Crazy Liberals, I swear

[Charles]

Originally Posted by merrylander

Crazy people, political persuasion is irrelevant after all it was a Republican governor in Massachusetts who passed the law that turned Willie Horton lose, even though they tried to pin it on Ducaucus.

Democratic Presidential candidate Michael Dukakis was the governor of Massachusetts at the time of Horton's release, and while he did not start the furlough program, he had supported it as a method of criminal rehabilitation. The State inmate furlough program was actually signed into law by Republican Governor Francis W. Sargent in 1972. However, under Sargent, convicted first-degree murderers were not eligible for furlough. After the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that this right extended to first-degree murderers, the Massachusetts legislature quickly passed a bill prohibiting furloughs for such inmates. However, in 1976, Dukakis vetoed this bill.[2] The program remained in effect through the intervening term of governor Edward J. King and was abolished during Dukakis' final term of office on April 28, 1988. This abolition only occurred after the Lawrence Eagle Tribune had run 175 stories about the furlough program and won a Pulitzer Prize.[5] Dukakis continued to argue that the program was 99 percent effective; yet, as the Lawrence Eagle Tribune pointed out, no state outside of Massachusetts, nor any federal program, would grant a furlough to a prisoner serving life without parole.


They didn't try to pin it on Dukakis, they DID pin it on Dukakis, and not without some merit.

Besides, Dukakis should have never "put on the hat". That was the stake through his heart, and a self inflicted wound at that.

Chas