Nation: A Question of Value

Among the recommendations made by the Warren Commission after its investigation of President Kennedy's assassination was that Congress should pass a law making it a federal—as opposed to a state or local—crime to kill, kidnap or assault a President, Vice President, President-elect or Vice President-elect. Last week the House of Representatives passed a bill that would do just that, and more. In the case of assassination, the House measure would impose the death penalty.

Debate was scant, since there was virtually unanimous agreement as to the wisdom of having federal jurisdiction over crimes against the President. Minnesota Republican Clark MacGregor reminded the House that FBI Chief J. Edgar Hoover told the Warren Commission that if Assassin Lee Harvey Oswald had been held by the FBI instead of the Dallas cops, "I do not believe he would have been killed by Ruby."

What debate there was centered on the bill's capital-punishment proviso. Noting that he would vote against the bill, California Democrat Phillip Burton explained that while he supported the purpose of the law, "my conscience requires that I oppose the imposition of the death penalty even in this most serious of crimes." Against that, North Carolina Democrat Basil Whitener said: "If any of us believe in the death penalty, we certainly should believe in it with reference to a premeditated murder committed on a President of the United States."

Whitener certainly represented the vast majority, yet under the standards of a democracy, which hold that all men are equal, his argument was open to question. As Catholic Theologian the Rev. John Courtney Murray has said: "Human life has a basic sacredness whether a person holds high office or whether he is among the humblest." Only recently, New York's Republican Governor Nelson Rockefeller, reluctantly signing a bill abolishing the death penalty in New York except in the case of cop killers and life prisoners who kill guards or other inmates, asked pointedly: "If the proponents admit that the death penalty is a deterrent in some cases, then why not in others?" But the House was in no mood for such objections, and when the vote finally came, only Burton and his fellow California Democrat Ronald Cameron were against the bill.