"As a policy matter, I do not agree (with Pope Francis’s opposition to the death penalty). I spent a number of years in law enforcement dealing with some of the worst criminals, child rapists and murderers, people who've committed unspeakable acts. I believe the death penalty is recognition of the preciousness of human life, that for the most egregious crimes, the ultimate punishment should apply."Ted Cruz AKA Rafael Edward "Ted" Cruz (born December 22, 1970) is an American politician and attorney, who has served as the junior United States Senator from Texas since 2013. He was a candidate for the Republican nomination for President of the United States in the 2016 election.
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Official portrait of
U.S. Senator Ted
Cruz (R-TX).
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INTERNET SOURCE: http://theslot.jezebel.com/as-an-attorney-death-penalty-enthusiast-ted-cruz-reall-1754039789
As an Attorney, Death
Penalty Enthusiast Ted Cruz Really Loved Describing Brutal Crimes
Texas
Senator and presidential candidate Ted Cruz has never exactly hidden his
passion for the death penalty—it’s a love that speaks its name over and over
whenever he talks in public. As the New
York Times lays out today, his passion took a somewhat more
unseemly form when he was a Supreme Court Clerk, where he seemed to take
unusual relish in laying out the details of violent crimes.
Cruz
has always been pro-death penalty and a staunch advocate for keeping the system
churning along just as it currently kills people (except, as Mother Jones
pointed out, in 2010, when as a private practice attorney, he represented a wrongfully convicted man who spent 14 years
on death row). He may have gotten some of that from his father; Rafael Cruz
has argued from the pulpit that God himself is pro-death penalty.
That
enthusiasm made itself evident when he was clerking for Supreme Court Justice
William H. Rehnquist in 1996, the Times
writes, and became known for his colorful briefs on death penalty
appeals, which “often dwelled on the lurid details of murders that other
clerks tended to summarize in order to quickly move to the legal merits of the
case.”
That’s
unusual for a dry, dispassionate SCOTUS brief, and really made old Ted stand
out at the office, a fact he himself was not unaware of. Per the Times:
“I believe in the death penalty,” Mr. Cruz wrote in his book “A Time for Truth.” As he saw it, it was his duty to include all the details and “describe the brutal nature of the crime.”“Liberal clerks would typically omit the facts; it was harder to jump on the moral high horse in defense of a depraved killer,” he wrote.
Cruz’s
love of death began even before that, in fact, during a clerkship at federal
appellate court in Virginia with Judge J. Michael Luttig. Luttig’s father was killed by a 17-year-old would-be carjacker named
Napoleon Beazley in 1994. The horrible incident created a bond between Cruz and
Luttig, who began working for the judge soon after. A very strong and slightly
macabre bond, again, per the Times:
Mr. Cruz became devoted to Mr. Luttig, whom Mr. Cruz has described as “like a father to me.” During his clerkship, he presented his boss with a caricature of him and other clerks pulling a stagecoach driven by the judge. According to someone who saw the illustration, there was a graveyard behind them with headstones representing the number of people executed in their jurisdiction that year.
One
thing we can say about Ted Cruz: the man’s character is consistent.
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A Cruz engraved shotgun
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