Death-penalty debates: Governor trying to balance respect for life with politics, law and public safety.

By Kevin Woster, Journal Staff Writer | Sunday, March 05, 2006

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Gov. Mike Rounds is a pro-life Catholic who might soon have to decide whether to allow the state to kill death-row inmate Elijah Page.

That decision, and the public discussion certain to surround it, could have life-and-death consequences for three other men sitting on South Dakota’s death row.

It could more clearly define Round’s political persona on moral issues as he seeks another term as governor and considers a possible run for the U.S. Senate in the future.

And it could spark a larger public debate on the wisdom and morality of the death penalty, which maintains general public acceptance in South Dakota even though it hasn’t been used here since 1947.

If that imperfect storm of politics, morality and the law rumbles across Rounds’ political horizon, Page will be at the eye of the gale. A 25-year-old from Athens, Texas, Page suffered a horribly abusive childhood and grew into a fractured young man with the proven capacity to torture and kill — and now, perhaps, to shape history.

Page pleaded guilty to the March 2000 murder of 19-year-old Chester Allen Poage in a creek bed near Spearfish and now seeks an end to both his legal appeals and his own isolated life in prison. As the courts deal with Page’s well-publicized death wish, Rounds ponders the possibility that he could be asked by anti-death-penalty activists — including some Catholic clergy — to block the execution.

Already, a defense lawyer for death-row inmate Briley Piper of Anchorage, Alaska — another confessed killer in the Poage case — is calling upon Rounds to show that his pro-life beliefs mean more than opposing abortion. Rapid City lawyer Patrick Duffy, who serves as a parish council president at a local Catholic church, wants Rounds to commute the death sentence.

“Gov. Rounds doesn’t have to wait for the legal system to do anything,” Duffy said

Saturday. “He could wake up Monday morning and decide he is not the kind of governor who’s going to kill a pair of 20-year-olds. He could commute their sentences Monday morning, if he wanted to.”

It isn’t clear whether Rounds would want to, even though his Catholic teachings could push him in that direction. It would be a landmark executive decision likely to enrage the family and friends of Poage and other victims of the death-row killers.

It would be a risky political move as well, something quite out of character for a cautious Republican governor who has studied the Catholic directives on the death penalty and found room for state executions.

“I think the church’s formal position on the death sentence is that we should do everything we can to eliminate the need for the death sentence, and we should preserve life whenever possible,” Rounds said during a telephone interview Friday. “I do not believe there is anything that says the death sentence is not acceptable today.”

As a state senator, Rounds voted for a bill to prohibit the execution of mentally impaired killers. And as governor in 2004, he signed legislation into law eliminating the death penalty for killers who were 16 or 17 years old at the time of their crimes.

In 2003, Rounds said clearly that he favored limited use of the death penalty: “Until such time as society can ensure that these people, who have proven their capabilities to kill and maim and rape others, won’t try to kill guards, hospital staff, other inmates and so forth, I will continue to support the death penalty.”

Rounds said Friday that South Dakota might some day reach a point where the death penalty isn’t needed. “But today, I doubt that’s the case,” he said.

Although generally in line with language in the Catholic catechism, which allows executions if they are the “only possible way of effectively defending human lives,” Round varies from key words of guidance from Pope John Paul II. John Paul said that cases in the modern world where state-sanctioned executions were absolutely necessary are “very rare, if not practically nonexistent.”

That message drives the U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops in a more aggressive move against the death penalty. It began last year and will focus church opposition to capital punishment during this season of Lent, which leads to traditional Good Friday observances of the execution of Jesus Christ.

Bishop Blase Cupich of the Catholic Diocese of Rapid City said Friday that any discussion of the death penalty must begin with the overriding need to protect citizens from violent offenders.

“If, in fact, there is an individual who is a violent offender and is a threat to the population, it would be possible to protect society by putting that individual to death,” Cupich said. “Now, this is where an enormous ‘however’ comes in. The ‘however’ that John Paul II brought to the discussion is that in modern society today, states have the ability to protect their citizens without putting an individual to death.”

Cupich said he has not been convinced that there is a need to execute death-row inmates in order to protect society, including the prison staff.

“I need to see some hard evidence that there is a need to take the life of people on death row. I haven’t seen it yet,” he said. “We are the only developed country in the world who has the death penalty.”

Duffy said his visits to Piper at the South Dakota penitentiary leave little doubt that the state and even prison staff is safe. Piper lives isolated in a cell with a sealed-glass door, and gets out for only 30 minutes of supervised exercise daily. He moves in a slow shuffle wearing connected ankle-and-wrist chains, surrounded by three guards.

“It’s hard for me to imagine how a man in those circumstances could possibly hurt anybody,” Duffy said.

Piper and Page both pleaded guilty in Poage’s death. A third person charged in the killing, Darrell Hoadley, went to trial and was convicted by a jury and sentenced to life in prison. Duffy said that disparity in sentencing was intrinsically unjust.

“Hoadley denies responsibility, and the jury spares his life,” Duffy said. “Page and Piper accepted responsibility, begged for forgiveness, and they are now on death row. And there’s no difference between the three.”

In Duffy’s view, the death penalty survives in South Dakota on political expediency and a mentality of retribution, rather than the need to protect the public from imprisoned killers.

“I think in this state, when push comes to shove, the politics of releasing someone from death row are too risky for a governor like Mike Rounds,” Duffy said. “In short, it makes political sense for the establishment to kill these boys.”

But the former Republican leader of the South Dakota House of Representatives argues that the death penalty is about more than politics or revenge. Bill Peterson, an insurance-company executive in Sioux Falls, said Saturday that in extreme cases, the death penalty fits the crime.

Based on what he has heard about the torture and killing of Poage, Peterson believes death is an appropriate punishment for Page and Piper.

“I think there are some crimes so horrible and so beyond what a civilized society can accept that the only proper response is to give the ultimate penalty, and that is the death penalty,” Peterson said. “I don’t believe it should be used broadly or frequently, but I believe some crimes are so heinous that the only response from the standpoint of justice is to take the life of the perpetrator.”

Peterson has personal history on the subject. His cousin, Mary Jeanette Stensland, was shot and killed during a bank robbery in Fairview in southeast South Dakota in 1989. Stensland was a farm wife who happened to stop at the bank to deposit money into a church account when the robbery occurred. She was shot by robber James Smith.

“It was a split-second thing, the luck of the draw. Mary Jeannette just walked in, looked at them and smiled, and he shot her,” Peterson said. “It is a horrible thing when you lose a family member.”

Smith was sentenced to life in prison and an accomplice got 30 years. Peterson hoped Smith would get the death sentence but accepted the judicial system’s ruling.

“There is a difference between justice and retribution. If I’d had my way, there would have been retribution,” Peterson said. “The system is about assuring there is justice under our laws. The system worked in this case. As the cousin of the victim, I didn’t like the outcome. But I have to respect it.”

Rounds said he must also respect the system, which currently allows for the death penalty in the most extreme of crimes. But the governor also knows that opponents of that philosophy, including a growing voice in his own church, are calling for change.

Some of them might call on him sooner rather than later. Without indicating how he will respond, Rounds said he is ready to face the issue if and when it comes.

“We know that one of the job responsibilities or duties in the office of the governor is responding to requests for pardons at multiple levels and the requests for pardons and dispensation and commutations in death sentences,” he said. “Today is not the time in which we should lay out specifics for a particular case. They still have a long way to go in judicial review.”