Word: daltonic
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There was nothing abstract about Roemer's words. The human life in his hands was that of Dalton Prejean, 30, a semiretarded killer scheduled to die in the electric chair shortly after midnight on Friday morning. Prejean was just 17 when he murdered a state trooper in 1977. His execution would be the first under a 1989 Supreme Court ruling permitting states to impose capital punishment for acts committed by 16- and 17-year-olds...
Prejean's guilt was never in dispute. Early on the morning of July 2, 1977, Louisiana state trooper Donald Cleveland stopped Prejean and his brother Joseph on a routine traffic violation. As Cleveland began to frisk the argumentative Joseph, Dalton crept behind the car, pulled out a pistol and fired two shots into the trooper's head. Prejean had also killed a taxi driver during an aborted robbery when he was 14. "I'm not bloodthirsty," insisted the officer's widow Candy Cleveland the morning before the execution. "But what kind of person am I supposed to be? I have...
...board of pardons to recommend commuting Prejean's sentence to life imprisonment without parole. And although there were two other executions last week, in Missouri and Texas, it was Prejean's case that inspired protests from Amnesty International and the European Parliament. As Prejean's attorney John Hall argued, "Dalton's lack of control over his behavior is so obvious that it is hardly ennobling to the people of Louisiana what will happen tonight. I'd feel differently if it were Charlie Manson or Ted Bundy. There are truly evil people out there. But Dalton is not that kind...
...phone just after Roemer said goodbye to Prejean. "Roemer did say that he would not be able to sleep at all tonight," the attorney recounted. "But before I could react to what he said, the Governor quickly added, 'Of course, the person having a terrible time tonight was Dalton...
...aloud a favorite passage from novelist John Fowles' book The Aristos: "In the whole, nothing is unjust. It may, to this or that individual, be unfortunate." So, in a sense, is capital punishment for both the condemned man and the Governor, who waited for word from Angola Prison that Dalton Prejean had died...