It Took My Son Being Killed ...

The current issue of Peacework magazine has a great article about Tina Chery, whose 15-year-old son Louis was killed in Boston in 2003. Here's an excerpt:

As survivors, if we can bring ourselves to tell our stories in public, people listen to us in a way that they don't listen to many others. I talk about my personal journey. I'm finding a way of dealing with the trauma. We need to learn how to celebrate and develop our resilience. When we can do that, we bring life back into our lives and into the lives of our communities.

We create peacemaking circles for survivors to focus on the principles of peace. How do we begin to live life for our living children? How do we honor the memory of those we have lost while celebrating the living? How do you want to choose to work with the police and the criminal justice system? How are you taking care of yourself? These circles give us the tools to live again, like someone recovering from an accident re-learning how to walk.

I try to channel my anger at losing Louis into motivation to work for peace. Before Louis was killed, I was in favor of the death penalty. It took my son being killed before I could oppose any more killing. Those of us survivors who share these views show that peace is possible. We are not working for vengeance.

We're Left to Wonder

In the current issue of our newsletter, there's a story titled "We're Left to Wonder: How Unsolved Murders Affect Victims' Families." Here's an excerpt:

The problem of unsolved murders isn’t much discussed in anti-death penalty literature, perhaps because in such cases the fate of the offender is not yet in question. But an unsolved case is the reality for many victims’ families, and failing to consider their experience leads to an incomplete understanding of what victims’ families may go through in the aftermath of a murder.

U.S. Department of Justice statistics report that in 2005, 62.1% of murders nationwide were “cleared” (that is, resulted in an arrest). Although the Department notes that homicide has the highest clearance rate of all serious crimes, it’s obvious from this statistic that a lot of families are left with the wondering, the fear, and the anger that an unsolved murder engenders.

Several MVFHR members who are active in their opposition to the death penalty have relatives whose murders remain unsolved. Here, we look at how they have been affected by that experience and how they see intersections between the issue of unsolved murders and the death penalty.

One of the victim's family members quoted in the story is Judy Kerr, whose brother's murder is still unsolved. Judy is the Victim Outreach Liaison for California Crime Victims for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (CCV). Check out the material on CCV's site, including their powerful booklet of testimonials.

My Feelings Have Been Challenged

Friday's Chicago Tribune had this letter to the editor:

Murder and the death penalty

In this last week my feelings on the death penalty have been challenged.

About a week ago, my 77-year-old sister was murdered and her 78-year-old husband was wounded as they made their 13th and last stop as Meals on Wheels volunteers. A day later a suspect was captured in Norfolk, Va. When I was a youth, I was very much pro-death penalty. Four different levels of academia saw me write term papers on this topic.

But in recent years, I have seen the behavior of prosecutors here in Illinois (particularly in DuPage County).

They have rushed to judgment, been guilty of withholding exculpatory evidence and failed to show remorse when DNA evidence has cleared those on Death Row (some hours away from execution).

So I've gradually come to oppose the death penalty in most cases (the exception being for the crime of incompetence for high school and college administrators).

So now that my sweet sister has met an untimely death, has this again changed my mind? No.

The death penalty option has been abused so often by ambitious prosecutors anxious to put another notch on their belts as they prepare to run for higher office that they must be denied this punishment option—even for the obviously guilty.

—John Anderson

Children of Both Victim and Offender

Today in Boston, photojournalist Scott Langley is screening the film Love Lived on Death Row at the Lucy Parsons Bookstore; MVFHR is co-sponsoring the event. We write about the film, and the family whose story it portrays, in the current issue of our newsletter. Here are the opening paragraphs of that story:

The four Syriani siblings were children when their father was sentenced to death for the murder of their mother. Ten-year-old John had witnessed the crime, and he and his older sisters testified against their father during the trial. They were afraid, and angry, and for years they didn’t even refer to their father by name. “I hated my father for what he did, for taking our mother away from us,” recalls Sarah, the second oldest.

The years passed; the children grew up without a mother and with a father whom they never saw. Then in 2004, fourteen years after their mother’s murder, the grown Syriani children decided to visit their father on North Carolina’s death row, hoping to confront him, get some answers, and maybe begin to come to terms with who he was and what had happened. To their surprise, they found that that visit was their first step toward reconciling with their father and fighting to stop his execution.

A new film by Linda Booker, Love Lived on Death Row, tells this family’s story and, in doing so, introduces audiences simultaneously to the idea of victim opposition to the death penalty and to the effect of executions on surviving family members.

A few years ago, I wrote a piece about another family facing a similar situation. Here's an excerpt:

Chris Kellett was eight years old the day his Aunt Betty broke the news that his mother and grandfather had been murdered. There's nothing that could have prepared him to hear it. Nothing that could tell him how to make sense of this gash through the heart of his family.

It's impossible to know exactly what happened the night of May 11, 1979, but it is clear that Linda Gilreath, estranged from her husband Fred and about to file for divorce, came back to his house with her father, Gerrit Van Leeuwen, to pick up some of her things. Fred shot them both several times. His brother, to whose house he fled, later described him as "dog drunk" that night. He was convicted of both murders and sentenced to death. Chris and his twelve-year-old sister Felicia were sent to live with relatives.

They were never given a chance to beg for their mother's life. Now, more than twenty years later, they intend to beg for their father's, even though some people probably think they're crazy for doing it.

Read the rest of the article here.

The Most Vexing Questions

Yesterday's Houston Home Journal has an interesting piece by Jim Rockefeller, former Houston County Chief Assistant District Attorney and former Miami Prosecutor. I particularly noted this section:

When I was a prosecutor, I understood that not every murder was a death penalty case. The death penalty was reserved for the particularly brutal psychopaths. Personally, I was involved in three cases where I considered recommending the death penalty be pursued.

In one case, the detective and I are still dedicated to ensuring the killer remains locked up, so there is not another innocent victim – we both firmly believe if this killer is released, she will kill again.

Yet, in none of these cases did I recommend the death penalty. In one of these cases, the victim’s family clearly did not want the death penalty. In the other cases, I carefully explained to the family the costs and the interminable wait for justice. They agreed that the death penalty should not be sought.

Had the families not simplified my decision, I’m not sure what I would have decided to do. Did I want to saddle the county with a multi-million dollar legal tab for a death penalty case? Is the death penalty an appropriate legal remedy? Where is the line drawn between the extraordinary “death” case and the lesser alternative?

These questions are among the most vexing a prosecutor can face ...

It's notable, I think, that in a piece about tough questions and about the difficulty of deciding to pursue the death penalty in any given case, this prosecutor specifically mentions thinking about the victims' families -- but not in the ways that prosecutors are typically assumed to think about victims' families. Instead, this prosecutor not only took the wishes of a clearly anti-death penalty family into account, but also invited two other victims' families to consider the death penalty's costs (not just in the monetary sense) -- and all agreed that it wasn't worth pursuing.

At the Most Painful Intersection

We've met a couple of times in recent weeks with colleagues at the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), and we are excited to announce now that we will be collaborating with NAMI to produce a report on the intersection between death penalty and mental illness, from a victim perspective. We are in the process of reaching out to relatives of victims killed by persons suffering from severe mental illness, and relatives of persons suffering from severe mental illness who have been executed. If you are, or can put us in touch with, survivors who fit either of these profiles, we welcome the information.

We've been interested in this issue for quite some time, and have been involved in meetings and discussions with Amnesty International, the American Bar Association, the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, and other groups who have been working in this area. In the spring of 2006 an article in our newsletter on this topic quoted California members Nick and Amanda Wilcox, who have been outspoken and active regarding this issue:

“A severely mentally ill gunman murdered our daughter Laura while she was filling in as receptionist at our local mental health clinic. We have always been opponents of the death penalty; we have not wavered in our conviction because of Laura’s death. ... Laura’s murderer suffered from severe paranoid schizophrenia. We came to recognize soon after the shooting that this man was very ill with little or no insight into his condition or the consequence of his actions. In order to protect society,institutionalization of this man is both necessary and appropriate. To execute him for an act he committed while delusional with a severe disease is, to us, simply wrong."

And in our report about families of the executed, also published in 2006, we quoted Tina Duroy, whose brother James Colburn was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia at age 14 and hospitalized repeatedly throughout his teenage years. At 18, he was no longer covered by his family’s health insurance. Tina recalls:

“My grandparents drained their entire retirement, their savings, but when they ran out of money there was no hospital that would take him without insurance. Texas has no state-funded mental facility. ... I don’t understand how they can execute mentally ill people when they don’t try to treat them first."

We are ready now to delve even further into this difficult and important issue. NAMI Executive Director Michael Fitzpatrick said it well in a public statement a couple of years ago: the death penalty for offenders suffering from mental illness represents “a profound injustice … at the most painful intersection of the mental healthcare and criminal justice systems in America.”

Dilemma in Taiwan

Our colleague Lin Hsin-yi from the Taiwan Alliance to End the Death Penalty published an opinion piece in the Taipei Times today titled "Phasing out the death penalty is overdue." A couple of excerpts:

Even before assuming office as minister of justice, lawyer Wang Ching-feng (王清峰) is already facing a dilemma: Should capital punishment be abolished?

Wang has long devoted herself to human-rights issues. She made a deep impression on me by choosing a tough road when dealing with such issues as the 921 Earthquake reconstruction project and Taiwan’s comfort women.

On the issue of the death penalty, she is willing to face and recognize her human-rights values and say that she opposes capital punishment. This not surprising at all, but she will still be facing pressure from all sides.

The biggest pressure will be the concern of the public: Without capital punishment, will crime rates increase and what should we say to future victims?

And:

For most families, a comprehensive protection system for victims might be more important than capital punishment. Our government, however has done very little to explore this alternative.

MVFHR worked with Lin Hsin-yi and the Taiwan Alliance to End the Death Penalty last year, when we participated in their "Victims, We Care" speaking tour.

Affecting Each Other

At MVFHR's panel at the U.S. Human Rights Network conference earlier this month, the panelists seem to have gotten as much out of the experience as the audience did. Debra Fifer, whose son was killed in Milwaukee and who is active with Mothers Against Gun Violence, was powerfully affected by the chance to participate in a panel specifically of victims' family members who oppose the death penalty. She said the experience made her realize that working against the death penalty would need to be part of her ongoing work in the aftermath of her son's murder. Debra also had the interesting experience of addressing, via the panel, a member of her family who had previously supported the death penalty. She writes, "My niece, who lives in Chicago, was interested in why I was there, and she came along to observe. She was for the death penalty prior to my arrival. After listening to the USHRN panel, she no longer supports the death penalty."

Stan Allridge, who traveled to the conference from Texas, was on the panel both as a family member of murder victims (both his mother's parents were murdered, in separate incidents, and his maternal aunt was murdered as well) and as a family member of the executed (two of his brothers were executed in Texas). Fellow panelist Jeanne Bishop was struck by Stan's story of his experience, and they ended up having a powerful exchange in front of the audience. Jeanne writes, "Stan spoke movingly about what it was like for him, at the age of 18, to say goodbye to his older brother on death row in Texas just before his execution. Stan said that the typical 18-year-old is consumed with things like the prom, graduation, applying to college, etc. Instead, he was in a visiting room with his family saying goodbye to his brother, who literally was in a cage inside another cage. I asked Stan, 'What did you say to him and what did he say to you?' Stan replied that they talked about everything BUT the impending execution. They talked about, remember that fishing trip we took one summer as kids? Things like that. And being so conscious of time ticking down, that in 15 more minutes it would be the end."

Jeanne also notes another valuable part of the panel experience: "One of the people in the audience was a young woman who had a relative who was murdered by another family member. The killer ended up taking his own life while in prison. The young woman talked about the pain the victim's mother has lived with ever since, knowing that she will never have the answers to some of her deepest questions about what happened to her child. She reflected on how the death penalty accomplishes the same result--inflicting more pain on the victims' families by making it impossible for them to ever know the truth about their loved ones' last moments."

Things I Wish I Didn't Know

MVFHR board member Bill Babbitt was one of several contributors to a forum on capital punishment in yesterday's Sacramento Bee. Here's Bill's letter:

In 1978, without knowing much about the issue, I voted for the Briggs Initiative that expanded the state's death penalty. Two years later, the death penalty became more than an abstract issue to me. I suspected that my brother Manny, who had served two tours of duty in Vietnam, was responsible for a woman's death. I had to make the hardest decision of my life: turn him in or not?

When I did go to the police, they assured me that Manny would not get the death penalty. I believed them. I didn't know then that the death penalty works against the poor who cannot afford dream-team lawyers. …

My brother was sentenced to death, and meanwhile other defendants in Sacramento County, convicted of all sorts of murders, got life in prison. I learned that death sentences are often arbitrary and illogical, resulting from politicians' whims or attorneys' inexperience, rather than any sense of proportionality.

I have learned things about the death penalty that I wish I didn't know, including how families of the executed continue to suffer in the aftermath. It's time to act on this knowledge and reconsider California's death penalty.

Witness to an Execution

MVFHR materials, including parts of our Gallery of Victims' Stories, will be on display in the lobby where the play Witness to an Execution is being performed in Chapel Hill, North Carolina this week. The play was inspired by National Public Radio interviews with people involved in Texas's death row and specifically those involved with carrying out executions. See more info here.