HUNTER: Is it time to talk about executing killers who murder cops and kids?
· Toronto Sun
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Benjamin Ritchie caught the night train to Nowheresville at 12:46 a.m. on May 20.
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Ritchie took his seat in the death chamber at the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City with his ticket punched: Lethal injection. Final destination: Oblivion.
He had been a death row habitue since 2002.
Cop was married with two kids
On Sept. 29, 2000, Ritchie, then 20, and on probation, and others stole a van in Beech Grove, Ind., outside Indianapolis. During a foot pursuit, he fired at police officer Bill Toney, killing him.
Toney was married with two children.
“It’s time. We’re all tired,” said Dee Dee Horen, who was Toney’s wife. “It is time for this chapter of my story, our story, to be closed. It’s time for us to remember Bill, to remember Bill’s life, and not his death.”
For Benjamin Ritchie, the consequences of his vile crime were fatal.
In Ontario over the past two weeks, two cops have been murdered and a third nearly bought the farm when he was allegedly run down by a 12-year-old (!) boy behind the wheel of a stolen car.
Open season on cops?
OPP Const. Tarun Bali , 29, was run down and killed while attempting to stop a vehicle near Hearst in northern Ontario on June 9. Justin Veronneau, 18, of Hearst, has been charged with first-degree murder and a litany of other charges.
Two days later, it was Toronto’s turn to mourn when TPS Emergency Task Force (ETF) Const. Marc Pinizzotto, 43, was shot and killed while executing a search warrant connected to national security. He was a married father of two and an 18-year member of the police service.
Cops say Nicholas Bennett, 19, is allegedly the shooter. He is in critical condition in hospital after ETF members returned fire. If he emerges from his coma, detectives say Bennett will be charged with first-degree murder.
And early Monday, tragedy nearly struck again when a 12-year-old boy allegedly slammed a stolen vehicle into an officer in the east end, sending the cop to hospital. Police returned fire and struck the kid, who remains in hospital. The cop was treated and released.
The boy is now charged with attempted murder, theft of a motor vehicle and assaulting an officer.
None of the charges have been proven in court.
Canada abolished the death penalty in 1976 and sent the last two men to the gallows at Toronto’s old Don Jail in December 1962.
Yet support for capital punishment remains stubbornly high with a whopping 57% of Canadians in favour of bringing back the death penalty. No wonder.
Support for death penalty high
The activist Supreme Court of Canada has stripped away sentence stacking and also bolstered the fortunes of rapists, killers and kiddie diddlers in myriad ways. Over the past decade a spike in murder and lawlessness has been fueled by a feckless judiciary and their booster clubs in politics and the faculty lounge.
I’m against the death penalty. No moral qualms about it. No saviour complex.
Instead, I share my friend and colleague Brian Lilley’s view that the government screws up everything, why trust them with the death penalty?
Still, I have no difficulty understanding why the public wants to see cop and child killers swing.
Indianapolis cop Mark Hammer said of Ritchie’s final departure: “I support the death penalty in certain cases and this is one of them.”
On X: @HunterTOSun