Death Penalty Is Preferable to Life Imprisonment
Kane, Gregory Current Controversies: Capital Punishment Mary E. Williams Greenhaven Press 2005
Viewpoint
Frederick Anthony Romano remembers the evening. Greater than 15 years later, he remembers it as if it happened within the last week.
It was Sunday evening, Nov. 1, 1987. Seventeen-year-old Romano had gone to bed. His mother, Betty Romano, was within the property with him and his father, Frederick Joseph Romano. Soon the father received a call from his son-in-law Keith Garvin, a Navy petty officer who had returned to his base in Oceana, [Virginia]. Garvin had known as his wife, Dawn Garvin, to let her know he had arrived back safely. But there was no answer.
Immediately after two calls to his daughter’s home, Frederick J. Romano headed to the newlywed couple’s White Marsh apartment. He found his daughter beaten, tortured, mutilated and dead.
Frederick A. Romano remembers his mother’s panic-filled voice as she talked to his father, of himself grabbing the telephone only to hear his father tell him that his older sister had been hurt.
“But he knew she was dead,” Frederick A. Romano stated…. Yes, Frederick A. Romano-who prefers to be referred to as just “Fred”-remembers it all. He remembers the man who murdered his sister and two other women-Patricia Antoinette Hirt and Lori Elizabeth Ward-and how he has waited for 15 years for a single Steven Howard Oken to, inside the younger Romano’s words, “meet his maker.”
The Pain of Victims’ Relatives
“It’s induced a great deal of emotional troubles for me and my mom and dad,” Fred said. “They’re on so many drugs to help keep themselves calm, it really is unbelievable.”
That is certainly a suffering death penalty opponents can’t or won’t understand. The discomfort of homicide victims’ relatives never ends. It chips away at their souls and psyches year following depressing year. So what is the appropriate punishment for that?
Death penalty opponents would have us believe that squirreling Oken away within a cell-where Frederick A. and Frederick J. Romano, Betty Romano and Keith Garvin could be amongst the taxpayers footing the bill for his housing and meals-is punishment sufficient. When the correctional technique provided any college courses, the Romanos and Garvin would pay part of the cost if Oken wanted to take them. Dawn Garvin by no means got to finish her education at Harford Community College.
Justice but No Closure
Capital punishment foes figure that’s justice. Here’s what death penalty advocates really feel is justice. Execute Oken the week of March 17, [2003], as a Baltimore County judge ordered…. Right after Oken is dead, death penalty advocates can then defy death penalty opponents to show us why and in what techniques Oken’s execution was not justice.
That is what it really is about for Fred Romano. He doesn’t buy in to the closure argument some death penalty advocatesmake. (It is just too. Death penalty opponents, ever noble with grief not their very own, dismiss the notion of closure, also.)
“It will not bring closure,” Fred Romano mentioned. “Dawn will never be back. I’m not trying to find closure. That’s a bad misconception on the a part of some people. I want Oken to die for the murder of Dawn, Patricia Hurt and Lori Ward.”
Not About Revenge
This isn’t even about revenge, yet another rallying cry from the anti-capital punishment crowd, who chide death penalty advocates for searching for vengeance.
“It’s justice,” Fred Romano stated. “It’s not revenge.”
His wife, Vicki Romano, agreed, then elaborated.
“Revenge could be going out and killing among [the murderer's] family members members,” Vicki Romano stated. “The death penalty is not revenge. It really is the law.”
Fred Romano believes the man who’s supposed to uphold that law, Maryland Lawyer General J. Joseph Curran, has inserted himself squarely inside the path of Oken’s execution. [Early in 2003], Curran called for abolishing Maryland’s death penalty….
Fred Romano called Curran immediately after the announcement, to give the attorney common a piece of his mind. Curran, to his credit, named Fred Romano back and heard him out.
Curran, Fred Romano said, asked him if he had an issue having a sentence of life without parole as opposed to the death penalty. His response was what you could expect from a guy who organized the Maryland Coalition for State Executions [in 2002] and who’s had the group’s Web website (www.mc4se.org) up for [several] months.
“My problem with it truly is that ten years from now some other idiot will come along and say life with no parole is as well harsh,” Fred Romano said. “Then they’ll pass a bill granting them parole and after that we’ll possess a bunch of murderers walking the streets.”
In Maryland’s bleeding-heart liberal legislature, that’s precisely what would take place.
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