"9/11 Husband Urges No Death Penalty"

From Monday's NBC New York News, "9/11 Husband Urges No Death Penalty for Accused Terrorists":

The husband of a 9/11 victim who was among the handful of relatives at Guantanamo Bay for the arraignment of Khalid Sheik Mohammed and four other alleged terrorists says the accused murderers should not be put to death if convicted.

Blake Allison won one of 10 lottery tickets available for relatives of 9/11 victims who wanted to see their loved ones' accused killers formally arraigned on terrorism, conspiracy and other charges last weekend, reports The New York Post.

His wife, Anna, was a software consultant en route to visit a client in Los Angeles and was on board American Airlines flight 11. She was 48.

Allison told friends and family he wanted to go to Guantanamo Bay to "see the faces of the people accused of murdering my wife," reports the Post. While there, the 62-year-old ended up meeting with the lawyers of the accused, offering to testify against the death penalty should a military commission convict them of capital charges, according to the paper.

The wine-company executive's staunch opposition to the death penalty predates his wife's death. Allison told the Post he believes the death penalty should be off the table in the 9/11 case, though he acknowledges his wife's relatives and the relatives of the other 9/11 victims who went to Guantanamo Bay disagree.

"They want what they perceive as justice for their loved ones," Allison said of the other families. "I would never tell anybody in my position what they should feel."

"The public needs to know there are family members out there who do not hold the view that these men should be put to death," he added. "We can't kill our way to a peaceful tomorrow."

Allison said that his opposition to the death penalty does not mean he doesn't seek justice for his wife's killers, nor does it mean he believes that, given the opportunity, KSM and the alleged terrorists would take a different course of action.

"But for me, opposition to the death penalty is not situational," he told the Post. "Just because I was hurt very badly and personally does not, in my mind, give me the go-ahead to take a life."

Short film from AI South Korea

Amnesty International South Korea has produced a 19-minute video, "The Death Penalty: Another Murder," that features several people speaking about the death penalty in South Korea, including Kim Dae-jung, former death row inmate and Amnesty International Prisoner of Conscience and the 15th President of South Korea.  At about 13 minutes into the film, you can see members of Murder Victims' Families for Human Rights with our banner and then a brief interview with Executive Director Renny Cushing.

Read our earlier post about our participation in events last September in connection with South Korea's 5,000th day without an execution.

We didn't give up

Monday's National Catholic Reporter has an interview with MVFHR member Toni Bosco, "Connecticut repeal thrills long-time death penalty opponent":

Writer, journalist and well-known death penalty opponent Antoinette Bosco, 83, has been against the death penalty her whole life. When she moved to Connecticut in 1981, she continued her campaign to abolish the death penalty in the state with the Connecticut Network to Abolish the Death Penalty. What makes her commitment even more compelling is that her son and daughter-in-law were murdered in 1993 in Montana. She and her other children wrote to the judge and said they did not want the killer executed.


On April 25, the campaign in Connecticut came to a close -- Gov. Dannel Malloy signed a law to repeal the death penalty. NCR talked to Bosco about the decision. The interview below has been edited for length and clarity.


NCR: What have you learned from working to repeal the death penalty in Connecticut?
Bosco: The nice thing I've learned is that a lot of people who never thought they'd be interested in this have joined. That is a good thing. We do make "converts" on this. And the other thing is that we have just had a repeal of the death penalty law in Connecticut. When I first started back in the '80s, if anybody said to me, "It'll take 25, 30 years, but it will happen," I would've said, "Yeah, sure," because I knew how adamant so many people were that we have to keep it. But it happened. It happened just now that Gov. Malloy signed the repeal of the state's death penalty. So I just feel, "Thank God for the young people." Thank God for them. Because they were the ones I have to give credit to, along with a few of us old ones. So you can understand, can't you, how happy I feel about this? Because sometimes you just felt like giving up. But we didn't. 

Read the full interview.

This Mother's Day: Walk for Peace

This Sunday, MVFHR will be participating in the Louis D. Brown Peace Institute's Mother's Day Walk for Peace.  The Peace Institute was founded in 1994 by Tina Chery after her 15-year-old son, Louis, was murdered in Dorchester, Massachusetts.  The Peace Institute does vitally important work in reaching out to family members and helping them to rebuild their lives after a homicide. They have created a special curriculum for young children who have had a sibling or parent or caretaker murdered, and they work within the community to prevent violence and promote peace. Without the Peace Institute, so many Boston-area families would be left to cope alone after murder, at a time when a lack of help and support only compounds the grief, pain, and isolation that comes after a family member is killed. 

You can support Team MVFHR as we walk with hundreds of other murder victims' family members, demonstrating our solidarity with other victims and offering our support to  those who do so much to provide help after homicide and work to prevent it fron happening to others.  

Go here to donate to our Team.

Read our blog post about last year's Walk for Peace.

Read an earlier post about the Peace Institute's work.

Valuing All Lives

From yesterday's Greensboro, North Carolina News-Record, this op-ed by MVFHR board member Yolanda Littlejohn, "The promise of the racial justice law":


North Carolina took a step closer to applying justice equally in death sentencing April 20, and also took a step toward valuing all lives regardless of race.

As a family member of a murder victim, I believe this is a big step toward a better quality of justice for murder victims’ families and all citizens of North Carolina. All lives matter; all lives have value; all lives should be treated equally. We should insist that our courts act accordingly.

In the first case heard under the N.C. Racial Justice Act, Cumberland County Superior Court Judge Gregory Weeks found that racial bias did indeed play a role in death sentencing in our state.

The judge pointed to “a wealth of evidence showing the persistent, persuasive and distorting role of race in jury selection” in the specific case of Marcus Robinson and also in capital murder trials across the state. The evidence was so clear that the judge rightly changed Robinson’s sentence from death to life in prison without parole. He also called for broader action to correct the widespread problem of race unjustly influencing death sentencing. 


Studies presented at Robinson’s hearing showed that white lives have routinely been valued more than black lives in our state. To my mind and heart, this is not justice.

I lost my sister, Jacquetta Thomas, when she was murdered in Raleigh in 1991. I know the pain, grief and anger of losing a loved one to murder. The wrong individual, Gregory Taylor, was convicted and served more than 17 years for her murder.

He was freed in 2010 after an investigation by the N.C. Innocence Inquiry Commission. I never believed Taylor was guilty, and I often have thought about what would have happened if he had been executed. 

My experience strengthened my belief that we need a judicial system that treats everyone’s life as having equal value. If there is inequality, if there is racial bias, there is no justice for the loved ones taken from us.

Judge Weeks said something else that really spoke to me as a family member of a murder victim. He said, “The very integrity of the court is jeopardized when a prosecutor’s discrimination invites cynicism respecting the jury’s neutrality and undermines public confidence.”

I want a court system that is strong. I want a trial process that I can trust.

Finally, North Carolina is beginning to see the racial injustice that has been going on for many years in our death penalty system. The troubling revelations of racial bias brought to light by this hearing offer us a chance to look at how broken the system is. While the RJA doesn’t repeal the death penalty, I pray this ruling will eventually lead to the death penalty being abolished in our great state.

I am especially proud of our state for examining our justice system, acknowledging injustice within the system and acting on it. I am convinced this can only strengthen our system and result in greater justice for us all — including justice for our murdered loved ones.

If anything, the RJA doesn’t go far enough. In light of this ruling that confirmed racial bias in our death penalty system, it’s time for North Carolina to seriously consider repealing the death penalty, as five other states have done in the past five years.

The needs of victims

From a letter to the editor by Rae Giesing in Wednesday's Groton (CT) Patch:

This week is National Crime Victims’ Rights Week – a week to honor crime victims’ rights, and to advocate for our needs. I never expected this would be something I would observe, but six years ago my son and his stepbrother were murdered. I have a new perspective on a lot of things now.

This is also the week where it’s expected that Governor Malloy will sign the bill repealing Connecticut’s death penalty, leaving in place life imprisonment without the possibility of release. I worked with over 180 other murder victims’ family members to see that this law was passed.

I love that these two events are coinciding because they fit nicely together. The reason so many victims’ family members advocated for repeal is we saw the ways the death penalty harms us. It creates an arbitrary (if not racist and classist) distinction about which cases are “worthy” of capital punishment and which murders don’t merit the ultimate punishment.

To each of us who have lost a loved one, our experience was absolutely the “worst of the worst”. The system is also brutal to those survivors who do become embroiled in capital case. The trial is long, highly publicized and it takes decades of waiting before there’s even the hope that the execution will actually be carried out.

To me, one of the most troubling aspects of the death penalty is how it diverts financial resources and media attention. Connecticut usually has about 100 homicides a year. We used to spend upwards of $5 million annually on one or two capital cases.

Think about what a difference the state could make in the lives of those 100 families if we re-directed those $5 million to victims’ services. 

This is a week to advocate for the needs of victims -- having the death penalty off the books is an important first step.

But we’ve more to do. When my son was murdered I struggled with everything from getting out bed in the morning to surviving the criminal justice system. When you lose a child to murder, “overwhelmed” takes on a whole new meaning.

For four years I stumbled through my life from one court appearance to the next, 80 visits in all. There are a lot of things that could have helped me and my family, but we never received: additional court appointed victims’ advocates to help with both the emotional trauma and navigating the legal system, counseling or assistance caring for my sons left behind, or somehow feeling heard and empowered by the prosecutors.

I hope that with the death penalty out of the way we can focus on improving current programs and developing new programs to help families like mine cope with the horror of losing a loved one.

I am grateful this week for repeal, and I am grateful for the work of victims’ advocates and allies in Connecticut. Our work is far from over, but I am encouraged that we have taken this important step toward a more just Connecticut.

Rae K. Giesing

Repeal in Connecticut!

Congratulations to our colleagues in Connecticut on the repeal of the state's death penalty yesterday!  The Connecticut Victims' Voices blog has some great photos and reflections.  Here is the text of Governor Dannel P. Malloy's statement:

“This afternoon I signed legislation that will, effective today, replace the death penalty with life in prison without the possibility of release as the highest form of legal punishment in Connecticut.  Although it is an historic moment – Connecticut joins 16 other states and the rest of the industrialized world by taking this action – it is a moment for sober reflection, not celebration.

 

“Many of us who have advocated for this position over the years have said there is a moral component to our opposition to the death penalty.  For me, that is certainly the case.  But that does not mean – nor should it mean – that we question the morality of those who favor capital punishment.  I certainly don’t.  I know many people whom I deeply respect, including friends and family, that believe the death penalty is just.  In fact, the issue knows no boundaries: not political party, not gender, age, race, or any other demographic.  It is, at once, one of the most compelling and vexing issues of our time.

 

“My position on the appropriateness of the death penalty in our criminal justice system evolved over a long period of time.  As a young man, I was a death penalty supporter.  Then I spent years as a prosecutor and pursued dangerous felons in court, including murderers.  In the trenches of a criminal courtroom, I learned firsthand that our system of justice is very imperfect.  While it’s a good system designed with the highest ideals of our democratic society in mind, like most of human experience, it is subject to the fallibility of those who participate in it.  I saw people who were poorly served by their counsel.  I saw people wrongly accused or mistakenly identified.  I saw discrimination.  In bearing witness to those things, I came to believe that doing away with the death penalty was the only way to ensure it would not be unfairly imposed.

 

“Another factor that led me to today is the ‘unworkability’ of Connecticut’s death penalty law.  In the last 52 years, only 2 people have been put to death in Connecticut – and both of them volunteered for it.  Instead, the people of this state pay for appeal after appeal, and then watch time and again as defendants are marched in front of the cameras, giving them a platform of public attention they don’t deserve.  It is sordid attention that rips open never-quite-healed wounds.  The 11 men currently on death row in Connecticut are far more likely to die of old age than they are to be put to death.

 

“As in past years, the campaign to abolish the death penalty in Connecticut has been led by dozens of family members of murder victims, and some of them were present as I signed this legislation today.   In the words of one such survivor: ‘Now is the time to start the process of healing, a process that could have been started decades earlier with the finality of a life sentence. We cannot afford to put on hold the lives of these secondary victims.  We need to allow them to find a way as early as possible to begin to live again.’  Perhaps that is the most compelling message of all.

 

“As our state moves beyond this divisive debate, I hope we can all redouble our efforts and common work to improve the fairness and integrity of our criminal justice system, and to minimize its fallibility.”

Boston screening of Incendiary, 4/22

MVFHR is co-sponsoring a showing of the film Incendiary, which is about the execution of Todd Willingham for the arson murder of his three daughters despite overwhelming expert criticism of the prosecution's arson evidence. Other co-sponsors are Massachusetts Citizens Against the Death Penalty, Amnesty International, and the American Civil Liberties Union.

The film will be shown at 1:00 p.m. on Sunday, April 22, 2012 at the Boston Common Theater, 175 Tremont Street in Boston. Join us after the film for a question and answer session with one of the film's directors, Steve Mims, who will be coming here from Texas especially for this screening.If you're in the area and would like to come, please pre-order your tickets today, April 17th. We hope to see you there!

In Montana

MVFHR Executive Director Renny Cushing just returned from several days in Montana, where he spoke at the Montana Abolition Coalition's annual summit and at public events that received some good press coverage. While there, Renny also offered a training for the Montana Abolition Coalition board and staff about working with victims, and met with local victims' family members at a gathering of the group Montana Family and Friends of Homicide Victims.

Read more about the Montana Abolition Coaltion here.

You know what it's like

This article in Saturday's Los Angeles Times features MVFHR member Vicky Coward:

Some survivors of murder victims have been part of the recent debate over capital punishment. Victoria Coward of Connecticut was one of them. Her 18-year-old son, Tyler, was shot and killed in New Haven in 2007.

"When you lose somebody to homicide, you know what it's like to lose somebody in one of the most hurtful ways possible," Coward said.

Prosecutors told her it would be too difficult to go through a trial and have to see photos of her son's body riddled with bullets, and suggested offering the killer a plea deal, which he took in 2010.

Coward lobbied lawmakers to end the death penalty and watched as state senators voted on the issue. Her son's killer, Jose Fuentes Phillich, was 25 when he was sentenced to 30 years in prison. She seems at peace with the decision.

"The death penalty doesn't help at all," she said. "If you have the nerve to kill somebody, you should be able to sit there every day and think about what you did."