trying.”

    Connecticut has executed just one person since 1960 – serial killer Michael Ross, in 2005. After 18 years of appeals Ross decided to give up the appeals process and, despite attempts by public defenders and others to save him, was given lethal injection in May 2005.
    * * * * *

    Who are these public defenders and others who felt the need to save the life of a serial killer? That’s the important question for society. Why should citizens sit on a jury for months, being plied with horror stories and images that never leave them afterward, for their work to establish justice to have been in vain. It makes a cynical mockery of the jury system.

     

  4. by carlos w porter

    On December 24, 2011 at 3:16 am

    Said to be an authentic epitaph from the Old West:

    “He found a rope and picked it up
    And with it walked away
    It happened to the other end
    A horse was hitched, they say.
    They took the rope and tied it
    Unto a hickory limb
    It happened that the other end
    Was somehow hitched to him.”

    It is sometimes forgotten that there was a very good reason to hang horse thieves. It wasn’t just that a horse was valuable property. A man whose horse had been stolen often died of thirst or was captured and tortured to death by Indians.
    At the same time, murder was NOT always punished by death, the reason being that “We have men who need killing but we’ve got no horses that need stealing.”
    As one judge told a horse thief: “We do not hang you because you stole a horse, but so that horses may not be stolen”.
    Or, as a French politician once put it: “I am very much in favour of abolishing the death penalty, but I await the first move, from our friends –the murderers.”
    Under the apartheid regime in South Africa there was a mandatory death sentence for 1st degree murder. The murder rate was very low. What is it today? Examples could be multiplied.
    A traditional principle dating back to antiquity is that desperate ills call for desperate remedies. Or, to borrow a slangy expression, what goes round, comes round. As ye do, so shall ye get did.

     

  5. by mj

    On January 11, 2012 at 12:49 am

    What about Troy Aitkens and every other innocent victim of judicial murder? It goes the other way too… is Amid Hezmati justly condemned to die in Iran??

    the point is not about the justice of lawful retribution; it’s whether the same government that hands out parking tickets can be trusted to render truth and justice.

    The State is a blind immoral creature that inevitably does more harm than good. If you want retribution and justice then take matters into your own hands and take direct responsibility too. Right now Connecticut is protecting these murderers from retaliation and threatening those who may seek real justice in their blood. death is not some clinical burocratic decision its immense sacred and fundamental. No one can legally or judicially decide life nd death its phony baloney witchdoctoring from the local priesthood going back thousands of years.

     

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