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MVFHR Blog: For Victims, Against the Death PenaltyMurder Victims Sample Blog, Dec. 12Sed ut perspiciatis unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem accusantium doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam, eaque ipsa quae ab illo inventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae dicta sunt explicabo. Nemo enim ipsam voluptatem quia voluptas sit aspernatur aut odit aut fugit, sed quia consequuntur magni dolores eos qui ratione voluptatem sequi nesciunt. Neque porro quisquam est, qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit, sed quia non numquam eius modi tempora incidunt ut labore et dolore magnam aliquam quaerat voluptatem. Ut enim ad minima veniam, quis nostrum exercitationem ullam corporis suscipit laboriosam, nisi ut aliquid ex ea commodi consequatur? Quis autem vel eum iure reprehenderit qui in ea voluptate velit esse quam nihil molestiae consequatur, vel illum qui dolorem eum fugiat quo voluptas nulla pariatur?
Speaking out in NebraskaPosted on the Nebraska Radio Network's site, 1/31/12, "Sister of murder victim campaigns against death penalty": The sister of a man brutally murdered nearly 30 years ago campaigns against executing his killer. A mixture of Mennonite faith and practicality leads Miriam Kelle of Beatrice to come out against the execution of Michael Ryan. Kelle says her faith compels her to speak out against the death penalty. Kelle adds, though, that each time the legislature debates capital punishment, the news media recounts how Michael Ryan tortured and murdered her brother, James Thimm, at his religious compound near Rulo in far southeastern Nebraska in 1984. Kelle uses a coping mechanism whenever debate at the Capitol turns to capital punishment. “We just try not to read the paper,” Kelle tells reporters at the Capitol. “You know, I try really hard not. My co-workers are reading it. You just try to go on and do your job that you’re supposed to do.” That approach didn’t work this year. Kelle actually gathered numerous newspaper accounts of the murder for Sen. Brenda Council of Omaha who sponsors LB 276, a bill that would eliminate the death penalty. Under the legislation, life in prison without the possibility of parole would be the ultimate penalty in Nebraska. The legislature debated the bill for two days last week before Council moved to indefinitely postpone it. The bill could return for debate later this session. Kelle says it’s difficult to re-read accounts of her brother’s death. “And the really hard thing is when you read something that you kind of forgot about and it comes crashing back, that’s the hard part,” Kelle says with emotion in her voice. An execution date of March 6th has been set for Ryan in the 1984 murder. A delay will begin the news cycle over. Kelle contends if Ryan had been sentenced to life he would have been forgotten long ago and she wouldn’t have to relive her brother’s brutal death.
Testifying in Washington stateFrom the January 26th edition of the (Washington state) Olympian, "Sister of Rupe victim urges end to death penalty":
More than 30 years after Mitchell Rupe fatally shot Candace Hemmig in Olympia, her sister is asking state lawmakers to abolish the death penalty she says caused years of traumatic court appearances for her family.
Karil Klingbeil testified Wednesday in favor of a bill to end capital punishment in Washington. Sen. Debbie Regala, D-Tacoma, sponsored the measure, Senate Bill 6283, which had a public hearing in the Senate Judiciary committee. Rupe was sentenced to execution two different times for fatally shooting Hemmig, 33, and another bank teller, Twila Capron, 30, at a West Olympia bank in 1981. Higher courts overturned both, and Rupe ultimately received a life sentence without parole after one juror objected to the death penalty at a third trial. Rupe suffered from terminal liver disease, hepatitis c and cirrhosis. He died in prison in 2006 at age 51. Klingbiel testified Wednesday that her family would have found more peace had life without parole been the most severe punishment available. She told the committee she was in favor of the death penalty for more than 30 years, but study and reflection led her to oppose it Thursday. “What followed (the shooting) was 20 excruciating years of hearings and appeals and nonstop media attention,” Klingbeil told lawmakers. “With each appeal and each court appearance, we relived that horrible tragedy.” Rupe made national headlines as the “man too fat to be hanged.” A federal judge ruled that hanging him would be cruel and unusual punishment, as he would likely be decapitated from his 409-pound weight. Several years later, state lawmakers switched the primary method of capital punishment to lethal injection. At the time Rupe faced death row, prisoners who did not choose between injection and hanging faced the latter. Regala also testified Wednesday as someone who lost a family member to violent crime. Her brother-in-law was killed in 1980, and his killer was never found. “We want the person responsible to be identified, to be prosecuted, and to be off the streets,” Regala said. “Life without the possibility of parole provides that.” Sen. Pam Roach, R-Auburn, expressed concerns at the hearing that some families might feel differently. “It denies some who would like to see a more final outcome,” Roach said. Klingbeil acknowledged those people in an interview later Wednesday. “There will always be some that want it, but they want it for the wrong reasons,” she said. “They want it because of their emotions, in my opinion.” Senate Bill 6283 has not been scheduled for a committee vote.
In New HampshireVictims' family members Renny Cushing, Arnie Alpert, Margaret Hawthorn, and Laura Bonk testified in New Hampshire yesterday in opposition to a bill that would expand the state's death penalty. An article in today's Concord Monitor quotes from Margaret's testimony and reports that the bill did not get much support: It's unlikely the state's death penalty law will be expanded to include murder during a robbery or murders that are "especially heinous, cruel or depraved." The House Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee voted unanimously yesterday to recommend the bill be killed. The recommendation still must go before the full House. Rep. Steve Shurtleff, a Penacook Democrat, said the bill was so broadly written that it could have made almost any murder a capital offense. "It was just a poorly drafted bill," Shurtleff said. "It was very vague." At a hearing yesterday, some questioned what murder wouldn't be considered "cruel" or "heinous" as described by the bill. Under the existing law, seven crimes are punishable by death: the murder of a police officer; murder for hire; and murder during a kidnapping, rape, drug deal or burglary. Murder while serving life without parole is also a capital offense. Burglary was added last year in response to a machete and knife attack that left a Mont Vernon woman dead and her daughter badly injured. Rep. Ross Terrio, a freshman Republican from Manchester, introduced his bill to expand it further to close what he considered a "loophole" in the existing law. Terrio told committee members yesterday that capital murder needs to be more evenly applied to all murders that are particularly heinous or those involving the torture of the victim. The state attorney general's office estimated that 11 murders since 2009 would have been capital offenses under Terrio's bill. Anticipating objections from the religious community, Terrio cited the Old Testament and said Moses spoke of offenses that should be punished by death. That's not untrue, Rabbi Robin Nafshi testified yesterday. But more importantly, she said, there are no examples in the Old Testament of the death penalty actually being used. She said religious leaders set such a high threshold that no offense qualified for capital punishment. "I know many in the Legislature feel their religious laws guide them," she said, urging the committee to defeat Terrio's bill. Opponents yesterday also included Margaret Hawthorn of Rindge, whose daughter Molly Hawthorn-MacDougall, 31, was murdered in her Henniker home in 2009. A Haitian national, Roody Fleuraguste, is awaiting trial on a first-degree murder charge for her death. Hawthorn told lawmakers expanding the death penalty law would not make New Hampshire safer or make justice more equitable. Prosecuting and defending a death penalty case also consumes a lot of money that could be better spent, she said. State officials said a death penalty case can cost millions, compared with a first-degree murder case, which carries a life sentence without parole. "The cost of receiving justice is priceless," Hawthorn said. "Please don't impede justice by squandering precious resources on the cost of revenge." Defense attorney Michael Iacopino, who sat on a state death penalty study committee, urged lawmakers to consider the report his committee produced in 2010. Twelve of the members voted to keep the death penalty and 10 voted to abolish it, he said. "I can tell you that there was not an appetite (on that committee) to expand the death penalty law," he said.
In GeorgiaKate Lowenstein will be representing MVFHR this weekend at a statewide death penalty abolition summit organized by Georgians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, Amnesty International, and the Ebenezer Baptist Church. You can see more about the summit, titled A Call to Action, here. Kate will be speaking on a panel titled "Building Relationships with Those Directly Impacted by the Death Penalty."
In AlabamaMVFHR Board President Bud Welch will be addressing students at Samford University's School of Law in Birmingham, Alabama today and will then be the keynote speaker at the Alabama Criminal Defense Lawyers Association's "Loosening the Death Belt" conference this weekend. Bud's 23-year-old daughter Julie was killed in the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City. Here's an excerpt from his story that the Association has posted on its site: Three days after the bombing, as I watched Tim McVeigh being led out of the courthouse, I hoped someone in a high building with a rifle would shoot him dead. I wanted him to fry. In fact, I’d have killed him myself if I’d had the chance.
Six months after the bombing a poll taken in Oklahoma City of victims’ families and survivors showed that 85% wanted the death penalty for Tim McVeigh. Six years later that figure had dropped to nearly half, and now most of those who supported his execution have come to believe it was a mistake. In other words, they didn’t feel any better after Tim McVeigh was taken from his cell and killed.
And here is coverage in the Birmingham News.
A change of heartLast fall, when MVFHR board member Walt Everett gave a talk to a group at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania, a writer from Drew University magazine attended and followed up with a long feature story about Walt in the Winter 2012 issue of the magazine. Here are a couple of excerpts: The first-year seminar is titled “Timeless Questions, Difficult Times: Making Meaning of Uncertainty,” and you might have to search the darkest corners of the planet to find a guest speaker more qualified to hold forth on that topic than the Rev. Walter Everett C’56, T’60.
A retired Methodist minister, Everett is something of an authority on timeless questions and difficult times, and he’s spent years trying to make meaning of uncertainty. He’s come to Bucknell, where he sits at the head of a small classroom crammed with 15 students and two instructors, to weave his extraordinary tale one more time, a retelling that will leave some of those in his young audience questioning their very core. For he’s also come with some questions of his own. “How many of you are in favor of the death penalty?” Everett begins. Silence. “How many of you are opposed?” A few. “How many are not sure?” All the rest. The article then goes on to tell the story of the 1987 murder of Walt's son, Scott Everett. Any death of a young person creates unspeakable trauma for the family, Everett tells the Bucknell students. A violent death, he says, “increases the trauma exponentially.”
And so it was that for the next 11 months Everett saw his life spiral downward, seemingly out of his control. He felt despair, rage, depression. His marriage, already on shaky ground, cracked under the strain. Everett prayed to God, beseeching him to show him a way out of the darkness. But Everett discerned no response. He attended a support group meeting with other family members of murder victims—the only people, he figured, who could possibly understand the anguish that consumed him. One night he heard a woman in the group say that anyone who committed murder “should be taken out and shot immediately.” Then he learned that the woman’s son had been killed 14 years earlier. He wondered if that’s what his life would be like for the next 14 years. “I was ignoring mail. I was not paying attention to people,” Everett tells the students. “My thoughts were elsewhere.” Eleven months and two weeks after the murder of his son, Everett sat in a courtroom in Bridgeport for Carlucci’s sentencing. Everett had never before set eyes on his son’s killer, who arrived at the courthouse three hours late, having indulged in one last cocaine binge before prison. The judge asked Everett if he wished to make a statement. Everett rose and spoke for 10 minutes, though he doesn’t remember a word of what he said. Then the judge asked Carlucci if he would like to speak. Carlucci stood. Everett tells the Bucknell students that he remembers every word Carlucci uttered. “I’m sorry I killed Scott Everett. I wish I could bring him back. Obviously, I can’t. These must sound like empty words to the Everetts. I don’t know what else to say. I’m sorry.” And from the end of the article: The bell rings. A half-dozen students approach Everett, thank him for coming, shake his hand. Some, on their way out, reach for the anti-death penalty brochures that Everett brought with him. Everett leaves the building with instructor Deirdre O’Connor, who says the students will discuss the issues that he raised at a later class. Not until then could Everett know whether the timeless questions he’s posed really struck a chord with the students, whether he’d helped them to make meaning of uncertainty.
A few days later a neuroscience major from Bexley, Ohio, named Bridget O’Donnell wrote about Everett’s appearance in her course journal. O’Donnell grew up in a politically conservative home. Both her parents supported capital punishment. As a member of her high school political club, she took part in debates about the death penalty, arguing strongly in favor. Just two years earlier, as a high school junior, she’d written a research paper defending her position. “Today, however,” she wrote in the journal, “I questioned myself.” O’Donnell says she left the class wondering whether her support for the death penalty was something she really believed in—“or something I learned to believe in.” And although she has a hard time articulating her change of heart, she is certain that a change has taken place. “I am not pro-death penalty anymore,” she says. In Walt Everett’s long journey, another small step.
Speaking in AlabamaFrom today's Anniston (Alabama) Star, an article that features MVFHR board member Bill Pelke: There are some images that Bill Pelke can’t erase from his memory.
For years the picture in his head that haunted him was of his beloved “Nana,” Ruth Elizabeth Pelke, a woman who taught Bible classes to local children in her hometown of Gary, Ind. In 1985 she was stabbed 33 times by a group of local teenagers who stole 10 dollars from the 78-year-old woman and let her bleed to death on her living room floor. It was the image in his head when he sat through the trial of Paula Cooper, the 15-year-old female who ended his grandmother’s life. “I remember when they asked me how I felt,” Pelke said Thursday at Jacksonville State University, recalling learning that Cooper was to receive the death penalty. “I said, ‘the judge did what he felt he had to do, but it won’t bring my Nana back.’” Pelke, 64, was the first of three speakers during an anti-death penalty forum called “A Journey of Hope,” sponsored by the campus Ethics Club. More than 30 people at Houston Cole Library listened to Pelke, Callie Grier, and a representative of the Birmingham-based Justice and Mercy group, Brandon Fountain, all present their stance against the death penalty. The event doubled as the first meeting of the semester for the club. “We’re all about dialogue,” said Scott Beckett, the faculty adviser for the Ethics Club. “Because we’re human, everybody here already has made up their mind, but we’re about dialogue.” But Pelke hoped his dialogue could possibly persuade death penalty proponents to change their mind — much as he changed his own stance on capital punishment after his grandmother was murdered. Pelke said his Christian upbringing taught him the death penalty was an acceptable form of justice, but began to question that notion in the years that followed Cooper’s sentencing. Over time, the image of his grandmother, the one he carried with him through the trial of Cooper, was replaced by another image he couldn’t shake — that of Cooper’s grandfather, shouting out “they’re going to kill my baby!” after her sentencing. Like Pelke, Callie Grier lost a loved one through violence. Her son, Mercury, was murdered in Birmingham, and just like Pelke, sought for forgiveness. “They kill this boy, give him life sentence or whatever, does that mean Mercury is going to come back?” Grier said. “Are you telling me I should put his family through this to get closure? Now I get closure? Uh-uh, I get nightmares.” Not all the details of the two stories were the same, though. “Black on black crime is just treated as another case,” said Grier, explaining her story didn’t “make it to Oprah” like Pelke’s more famous story. ...
"I will not rejoice in the death"In honor of Martin Luther King Day, David Love, director of Witness to Innocence, has a great column at the Huffington Post about Dr. King's stance on the death penalty. Here's an excerpt that is particularly relevant to MVFHR: ... And the late Coretta Scott King--whose husband and mother-in-law both were assassinated--spoke out against the practice. "An evil deed is not redeemed by an evil deed of retaliation," Dr. King's widow proclaimed. "Justice is never advanced in the taking of a human life. Morality is never upheld by a legalized murder". Further, the death penalty is an international human rights issue as well. The European Union, which forbids the practice among its member nations, has imposed new restrictions on the importation of anesthetics used to execute people in the U.S. Sadly, some would dilute Dr. King's human rights message, including his "radical revolution of values," in which he urged America to begin the necessary shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. Meanwhile, the "drum major for justice, peace and righteousness" as the inscription reads on his memorial--stands on the National Mall as a reminder of his dedication to human rights, including opposition to the death penalty. If America truly wants to follow the teachings of Martin Luther King, we should end all executions now.
Speaking in ConnecticutA nice mention of MVFHR's Walt Everett in yesterday's Post-Chronicle (a Connecticut paper): The Rev. Walter Everett experienced every parent’s nightmare: the murder of a child. In 1987, his son Scott was shot and murdered in Bridgeport. Everett will speak at the Hamden Plains United Methodist Church, sharing his story of loss, rage, and forgiveness, and calling for repeal of Connecticut’s death penalty, Sunday, Jan. 15. during the 10:15 a.m. service.
For almost a year after the murder, Everett’s emotional state had transitioned from rage to depression. He found it difficult to even go through the motions of his work as pastor of a United Methodist Church. Eventually, he came to recognize his need to move beyond his anger and he found healing through forgiveness. Rev. Everett currently serves on the board of directors of Murder Victims’ Families for Human Rights, an organization of family members of murder victims and family members of the executed who challenge the notion that executions are the way to achieve justice or closure for the family that murder leaves behind. Everett has testified before legislative committees on numerous occasions, including the Connecticut General Assembly’s Judiciary Committee in 2005 and 2009.
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