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Monday, February 5.1973
University Daily Kansan
KANSAN comment
Editorials, columns and letters published on this page reflect only the opinions of the writers.
Kansas Death Penalty
The nation's electric chairs, gallows and gas chambers, rendered obsolete by the Supreme Court's abolition of the death penalty June 29, may return to use in some states. Kansas is one of them.
Chief Justice Warren Burger, in his dissenting opinion on the abolition, provided a means for state legislatures to reinstate the death penalty by altering laws to conform to the Supreme Court ruling. He wrote that either states could specify those crimes for which the death penalty could be used under certain circumstances, or the states could enumerate very serious crimes that would violate a man's own sentence. Two bills currently proposed in the Kansas Senate represent Burger's two suggestions for making these amendments.
Senate Bill 82 seems to represent little change from Kansas' former statute providing for capital punishment. As in the former Kansas criminal code, the bill specifies crimes such as first-degree murder and first-degree punishable by death. There is, in the past, no mandatory death penalty. However, the alternative, life imprisonment, carries with it a mandatory prison term of 25 years before the prisoner becomes eligible for parole. The decision to impose the death penalty shall be determined in a separate sentencing proceeding before the court deems evidence may be presented on any matter the court deems relevant to sentencing.
One of the major objections to capital punishment made by the Supreme Court justices last summer was its arbitrary application. Justice Potter Stewart wrote, "There are other reasons and unusual in the same way that being struck by lightning is cruel and unusual."
Justice Thurgood Marshall wrote that capital punishment fell most frequently on blacks, "the poor, the slave," and privileged imprisoned members of society."
It seems that this bill would not do away with the arbitrary factor in imposing the death penalty. Although the death penalty would be determined in a special proceeding, it still would depend on the deliberations of the jury or judge, and therefore, its imposition could once again be inconsistent and unfair.
Senate Bill 88 follows Burger's second recommendation, by authorizing serious by the regulators as punishable by a mandatory death
sentence. Murder of a law enforcement officer, corrections employee, fireman, public official or a witness to prevent him from testifying is subject to the mandatory death sentence.
Death is also mandatory for murder committed in the perpetration of rape, kidnapping, aircraft piracy, aggravated burglary, aggravated robbery, aggravated battery or aggravated arson. First-degree murder alone, however, the killing of a human being "committed maliciously, willfully, intentionally, or deliberately and with premeditation," would no longer be punishable by death.
Although death sentences would be less arbitrarily imposed under this bill, the mandatory sentence is still inconsistent with another major argument for the abolition of capital punishment.
In last summer's ruling several of the Supreme Court justices said capital punishment constituted "cruel and unusual punishment." Justice William O. Douglas wrote that executions in modern-day America necessarily violated the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. William J. Brennan called capital punishment "the most serious crime" and degrading," and reasoned that it might be no better than prison as a deterrent to crime. Even dissenting Justice Harry A. Blackmun said he had a personal abhorrence of capital punishment, but felt that it was the states' responsibility to abolish it.
Some Kansas legislators now want to reverse this monumental Supreme Court decision. So far, studies to measure the effectiveness of capital punishment as a deterrent to crime have proved inconclusive. Beyond effectiveness another question exists. What judge or jury really has the right to decree life and death?
Perhaps Justice Marshall best summarized the merits of abolishing capital punishment when he wrote, "In striking down capital punishment, this court does not malign our system of government; on the contrary, it pays homage to it. Only in difficult times, in difficult times, and could civilization record its magnificent advancement."
The United States could have been the 38th country in the world to record such a "magnificent advancement." The effort by certain states to hold off a prolonged days of the death penalty is a backward step in the progress of a nation.
—Barbara Spurlock
Nicholas von Hoffman
WASHINGTON—With the gracelees and grudging American withdrawal from the war, will the Jane Fonda-Tom Hayden marriage last? The women unless she can teach him to act.
Truce to Weaken the Movement
will be in the straitened circumstances of an old revolutionary after the revolution has been won. Such people usually are looked upon with no more favor by the new revolutionary government than by the old one which they had
If he isn't now, Hayden soon
helped pull down.
Joseph Stalin had somebody put an ax through Leon Trotsky's skull. Fidel Castro probably would have shot Che Guevara if he had gone at him. Even the great ideologue and master propagandist of the
Subdued Homecoming Awaits American Prisoners of War
Editor's note: Max Desfajon,
Associated Press Asian photo
editor, was at Pamunjimun,
Korea, when U.S. prisoners of
war taken in that conflict were
caused in this article Derek Reefor,
author of the book *Ambitious* and
compares it to preparations
for the return of Vietnam POWS.
Bv MAX DESFOR
CLARK AIR BASE, Philippines (AP)—The most memorable part of that spring day almost 20 years ago was how the POWs just jumped out of the trucks, most shouting and cheering, happy as larks to be safe again.
In the clear, mild morning of April 20, 1953, the first truckloads of American POWs were brought to the North Korean side of the city. In another shift then shifted to U.S. Army trucks for the short ride to "Freedom
A similar name, "Operation homecoming," has been given to the organization now waiting at Dark Air Base to greet 535 returning American POWs from the nation's second Asian war in Vietnam. But the reception will be comparatively low key.
City," the name given the collection of tents that housed the OW processing center.
In Korea, there were nearly 3,500 returning American prisoners.
Some had been held as long as $2 \frac{1}{2}$ years. In Vietnam, many have been held longer. The one held longest is Lt. Cmdr. Lendr. Alvarez Jr., who was shot down and captured in the first U.S. air attack against North Vietnam in 1964.
Some looked elated, others tired and unkempt, as they
Two former Viet Cong in a group of 200 released here
CAN THO, Vietnam (AP)—Eight years a prisoner, Dang Van Hai is now free to go home. Fear keeps him locked up. He is afraid to commit snares from the Viet Comité Commandos was once a Viet Cong guerrilla.
Hai was brought here during the week from Phu Quoc Island Prison for release, along with more than 2,000 other former Viet Cong. By Thursday most had left Hai. Holo compound for home.
According to Hai and others still at the compound, scores of former Viet Cong released in the last few days plan to rejoin their province as they return to their provinces, and barass those who do not.
Hai is among 50 men here who are eligible for immediate release, but who are loath to leave the compound.
jumped from the trucks of truckson
Pannumjom. Most wore baggy
fatigue with the letters "PPW"
painted on back. A few had
donned Chinese-style blue
packed jacks.
Viet Cong Fear Release
There were also the litter cases, the men who had been wounded when they were captured.
The POWs were released in great masses, hundreds at a time, and there was much confusion as guards lined them up and started them toward the processing tents.
It was like anything else in the Army, such as lining up for chow. There was none of the almost mathematical precision with which "Operation Homecoming" is to be run, and there were a great many more opportunities there to see returning POWs soon after they were released in Korea.
★ ★ ★
"I don't know what to do," he says. "I want to go home, but I'm afraid. I'm afraid to leave here."
"Here" is a compound of the government's Hoci Hol or Open Army program, aimed for years to men over from the enemy.
Hai, 31, hard-core Viet Cong planned reprisals against all who allowed themselves to be won over to the government side. lie said punishment squads of from 100 to 150 men have been formed under ex-Viet Cong officers and lower-level leaders.
Wednesday were beaten, clubbed and stoned by a group of prison mates as they waited for tran- sitioners. The men are being treated at a hospital.
American Revolution didn't do so well after the cause was won: Tom Paine died poor and largely unillustrated, but he'd done so much to liberate it.
The press, of course, was not allowed to see Korean POWs who were seriously ill, but photographers and reporters were allowed, as a matter of course, to see consenting prisoners. The prisoner permitted it, both in Korea and at hospitals in Japan.
Hayden's prospects are bleaker in their own way. The Movement that he and his companions have a successful ceaseture. It will go down in history as having achieved some important success, but also as having looked more revolutionary, more literal in the sense of high protest when there were hundreds, even thousands of red flags of Bolshevism trooping around the White House, it did not mean they were leading a huge army of half-naked, piratical Communists.
Paine's problems were aggravated by his anti-Christian, anti-organized religion blast. Richard Nixon and Billy Graham would have hated this particular issue because that, many revolutionaries can't adjust to calmer, less turbulent times. They're born trouble-makers who even have been known, when finished with one revolution, to go off and try another. That that's how Guerra vets are held a part in the French Revolution, it was over Napoleon would have none of him. He fled back to America and a stingy death.
Now, by contrast, military officials at Clark have said reporters will not be allowed to see most POWs while they are in the Pacific area. They have said respondents should request to interview POWs, and that some limited interviews might be granted.
In fact most of them simply were very angry, but very garden-variety, liberalers. They will revert now that they haven't already. There's no call to be so noisy or to apply the tactics of the taxicabs. But Abbie Hoffman isn't funny any more; not even he thinks he is.
The New Left, then, is about to go up the flue. With its vanishing, the radical leaders of peace, who have long reservoir of much good-will and gratitude for what they've done, but no rank-and-file constituency, no significant organization, no people engaged in activity any more.
The men and women who led hundreds of thousands of people in the streets so short a time ago
might not have been so quickly reduced to being single, private citizens had been able to build some kind of radical party. There were a number of attempts, but they never took, so the Movement was never able to resist the hedge against its almost instantaneous evaporation when the enthusiasm went dry.
Something more permanent in the way of a political organization might have been erected had it been possible to piece together even a rudimentary, radical political creed. In the anarchy of the era when the government had have been, but then the conduct of the Right and the Center hasn't made it any easier for people to carve out a stable political allegiance for themselves.
Do you recall Sen. George McGovern campaigning about getting the troops home within 90 days of his inauguration, and seeming to favor abortion when he was running, Nixon goes ahead and presumably will get them home in less than 90 days, and the Supreme Court he created legalizes abortion. The times have conspired to prevent the women from themselves itself toward new purposes, as if once switched from concentration on civil rights.
For the Movement leaders, the air has a sour breath. The music has gone bad on out so that the hottest number out is Bette Midler singing old songs to aging men. She's the spirit of the moment then you can understand how Nixon gets away with playing a Sears, Rebeck imitation of the most Christian Charles de Gaulle: the repeated television vignette of the grand, silent, lonely man of religion. He prays while being praised by relays of dergium who all look as energetically sincere as the anchor men on TV news shows.
This is the time for Tom Hayden to take acting lessons.
(C)
Washington Post-King Features Syndicate
Readers Respond
Not 'Fluffy'
To the Editor:
'1776' Review, Tickets on Trial
When "177" was a Broadway production, it won both the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award and the Tony Award as best musical of the 1988-69 season. Now, with the exception of a few deleted lines, it has been transferred to the screen, and is greeted with acclimation by the movie crits of the Kansan, right?
Well, wrong. The gentleman
thinks it's "fuffy". Presumably, he is ignoring as irrelevant the bittersweet of John Adams, revealed in his letters to his wife; the information that Benjamin Franklin established the first antislavery society on our continent; the Delaware delegate's all-night ride to Philadelphia, for independence, though he had been an active supporter dying of skin cancer; the Georgia delegate's struggle with himself before he could decide what "representing the people" truly meant; and Thomas Jefferson's resolution to free his slaves.
The committee was set up four years ago under crusading Rep. Claude Phelpe, D-Flat, to expose
Interests Blitz Crime Committee
WASHINGTON—The House Crime Committee is about to become the victim of its own creation, and should verge on it from all directions.
Valerie J. Meyers
So aroused are the pharmacological firms that they have to deal with the queries about Pepper's proposal. Calls even have come from stockbrokers worried about what happens to their drug investments.
precipitated the greatest revolution in the history of government.
Worst of all, Pepper stepped on
Jack Anderson
to build up his jurisdiction, even if it means gobbling up the committee of his old friend, Claude Pepper.
Overland Park Freshman
At present, Pepper's opponents plan to bury the committee's funds and authority in the Rules Committee without bringing the issue to a floor vote. A floor vote would put the law-and-order minded Republicans and their unfortunate friends at the uncomfortable position of attaching the Mafia and the drug interests by openly killing the only House committee now dealing exclusively with crime.
Coast Guard Caper The Coast Guard is charged under the new water pollution
interstate crime and drug abuse. For two years, it plugged along ineffectively.
The White House also is unhappy with the Peppar unit. if the committee gets a new lease on life, the Administration is bound to get a goering over for its failure to curtail street crime. The police insiders have badmouthed the committee for years.
Pepper then installed a vigorous new staff. Seldom has a congressional committee produced such useful testimony and challenging reports in any two-year period.
He horrified the TV industry be demanding that the pill and tonic acids, which bring in billions of dollars, be totally banned between 8 a.m. and 9 p.m. to keep from becoming pill addicts.
With such a record against un- special interests, a counterattack was inevitable. About three weeks ago, minority leader Gerald Ford N.Mich. entered of office in a town where Oklaho, strongly urged him to kill the crime committee. Albert listened but made no commitment.
he toes of powerful congressmen who felt he had intruded into their urisioned
Tickets
Pepper infuired Dun & Bradstreet and the dignified accounting firm of Peat, Marwick, Mitchell & Co., by showing unwilling, were used in a mobile phony securities scheme.
The committee exposed mob infiltration of sports, tying Frank Sinatra to a syndicate-run race. The jury of the grumbling, growling Mafia bosses Raymond Patricaire and Carneiro into the public spotlight.
Yet the Coast Guard has abolished an Industry Advisory Committee on Oil Pollution Inhabitat and environmental activistats. Adm. William "Mike" Benkert, in charge of marine environment for the Coast Guard, wanted to add environmentalists to the committee so that they could be by the oil industry which had dominated the committee.
laws with clearing our navigable waters of oil spills and sewage from ships. Its effectiveness may determine whether Americans will be able to swim at public beaches which have become increasingly contaminated by shipboard discharges.
Some of the reforms being considered are worthwhile. A fixed fee for tickets is superior to a fee for entry contrary to official belief, parking backwards and misplaced stickers don't threaten the community as much asading. The fees should reflect this.
Finally, any campus officer will tell you that some tickets blow away in bad weather. Because of this, you may receive two tickets for something you could have corrected had you not been wearing them or your right to appeal because you won't discover the violation until long after the two week grape period. The only way to protect yourself is to drop by the Traffic and Security office every week to find out what tickets you didn't get. I suggest officers either tape himself/hide or notify the student within two weeks about them.
Benkert acknowledged that his proposal to include environmentalists on the committee had met with objections. But he acknowledged the Coast Guard's statement that the committee duplicated the work of two committees to the Marine Safety Council. Benkert also said that the Coast Guard was taking strong measures to prevent oil and sewage pollution.
Adm. Chester R. Bender, the coast Guard commandant, solved the problem by petitioning Secretary of Transportation John Vope to eliminate the committee altogether.
Copyright, 1973 by United Feature Syndicate, Inc.
The stated purpose of University Traffic and Security is to protect the campus and to keep traffic orderly. Apparently, this hides their real motive of making cars come from parking violations.
Stories of Traffic and Security are beginning to sound like "The Trial." Too many reforms function only to save the ad-time time and money rather than give the student a break.
Moreover, requiring one to pay his fine before being allowed to appeal is ridiculous and unfair. To discourage those criminals who only want to delay paying tickets, Traffic and Security is willing to shaft students with which you have an issue. I appeal You may get your money back, but what if you don't have $10 or $15 to shell out you can appeal? Legitimate cases will be thrown out because one doesn't have the money to pay a ticket he doesn't deserve.
To the Editor:
"There's no spirit of freedom, just the trappings," the critic wrote. "It is a quiet despair at the wreckage, Congress was making of the Declaration, or John Adams' defiantly blaming song, 'Is it wrong to kill?"
"A cataclysmic earthquake I'd accept, with some despair. But no, You've sent us Congress; God God, Sir, was that fair?" He said of the line that rings with unmistakable echoes today. Perhaps while he was pleading, he should have asked the same thing about movie critics who are unable to believe that our heroes were real creatures, but they sometimes laughed at them oblivious and sometimes obnoxious and sometimes impossible to move—and, incidentally—they
Roger Hughes Topeka Junior
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