But by then he had found a more exciting calling. We pretty much was it. The attendant, year-old Joseph Fournier, was later found dead in a trash can, stabbed 19 times.
The high school student had been working evenings and weekends to save money for his first car. Horton insists he waited in the car and did not know his friends planned to kill anyone. A co-defendant said he waited in the car while Horton and the third man went in. All three were convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life. I n the mid- to lates, all 50 states had furlough programs.
These passes allowed inmates to leave the prison for periods of time ranging from a few hours to several weeks, depending on their sentence and their behavior in prison; while in the community, they could visit family, look for work, or participate in religious activities.
Almost 10 percent of state and federal prisoners received a furlough in Nationally, murderers served an average of eight years before they were paroled or commuted, so furloughs were, in the toolkit of a previous generation, an uncontroversial proposition. They offered incentives for good behavior behind bars and a good way for inmates to reacclimate to the life they would almost certainly return to outside of prison. When we talked to him in his office at Northeastern University, where he is a professor of politics, Dukakis said furloughs were a sensible means of protecting public safety.
Dukakis points out that one of the most liberal furlough programs at the time was the one in the federal prison system under President Reagan and Vice President Bush.
When critics challenged the program, Reagan defended it with a vehemence that seems impossible to fathom today. But on what would turn out to be his last furlough, in June , Horton made a decision that would end up defining the presidential election — and the politics of crime for the three decades that followed.
Trying to get away from the police, Horton crashed the car his nephew had loaned him and took off on foot. Via stolen cars and buses he made his way to Florida, where he worked in construction. After about a year he lost that job and moved north to stay with friends in Baltimore. On April 3, , in a small, working-class Maryland suburb near D. Barnes, a sales manager for a car dealership, was bound to a pole in the basement and knifed over the course of several hours. Eventually Barnes escaped out the basement window and ran to get help.
A short time later, police identified the Camaro on a nearby road. After a high-speed chase, the Camaro stopped and Horton emerged, pointing a handgun at police. Horton took off on foot amidst a barrage of gunfire. He was captured, bleeding, in the yard of an adjacent house, with gunshot wounds to the abdomen and arm. Two days later, police identified Horton as an escapee from a Massachusetts prison. The Lawrence Eagle-Tribune began running what would eventually amount to almost stories over the course of the following year, criticizing the Department of Corrections, Governor Dukakis, and the furlough program.
Newt Gingrich, the future house speaker, read each installment aloud on the House floor. There is no taking away from what happened in Maryland, but William Horton is an exception to the rule. Inmates blamed Horton for the end of the furloughs and work releases. T he Massachusetts furlough problem had already been in the news for months when Dukakis and Al Gore sparred in a Democratic primary debate in April Atwater was a master of the Machiavellian campaign.
What was in the Horton ad. The "Willie Horton" campaign ad was produced by supporters of George H. Bush for his presidential campaign against Michael Dukakis. Read More. Horton, an African-American man, was a convicted murderer who raped a white woman and stabbed her partner while furloughed from prison under a Massachusetts program in place when Dukakis, the Democratic nominee, was governor.
The TV ad is now considered one of the most racially divisive in modern political history because it played into white fear and African-American stereotypes.
In it, an off-screen narrator tells the story of Horton's crimes while pictures of Bush and Dukakis and a menacing mug shot of Horton flash across the screen. The narrator notes that Bush supports the death penalty for murderers. The ad ends with this tag line: "Weekend prison passes, Dukakis on crime. By choosing I Accept , you consent to our use of cookies and other tracking technologies. Reddit Pocket Flipboard Email.
A still from a presidential campaign TV spot created by George H. YouTube screengrab George H. But the attack ad was more than just an attack on Democrats. Delivered Fridays. Thanks for signing up! Check your inbox for a welcome email. Email required. By signing up, you agree to our Privacy Notice and European users agree to the data transfer policy. For more newsletters, check out our newsletters page.
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