Capuano challenges Coakley on death penalty

“For many reasons, the death penalty is a mistake,” Coakley said today, after turning in 17,000 certified signatures to the secretary of state, nearly twice the amount needed to qualify for the ballot. “I do not believe in it, and I do not have any exceptions to it.”

When asked about how his campaign could have claimed that he was the only candidate to oppose the death penalty, Capuano said, "I didn't know she was against it. I knew she was for it before she was against it."

“Politically it’s easier to be on both sides of the issue – tell the conservative people that you’re for it and tell the more liberal people that you’re against it,” Capuano added. “I tell everybody I’m against it....Maybe she’s been enlightened, and that’s a good thing. I welcome her to the right side of the issue.”

Capuano's assertion has irritated some Coakley supporters.

“We want to work off the facts,” said state Representative Jennifer Benson, a Lunenburg Democrat who has endorsed Coakley. “She doesn’t need to use political tactics. She can run on her record.”

Coakley said today, “It doesn’t aggravate me, it just shows that he’s wrong. And the record will correct itself, but that’s an issue that I’ve been clear on for a long time.”

Coakley's campaign pointed out that Capuano, despite his stated opposition to the death penalty, was among those US representatives in December 2001 who voted to authorize the United States to execute terrorists who bomb public areas or government buildings.

“I’m against the death penalty, but if we’re going to have one, than there are few people more deserving of it than those who committed those particularly heinous crimes,” he told the Boston Herald at the time.

Capuano said today that the legislation was much broader than just the death penalty issue, and included stronger laws in terrorism cases. And while he opposed the death penalty provision, he said, he had to vote for the legislation as a whole, which he considered "95 percent good."

Capuano’s campaign website notes that he is against the death penalty, and he makes the same point in his first televised ad of the campaign.

The four Democratic candidates in the primary differ widely in style and background, but the field, with some distinctions, appears to be in agreement on many of the issues that could decide an election.

They all support gay marriage, abortion rights, and expanded health care coverage. Capuano insists that a public option be included, while Pagliuca says he prefers it but would support something that didn’t include it.

When asked about Capuano’s charge that she is not a liberal, Coakley said, “I don’t know what he means when he says that; he certainly hasn’t said why. I’ve been with him before where he’s said we all pretty much believe the same thing and have the same philosophy. I think that’s true, I think I’m a progressive candidate.”

Coakley has front-runner status in the race, with public polling showing her with a comfortable lead. Last week, she reported raising $2.1 million in one month. Still, she said yesterday that she wasn’t going to start buying television ads -- as Capuano and Pagliuca have -- until later in the race.

“I think people who are up on TV are doing that because they have to,” Coakley said. “I don’t think we need to do that right now.”

Coakley’s stance on the death penalty has been a campaign issue in the past.

In 1998, the National Organization for Women did not endorse Coakley in her race for Middlesex County district attorney because of her death penalty stance at the time. She supported the death penalty in cases in which a police officer was killed, or when murder was committed by someone already serving a life sentence.

“I have since changed my mind on that,” Coakley said yesterday, adding, “I believe I was mistaken.”

She said she changed her mind sometime in 2001 or 2002, in large part because of the case of Joseph Salvati, in which he and three others were wrongly convicted of a 1965 murder. In July 2007, US District Court Judge Nancy Gertner ruled that the FBI deliberately withheld evidence that could have exonerated them, and ordered the government pay the men or their estates $101.7 million collectively.

“I have been convinced that the issue of a mistake or prosecutorial misconduct, even though it may be small, is enough of a factor that there are no circumstances under which we should permit a death penalty,” Coakely said today.

In October 2008, she was honored by the Massachusetts Citizens Against the Death Penalty, which was founded in 1928 after the executions of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti and is the oldest death penalty abolition organization in the country.

Matt Viser can be reached at maviser@globe.com.