Public Opinion from Chambersburg, Pennsylvania • 3

PUBLIC OPINION -t FRIDAY, USE 30, 197 ow Inmates Hail Decision earn v--- A': f' 1 1 1 I T. I 1'- PHILADELPHIA (AP)-A former state attorney general who ordered Pennsylvania's electric chair dismantled hailed the news as "magnificent." The mayor of Philadelphia, a former police commissioner, called it "a mistake." But word that the U.S. Supreme Court, by a closely divided margin, had declared the death penalty unconstitutional, evoked elation, gratitude, and reflection from the 23 inmates of Pennsylvania's death row. "I don't think anyone is justified in taking another life, either an individual or the courts," said Jack Lopinson, imprisoned at the nearby Grat-erford Correctional Institution where 13 of the 23 death row convicts live. Actually, there is no death row, a form of solitary confinement eliminated when Gov.

Milton Shapp took office in January 1971. It was also that January, as the final act of a retiring attorney general who didn't believe in capital punishment, that the electric chair was ordered dismantled. Fred Speaker, who was that attorney general, called the court ruling "wonderful, magnificent news" that "ha's underscored the value of human life." Shapp hailed the decision as "a step forward in the interest of humanity. Lopinson, convicted of hiring a confessed gunman to kill his wife and business partner, has been fighting since 1965 to overturn the verdict. While he was happy over the ruling, he said Thursday he wanted to read it to see if it affected only those three men who had carried the case to the Rizzo said he believed the ruling was "a mistake." But the mayor prefaced his remarks by saying "however, this is the highest court in the land, and most certainly, that's it.

What further conversation is necessary? The law abiding people will uphold the law of the land." Sprague said he was "amazed" at the decision, added that it could harm his work in trying to find the persons who hired the men who killed Joseph A. an insurgent United Mine Workers union official, his wife and daughter. "It hinders our going up the ladder from the perpetrators to the planners," Sprague said "It will be much more difficult to get people to turn state's evidence in this case." Tony Scoleri, three times convicted of killing a Philadelphia storekeeper in 1958 and three times sentenced to die, said the death penalty has never been a deterrent. nation's highest court, or whether wiped out death for some 600 now waiting in U.S. prisons to die.

The most recent person in the state sentenced to die was Marilyn Dobrolenski, of Toledo, Ohio, convicted of killing two Delaware state troopers who chased her and a male friend into Pennsylvania after a Delaware robbery. The companion was killed. She was sentenced to death last week by a three-judge court. 'ELATED' Her lawyer, John Brooks, said he was "elated" and felt the court was right. "In this case, we have a 19-year-old girl who we feel is capable of being rehabilitated." Unfavorable comment came from Philadelphia's Mayor Frank Rizzo, a former police commissioner, and First Assistant Dist.

Atty. Richard A. Sprague, who is the special prosecutor in the Yablonski family murder trials. "You can't stop death with death," he added. "You can't stbp killing.

A' man doesn't think of the penalty when he does it." JUST NUMB' Al Raymond, another Grat-erford inmate who. twice, was scheduled to die and then won reprieves, said "I don't have any emotion now, really. I'm just numb. I can't really believe it." Raymond was convicted of killing a policeman 11 years ago. The last person to die in Pennsylvania was Elmo Smith, five years ago, and Scoleri remembers his last, silent walk to the chair.

"It the most brutal thing I ever saw in my life," Scoleri said. "When the troopers came early in the morning to take him away, everybody else on death row pretends to be asleep, but no one really is. "What can you say to a man who is going to his death? 'I'll see you CONVICTED MURDERERS DISCUSS the Supreme Court decision to outlaw -the DEATH PENALTY" Three Pennsylvania death penalty. The three are imprisoned at convicted murderers, left to right, Jack Graterford Correctional Institute near Phila- Lopinson, Tony Scoleri and Al Raymond, talk delphia and are among the 13 inmates on with newsmen Thursday after learning of death row. (AP Wirephoto) Ruling Leaves Door Open for New Laws latures to write criminal laws that are "evenhanded, nonselective and nonarbitrary" and requires judges "to see to it that general laws are not ap plied sparsely, selectively and spottily to unpopular groups." Chief Justice Warren E.

Bur ger, one of the dissenters, took heart in the Stewart-White position. He said: "Since the two pi votal concurring opinions turn on the assumption that the pun ishment of death is now meted ooo out in a random and unpredic table manner, legislative bodies may seek to bring their laws into compliance with the court's ruling by providing standards for juries and judges pi Pit 0nL 'GOGH (O LeJUULJ WASHINGTON (AP) The Supreme Court decision outlawing the death penalty as it is now imposed leaves the door open for Congress or the states to write new laws that would be considered valid. But the door isn't open very much. The only reason there is an opening at all is that only two of the five justices in Thursday's majority seem to have concluded that capital punishment is prohibited by the 8th Amendment for all crimes and under all circumstances. They were Justices William J.

Brennan Jr. and Thurgood Marshall. The three others, Byron R. White, Potter Stewart, and to a lesser degree, William 0. Douglas, quarreled constitutionally not with capital punishment itself so much as with the looseness of sentencing procedures.

That is, the legislatures left it to judges and juries to choose to impose the death penalty in one instance of murder or rape and to impose a lesser sentence on another defendant for a similar crime. White said that as a result the odds are very much against execution. "When imposition of the penalty reaches. a certain degree of infrequency, it would be very doubtful that any existing general need for retribution would be. measurably satisfied," he said.

Stewart said: "I simply conclude that the 8th and 14th Amendments cannot tolerate the infliction of a sentence of death under legal systems that permit Jhis unique penalty to be so wantonly and so. freakishly imposed." Put another way, Stewart said the death sentences before the court "are cruel and unusual in the same way that being struck by lightning is cruel and unusual." Douglas, meanwhile, said the 8th Amendment requires legis to follow determining the sentence in capital cases or by more narrowly defining the crimes for which the penalty is to be imposed." But even Burger had to conclude that, "since there is no majority of the court on the ultimate issue presented in these cases, the future of capital punishment in this country has been left in an uncertain limbo. "Rather than providing a final and unambiguous answer on the basic constitutional question the collective impact of the majority's ruling is to demand an undetermined measure of change from the various state legislatures and the Congress." President Nixon, while volunteering that "any punishment is cruel and inhuman which takes the life of a man or woman," expressed hope the ruling will not prohibit the death penalty for such federal crimes as kid naping and hijacking. Justice Lewis F. Powell in his dissent, wrote that the decision not only wipes out all 600 death-row sentences in the nation and laws in 39 states, but denies to Congress and all 50 legislatures "the power to adopt new policies contrary to the policy selected by the court.

I IfuQ Li 0G Chess Group Threatens Fischer with Blacklisting Odd UCa (SCaQinafeQPolbcDPg.p Available at PUBLIC OPINION Jfranklm fteposttorp Or Af Your Favorite Public pinion Dealer Throughout The Tri-County Area Mail Avay $1.00 No Phono Calls Plcoso! the American Chess Federation, who is acting as Fischer's advance man. The Icelanders said they have already spent about $200,000 on preparations, and if they meet Fischer's demand they can't break even. The gate receipts probably will be considerable. Matches will be played three to six days a week in a sports palace with seats at $5 each. And the series is expected to last two months.

Euwe, said he didn't expect the Icelandic Chess Federation to meet Fischer's demand. He added that it would have grounds for legal action against the American challenger if he didn't show up Sunday. "I don't like Mr, Fischer in our chess world," said Euwe. "He's a good player but every day we are getting another ultimatum from him like this." Cuban Premier Goes to Russia PRAGUE (AP) Cuban Premier Fidel Castro left for Moscow on another leg of his nine-country Hour Monday after telling Czechs that North Vietnam needs more support than ever before in the conflict in Southeast Asia. Castro also told a rally that many of the Nazi war criminals sentenced to hang after World War II ended on the gallows for crimes that he said were similar to actions by Americans in South Vietnam.

AMSTERDAM (AP) The president of the World Chess Federation has threatened American champion Bobby Fischer with blacklisting following report he is holding out for a cut of the gate receipts from his World Series with Boris Spassky of Russia. Dr. Max Euwe, the world federation president and veteran Dutch grandmaster, said Thursday night that if the 29-year-old American fails to appear Sunday for the start of the world chess championship in Reykjavik, Iceland, he stands to lose his rights to play for the world title "not only this time but perhaps forever." Fischer was seen Thursday night at New York's Kennedy airport, but Icelandic Airlines said he did not board its flight to Reykjavik. When newsmen tried to question him, his bodyguards fended, them off. The next flight from New York to Iceland is tonight.

But Fischer in the past has refused to fly on the Jewish Sabbath, between sundown Friday and sundown Saturday. Informed sources in Reykjavik said that Fischer informed the Icelandic Chess Federation that he wouldn't, play unless he got 30 per cent of the gate This would be in addition to his share of the $125,000 purse and 30 per cent of the receipts from the sales of television and film rights already agreed to. The Icelandic federation was reported seeking a compromise in negotiations with Fred Cramer, former president of.