“Make your way to death row and speak with the tragic victims of criminality. As they prepare to make their pathetic walk to the electric chair, their hopeless cry is that society will not forgive. Capital punishment is society’s final assertion that it will not forgive.” Martin Luther King, Jr.

As we pause during Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday to reflect upon the challenges of our time, we look for inspiration among our heroes. We see severe economic crisis, educational lethargy, social division, discord and extremes and we are forced to question why we have seemingly lost our way.

We are so much more than what we’ve become.

Titans of political discourse and civic dialogue in America: King, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Robert Kennedy, Franklin Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, Mark Hatfield and others all would, I believe, approve of representatives within a representative democracy bringing forth issues of the day for public discussion and not to self-censure ourselves for want of comfort.

No one in public office in our state seeks to contribute to the distraction from work to resolve our severe economic challenges, but I am also not comfortable with retreating into silence about the great moral issues of our time that I believe warrant a healthy, open and embracing civic debate.

It is, therefore, valuable to attempt not to righteously criticize but to elevate, to lift up our state’s level of discourse, to attempt to show the people that representative democracy can indeed give voice to real issues for reasons of conscience and not convenience.

With the support of many colleagues, I introduced a bill today, House Bill 2468, that is extremely unlikely to pass this year, unlikely to secure the support even to hold a hearing, but one that must be given voice because the arc of history bends toward justice.

One of my heros is Holocaust survivor, human rights activist and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel who spoke about his belief that such criminals must be harshly punished but not executed. I believe life in prison without the possibility or prospect of parol is such harsh punishment.

I seek to eliminate the death penalty in Washington State because it is beneath us as a civilized society. It is economically inefficient. It is unjust to the victims’ families because of the frustration of years of delay in allowing a form of closure. It is inequitably applied across race, class and social status. It does not achieve deterrence for other criminals.

Some of my blog posts about my views are here, here and here, here.

Recently a prisoner from Georgia shockingly murdered a constituent of mine. Our community mourns. I have lost much sleep thinking about her young daughter, now alone in the world. I cannot imagine the pain of such sorrow, the exhausting assault upon the human spirit. I am angry about our state’s policies in such regard in that we clearly allow too many out-of-state recently released prisoners to move to our state with little policy structure or guidance. And yet so much more could be accomplished in our criminal justice system if we could resolve to prioritize policies and programs that work rather than those with dismal records of performance. We can do so much better on all fronts in this regard.

As a husband, father and citizen legislator my conscience and religious conviction compels me to reflect upon the journey of victims of crime in direct ways, to attempt to elevate our state’s dialogue about both the death penalty and those policies we pretend work within our criminal justice system. And to take a step forward.

Your partner in service,

Reuven.