Jon Kyl: “Opponents of the death penalty rarely want to talk about the crimes of those sentenced to death. One commentator has…”

“Opponents of the death penalty rarely want to talk about the crimes of those sentenced to death. One commentator has observed that this is ``a bit like playing Hamlet without the ghost, reviewing the merits of capital punishment without revealing just what a capital crime is really like and how the victims have been brutalized.'' In the week ahead, the public will be riveted with news of Robert Comer: his life, his struggles and his legal battles borne by others to the very end. But what of his victims? Let us hope, in the end, the law will speak for them. And let us hope that those who excuse or minimize his crimes will listen, if only for even a brief moment or so, to what Judge Alex Kozinsky has rightly called ``the tortured voices of the victims crying out for justice.'' It is in those voices that we understand the morality of the death penalty, even when they are raised in opposition, as they sometimes, albeit rarely, are. There are 112 murderers on Arizona's death row. Robert Comer is one of them, having been sentenced to death almost 20 years ago, April 11, 1988.”