I am grateful for the many good things that happened during the Clinton presidency, particularly in comparison to what we’ve had the last seven years. But one thing that has always stuck in my craw was his active participation in the execution of Ricky Ray Rector just before the 1992 New Hampshire primary.

I thought I might bring it up to President Clinton some day if I ever was fortunate enough to meet him. But since he’s in town today, and since I may well never meet the man, I thought I'd share my concerns here and see what Blue Oregon readers think. Maybe I'm wrong. And who knows, maybe President Clinton or his people will come across Blue Oregon while he’s in town.

Ricky Ray Rector was executed just before the New Hampshire primary in 1992 for the brutal murders of Arthur Criswell and Officer Robert Martin. Rector had known Officer Martin since he was a child.

Stephen Bright of the Southern Center for Human Rights saw the Clinton-Rector execution as part of the modern exploitation of the crime problem that went back to Eisenhower, but which was perfected in campaigns of Presidents Nixon and George Bush I.

In the St. Louis University Law Journal, Bright wrote:

Not nearly as noticed (as the Bush Willie Horton ads of 1988), but just as significant and perhaps saddest of all, was when then-Governor Clinton went back to Arkansas to preside over the execution of a brain-damaged man, Ricky Ray Rector, an African-American who was sentenced to death by an all-white jury for the murder of a white policeman… After shooting the policeman, Rector, who always had mental problems, put the gun to his own head and shot himself, destroying the front part of his brain. Clinton scheduled the execution for a short time before the New Hampshire Primary. Clinton went back to Arkansas to make a spectacle out of Ricky Rector's execution and get as much political mileage out of it as possible. The logs at the prison show that in Ricky Rector's last days, he was howling and barking like a dog, dancing, singing and laughing inappropriately, and saying that he was going to vote for Clinton.

Charles Taylor at Salon noted, “The execution went horribly wrong, with Rector's arm finally being slashed to insert a catheter when a vein for the lethal injection could not be found. (Rector was clearly unable to comprehend what was happening -- thinking that his executioners were doctors coming to his aid, he attempted to assist them.)"

Bright continues:

Rector had a habit every night of putting his dessert aside until bedtime. After Ricky Rector was executed, they found in his cell that he had put his pie aside that night. Not having enough appreciation for what death meant, he did not realize he was not going to come back to eat his pie that evening. Even the Arkansas Supreme Court said that Rector’s was a case that should be considered for executive clemency, but there was a more important agenda. The Democrats were taking back the crime issue. Bill Clinton in the midst of the controversy regarding Gennifer Flowers, was showing that he was tough and that not only did he believe in the death penalty, but he actually carried it out.

Many Democrats argue that we need to seize the crime issue and be tough on crime. Amnesty International has suggested that the death penalty is a human rights abuse. And if the Rector execution is what tough on crime looks like, I’ll settle for a more basic respect for human rights. And as public policy, I’ll take true life with no chance of parole over the death penalty any day.

But what do you think?

Oh, and welcome back to Oregon President Clinton. I truly miss most of your presidency.