Chief Rabbi Metzger Writes to Florida Governor On Behalf of Martin Grossman

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rabbi-metzger[Letter link below.] Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel Rav Yonah Metzger has joined others who have written to Florida Governor Charlie Crist, asking him for a 60-day stay of execution for Martin Grossman. Rav Metzger says he is convinced that there is sufficient cause to delay this execution “until all evidence and legal arguments are presented.” Click here to see his letter, which was written on Thursday. Click on the image to magnify it.

Thousands have been writing to the Governor to ask him to grant clemency to Grossman, scheduled for execution tomorrow afternoon, and to allow him to repay his debt to society by serving the rest of his life in prison.

Mr. Grossman was convicted of killing Margaret Parks, a Florida Wildlife Officer in 1984, when he was 19 years old. The crime was committed when Mr. Grossman was under the influence of drugs and alcohol, and he has conducted himself as a model prisoner since his incarceration some 25 years ago and has shown profound remorse and regret for his actions.

The Governor’s e-mail address is [email protected] and his phone number is 850. 488.7146. He can be faxed at 850.487.0801.

Separately, 200 organizations, Jewish and non-Jewish, have sent Governor Crist a petition requesting a 60-day stay of the execution, in order to properly file an official request for clemency.

As reported exclusively here on Matzav.com, Rav Chaim Epstein, Rav Elya Ber Wachtfogel, Rav Aryeh Malkiel Kotler, Rav Dovid Schustal, Rav Yeruchem Olshin and Rav Yisroel Neuman all signed a kol koreh last week encouraging people to write to the Governor and lobby on behalf of Mr. Grossman.

{Dovid Bernstein-Matzav.com Newscenter}


19 COMMENTS

  1. I also sent quite a few emails but can somebody promise me that this is having am affect I am so scared for Martins life please hashem help that your power decisions should be above the will of these flesh and blood

  2. At http://matzav.com/roshei-yeshiva-of-bmg-sign-kol-koreh-for-martin-grossman, I posted the following two web addresses of two sites, which each explain the case in detail, and which each have a link to (the same) online petition which everyone should sign.

    So again:

    PLEASE GO TO EITHER
    http://www.chabad.org/blogs/blog_cdo/aid/1118763/jewish/Martin-Grossman-Does-Not-Deserve-To-Die.htm

    OR TO

    http://www.savemartingrossman.com

    AND CLICK ON THE LINK TO THE ONLINE PETITION AND PLEASE SIGN IT!!

  3. I also sent quite a few emails but can somebody promise me that this is having an affect I am so scared for Martins life I have difficulty sleeping at night thinking about it the whole time please hashem help Martin and show that your power and your decisions are above the will of these flesh and blood please hashem show these flesh and blood that you rule this world and not them

  4. We should email for him to carefully think about his actions before putting somebody to death, but not to be swayed by any kind of pressure from any group.

    It should be a really well-thought out and justifiable decision, whether 100,000 people weigh in or none.

  5. i just called 850 488 5603 they were very nice and patient on the phone. i think that means that not enough people are calling. otherwise they would be over their head and quick on the phone. we still have the chance to sworm the phone lines. they are counting how many calls they get.

  6. TO #2: I would hope that you sent it to Ms. Alex Sink. You wouldn’t expect much help from her if can’t get her gender correct. It is pretty safe to assume that a female who has reached so high in state government may have enough of an aittitude that she might get turned off by those who ignorantly address her as Mr. Sink.

  7. #1:

    The petition site is a tool for ranting with no binding power or importance. Look at the site. There are petitioners from Spain, from Italy, from Donald Duck. The site is a feel good ranting tool and is meaningless.

    There were smarter ways of handling the case than having a few hotheads running the show. Nebach, after what happened to Sholom Rubashkin some of the same people tried using bravado instead of brains in the Grossman situation. Not everyone has the seichel to explain their position on Grossman. This shouldn’t have been turned into a three ring circus.

  8. I apologize for my mistake. I got her name from a different website where no gender was mentioned and assumed it was a man. I still urge everyone to send emails to Ms Alex Sink

  9. American Rabbi,

    There is no need for you to apologize. Apologizing is for when someone hurts someone else and wishes to inform him that he regrets his actions. The word is misused and overused these days. But that is not the point right now. Thank you for writing and getting others to do so. Hashem Yerachem. We do what we can.

  10. According to the prosecution, Martin Grossman allegedly related details of the shooting to a jail mate, Charles Brewer. However, in 1990, Charles Brewer signed an affidavit retracting his trial testimony against Grossman. He said that he assisted the authorities because he believed they would help him with his own case. He said that the authorities had told him to continue talking to Grossman and had fed him questions to ask. Among other things, Brewer had testified that Grossman had told him that he had shot Margaret Park because he did not want to be arrested by a woman. In his affidavit, he said that the prosecutors emphasized to him “the female officer thing” when they were preparing him to testify. During the trial, the prosecution had repeatedly emphasized the suggestion that gender had been part of the motive for the killing. In his affidavit, Charles Brewer said that “I cannot say Martin told me that” and “Martin never said he shot her.” On 14 January 2010, the Florida Supreme Court overturned the death sentence of another inmate, Paul Johnson, after finding that the state had induced him “to make incriminating statements to a jailhouse informant.” Is this justice?

  11. Somebody needs to inform Rav Metzger that American courts don’t follow the same rules as the Sanhedrin. They follow American laws. So we shouldn’t count on ancient Jewish laws to save us in American courts. And we shouldn’t shoot police officers who are doing their jobs.

  12. To Comment #17 from “I read that letter”: Of course, we all understand that American courts do not work with the exact same rules that apply to, Lehavdil, the sacred court of the Sanhedrin. Rather, all Rav Metzger is saying is that THE GENERAL PRINCIPLES that are put forth by the Bible and the Talmud of proper justice are fully respected and accepted by all cultures of human civilization and thus form the basis of the respective jurisprudence laws of each nation.

    These Biblical and Talmudic general principles of having proper justice, to say it very “generally,” include, as Rav Metzger pointed out, being extremely careful in administering justice, and being even more extremely, extremely, extremely careful in a case of capital punishment.

  13. To Comment #17 from “I read that letter”:

    Regarding your remark: ” . . . we shouldn’t shoot police officers who are doing their jobs”: of course, we are not, Chas V’Shalom – Lord Forbid, saying or implying in any way whatsoever that it is OK to shoot a law enforcement officer! On the contrary, the Bible and the Talmud and all our holy teachers of our Divine Literature strongly instruct us that we must have and exercise the utmost respect for government leaders, officials, and law enforcement officers, and that certainly,

    THERE MUST BE LAW AND ORDER!!!

    What we ARE saying here is that this particular person who did this horrific action of killing a law enforcement officer — because of his significantly impared mental state from various serious neurological diseases — cannot deserve capital punishment. Rather, some form of life-long institutionalization is probably what is appropriate for the case.

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