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Rich. Times Dispatch Editorial - Weekly Review |
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By Staff Reports
Published: February 6, 2010
This week the House of Delegates approved
expanding the death penalty by passing the so-called triggerman bill.
We support capital punishment, but consider the legislation not only
unwarranted but gratuitous. The House also passed a bill to apply the
death penalty for "the willful, deliberate, and premeditated killing"
of an EMT "when such killing is for the purpose of interfering with the
performance of his official duties." We admire EMTs, and we suspect the
bill's enthusiasts can summon pleasing arguments in favor of their
position, but this, too, strikes us as unwarranted and gratuitous. We
are not aware of a surge in killings of EMTs that might justify such a
step. And as valuable to society as emergency personnel might be, are
their deaths in the line of duty different from the deaths of, say,
pharmacists, teachers, pilots, or, for that matter, any law-abiding
citizen?
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