Michael Smerconish: JUSTICE WAS SERVED BY 'OFFICER X'

By Michael Smerconish

05.08.08

Philadelphia Daily News

AS FAR AS I'm concerned, there's a mystery hero in town: The Philadelphia police officer who did society a favor by putting down Howard Cain on Saturday, minutes after Cain executed Sgt. Stephen Liczbinski. In the process, that cop brought about a just ending for Cain, something the criminal-justice system would never have done.

Don't believe me? Just ask Maureen Faulkner. Over 26 years, she hasn't received anything near that level of closure.

How could she? Since Pennsylvania restored the death penalty in 1978, only three people have been executed. And they all asked for it.

By now we're all acquainted with the basic facts: Cain, Levon Warner and Eric DeShawn Floyd held up the Bank of America branch inside the ShopRite at Castor and Aramingo on Saturday morning. Fifteen minutes later, Cain is believed to have shot Liczbinski five times with a Chinese SKS rifle. The three perps fled, but a canine officer responding confronted the men, then shot and killed Cain.

That cop is the mystery hero.

Good thing that confrontation played out the way it did. Otherwise, I suspect I know how things would have played out. Liczbinski's family would have been subjected to a tortuous murder trial, maybe an attempt at an insanity defense and, finally, a verdict of guilty.

In the sentencing phase, a jury would decide that death was the suitable punishment, and would adjourn its arduous task believing that someday the cop-killer would receive the prescribed fate. I can picture the Liczbinski family walking out of the Criminal Justice Center believing they'd gotten some measure of justice.

But the appellate clock would only then begin to tick. There would be motions filed and "new evidence" raised. Probably a cry or two about discrimination. Then a post-conviction relief-act hearing. The case would take on a life of its own, meandering through the court system. Always seeming close to an ending, never quite getting there.

Over the years, the spotlight would dim and, receding along with it, would be the politicians who clamor for the death penalty to be on the books but never do anything when judges fail to allow it to be carried out.

And those judges would now play games with the law, ensuring that Cain was never subjected to his sentence, regardless of what any legislature or jury had to say. We know this not only because of historical precedent, but also because of the way the system gave Cain himself so many second chances.

Cain was reportedly arrested at least 16 times before Liczbinski was killed. In fact, he was on parole at that moment, having served just nine years of his nine-to-18-year sentence for robbery. He was granted parole at his first opportunity, and spent a couple of months at a South Philly halfway house before being freed under "parole supervision" in December 2006.

"Mr. Cain has what the police would call an all-star rap sheet," CBS3's Walt Hunter told me. The same could be said for Messrs. Warner and Floyd. In fact, there's nothing unique about the three of them, other than the tragic fact that their criminal ways took down a member of the thin blue line.

And isn't it remarkable that in a society where there is always someone willing to make a case for the unjust nature of the death penalty, in the immediate aftermath of a circumstance in which the thug gets street justice, there is only silence.

How telling.

Thank God that Cain's Chinese SKS semiautomatic rifle jammed after the five shots with which he hit Liczbinski. We know that Cain wouldn't have hesitated to use the 25 others.

And thanks to the mystery cop who subsequently took Cain down, Liczbinski's loved ones have the solace of knowing that Cain is in Hell right now, instead of getting there only after dying of natural causes at the end of a lengthy prison stay. *

Listen to Michael Smerconish weekdays 5-9 a.m. on the Big Talker, 1210/AM. Read him Sundays in the Inquirer. Contact him via the Web at http://www.mastalk.com.