Justice for George Hanna
On Feb. 26, 1983, Trooper George Hanna was gunned down in chilly blood in Auburn by people who had been planning a theft of a neighborhood enterprise. George Hanna bought of their method, in order that they killed him.
I had the dignity and privilege of working with George and bought to know him effectively. He was nice husband and father. He discharged his duties with equity and justice, treating everybody he encountered civilly and respect. He was the kind of particular person whom you wished all cops would emulate.
Because the day he was murdered, some 45 years in the past, his household and his buddies have painfully questioned what life would have been like if he had lived. As we speak, in a transparent manifestation of confused authorized considering, certainly one of his killers really faces the potential for being launched on parole. This prospect is the consequence of a Supreme Judicial Courtroom ruling which embraced a radical and questionable principle about mind growth, superior by many European international locations, which holds that full mind growth in human beings happens a lot later than beforehand thought, thus casting doubts upon felony culpability.
This principle fully rejects ethical growth as a legit factor in administering justice. None of Hanna’s killers superior any psychological deficiency of their protection. They had been rationale individuals. The deed they dedicated was vicious and horrendous. It was not a mistake of the top however an evil disposition within the coronary heart that ended George Hanna’s life. Lots of our justices seem to have forgotten that distinction.
The individuals of Massachusetts declare to worth life. Of their charity, they selected to reject capital punishment as a response to premeditated homicide. George Hanna’s killers have obtained the dividend from their beneficence. His life had worth as effectively, and since it was coldly and brutally taken from him, a loss that continues to torture his household to this very day, justice calls for that those that took it stay in jail for the remainder of their lives.
Dennis Galvin
Main, Retired
Mass State Police
Remembering Hanna
As somebody who served over 28 years in legislation enforcement as a member of the Boston Metro DMH Space police division, I nonetheless keep in mind when Trooper George L. Hanna was brutally murdered after he made a visitors cease (“Probably the most heinous of crimes,” Boston Herald, Jan. 14).
Hanna was eradicating the occupants of the automobile when certainly one of them, Jose Colon, 20, shot Hanna six instances at shut vary. The killer was sentenced to life with out parole. Nevertheless, that is Massachusetts and due to a Supreme Judicial Courtroom choice, Commonwealth v. Mattis, which dominated “rising adults” who had been 18 to twenty on the time they killed couldn’t be sentenced to life with out parole.
So, Colon and others may get launched whereas the victims get no paroles from dying.
Thanks to Gov. Maura Healey for thus strongly urging the Parole Board to disclaim parole for Trooper Hanna’s killer.
Sal Giarratani
Sergeant, retired
Boston Metro DMH Space Police Dept.
