Donald Trump is engaged in an extremely dangerous precedent … on his way to another even more dangerous precedent. On Wednesday evening, he tweeted
Donald J. Trump
NYC terrorist was happy as he asked to hang ISIS flag in his hospital room. He killed 8 people, badly injured 12. SHOULD GET DEATH PENALTY!
Trump followed this up with two more tweets on Thursday morning ...
Donald J. Trump
Would love to send the NYC terrorist to Guantanamo but statistically that process takes much longer than going through the Federal system… There is also something appropriate about keeping him in the home of the horrible crime he committed. Should move fast. DEATH PENALTY!
There is something appropriate about keeping a trial in the area where the crime occurred. But there’s nothing appropriate about Trump’s tweets. Because not only is he pre-judging a case and publicly calling for blood, he’s doing so in a way that taints any possible jury pool, in any possible court, anywhere in the nation. This follows on the heels of Trump declaring to the world that the American Justice system is “a laughingstock.”
Trump is demanding a form of justice that … isn’t. Sayfullo Saipov’s guilt may be obvious. His crime may be terrible. His motivations may fuel anger. But that doesn’t mean the justice system should make an exception to give him the expedited trip to the gas chamber that Trump is demanding. Because not only should the justice system give everyone, no matter the circumstances, the opportunity for a fair trial, Donald Trump has a horrible record when it comes to demanding people’s death.
Donald Trump remains the same idiot who took out an ad calling for the death of five teenagers accused of mugging and murder in New York’s Central Park. They went to jail … but to Trump’s disappointment, were not executed.
Which is a good thing. Since they turned out to be innocent. However, that didn’t slake Trump’s blood-lust.
Incredibly, 14 years after their sentences were vacated based on DNA evidence and the detailed and accurate confession of a serial rapist named Matias Reyes, Mr. Trump has doubled down.
“They admitted they were guilty,” he said in a statement to CNN this month. “The police doing the original investigation say they were guilty. The fact that that case was settled with so much evidence against them is outrageous.”
Trump was still willing to kill these men even though it was clear they hadn’t committed the crime, because as teenagers some of them had been battered or badgered into confessions that were full of contradictory statements.
The death penalty is a bad idea in all cases. Not just because there are situations where it could be applied to someone who is later shown to be innocent, as in the case of the Central Park Five, but because it’s simply immoral on its face.
Especially when it's being doled out to satisfy the racist hatred of someone like Trump.
Mr. Trump has also suggested that the teenagers were guilty of something that night because, as he wrote in an editorial for The New York Daily News in 2014, “these young men do not exactly have the pasts of angels.”
None of the Central Park Five had ever been arrested before, so Mr. Trump’s reference to their pasts has no basis in truth. The five were in the park that night, but they maintain that they did not participate in other attacks, and there is no evidence that they did.