Blagojevich didn’t have a mentally retarded killer to showcase for his support of the death penalty, as Bill Clinton did, but that didn’t let him stop himself from pandering to the police by issuing an amendatory veto of a provision allowing for a special mechanism to remove badges of officers found to have perjured themselves in a death penalty case.
He vetoed a measure that would bring credible and substantiated cases of police perjury before a Law Enforcement Standards & Training Board. That board would be made up of 17 police officers. If two-thirds of them found an officer had committed perjury, that officer would lose his badge.
If a cop lies so egregiously on the stand that it leads to the wrongful conviction of a defendant and motivates a panel of 17 fellow police officers to opt to kick him off the force, what’s wrong with that?
This provision does not, as Blagojevich attempted to argue Tuesday, "(treat) the police worse than everyone else." It does not carry the same weight as a criminal felony perjury conviction. If you convict a cop of perjury, he can go to jail. If this board finds that cop guilty, he loses his badge. He’s free to go sell insurance, open a lemonade stand or spend his days on a fishing boat in Florida.
It will not, as Blagojevich also asserted, cause the floodgates to open for every felon to file a perjury grievance against police. This would apply only to homicide cases in which an officer is a relevant, significant witness. That alone significantly narrows the qualifying field of cases.
So in 2008 will he turn to his aids and say, kill the retarded inmate?
It is important to note that John Burge is currently retired in Florida enjoying retirement. Some of his victims spent time in prison for crimes they didn’t commit, but were sentenced for and tortured to promote a confession.