Mississippi: Faith leaders call to end death penalty

Leaders of Muslim, Jewish and Christian congregations gathered Thursday at the Capitol to call for an end to the death penalty in Mississippi.

Death penalty supporter Ann Pace of Jackson, meanwhile, held pictures of her daughter, who she said died at the hands of a serial killer.

The main point of contention between the Mississippi Religious Leadership Conference and Pace is whether the death penalty effectively deters crime, but the issue also hinges on inequity in the criminal justice system and religious principles.

“We face the real possibility of three state-sanctioned executions within the next month,” said the Episcopal Rev. Carol Borne Spencer. “The organization thus felt that the time was now for us to ask our state leaders to find new ways to deal with one of the largest societal dilemmas of our time, that is how to deal with heinous criminal actions of murder and violence and still hold people accountable in ways that do not require the killing of a person."

On Wednesday, the Mississippi Supreme Court set execution dates for 2 convicted killers, and Attorney General Jim Hood has requested an execution date for a 3rd.

The religious conference, which grew out of the 1960s civil rights movement, asked Thursday for crime victim support. But members said executions only create new victims — the families of executed criminals. Isolating criminals is better than condemning them to death, members said.

Pace, whose daughter Murray Pace was slain by reputed south Louisiana serial killer Derrick Todd Lee in May 2002, disagrees.

Lee, 43, sits on death row at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola for Pace’s murder. Murray was killed at the age of 22, 1 week after graduating with an MBA from Louisiana State University.

Lee is suspected of killing 7 south Louisiana women between 1998 and 2003, but Pace said he has not yet been put to death because Louisiana state law allows too many appeals.

“Even though the case is a DNA case, his DNA in 7 murders, and it’s been upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court twice, Louisiana still provides for a system called post-conviction relief that can go on for years and years and years, and it made sense before forensic science. It does not make sense now,” said Pace.

She cited a series of studies in the early 2000s finding that each execution prevents between 3 and 18 slayings. The studies have been widely disseminated by pro-death penalty advocates but widely criticized for technical and conceptual errors by those who oppose execution.

“I am here for those three to 18 additional victims,” Pace said. “I think abolishing the death penalty is idealistic, sounds good, feels good to support, but it does not protect life, it does not protect us, and I think our most important moral obligation in our life is to protect ourselves, our children, and our community, and I think that the death penalty does in fact do that."

In addition to the debate over deterrence, the Capitol press conference brought up issues of social equality and faith.

Okolo Rashid of Jackson's International Museum of Muslim Cultures signed the MRLC's call for a moratorium. She said her faith would allow her to support the death penalty if the system did not disproportionately execute black men.

Another MRLC member invoked the symbolism of the Christian day of Good Friday, which marks the day Jesus Christ was crucified.

“We know that Jesus Christ would not want the death penalty for anyone, having suffered himself at the hands of the state,” said the Catholic Bishop Joseph N. Latino of Jackson.

Set to be executed May 10 is Benny Joe Stevens, now 52, who was sentenced to death in 1999 for killing his ex-wife and her husband, his 11-year-old son and his son's 10-year-old friend.

Meanwhile, state officials have set a May 17 execution date for Rodney Gray, now 38, who was sentenced to death in 1996 for the 1994 rape and murder of 79-year-old Grace Blackwell of Louin. Blackwell, who had last been seen withdrawing a large amount of money from her bank, was found shot multiple times in Newton County.

Robert Simon Jr. was sentenced to death for the killings of 3 members of a Quitman County family, but his attorneys say a fall has rendered him incompetent for execution. Hood had earlier asked for an April 20 execution date.

Source: Associated Press, April 23, 2011

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Oklahoma City victim's dad speaks against death penalty

Bud Welch found that he had a lot in common with the father of the man executed for killing 168 people -- including Welch's daughter Julie -- in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. "We both buried our children, in different ways and at different times, but from the same event," he said during a program here Tuesday night.

Julie Welch was 23, working as a Spanish interpreter in the Social Security Administration the morning that a bomb leveled the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. She had just met a client in the lobby and was leading him into the office when the blast occurred, shortly after 9 a.m. on April 19, 1995. She was planning to have lunch with her father in a little Greek restaurant across the street later that day.

"That was a Wednesday; they found her body on Saturday," Welch said. "I found out later that she and her boyfriend had been talking about getting engaged. Timothy McVeigh was convicted more than two years later and was ultimately executed, but nothing about that gave me any peace."

A board member of Murder Victims' Families for Human Rights, Welch spoke to about 25 people in the St. Gabriel Church Hall. He talked about driving Julie to Marquette University for her freshman year, and inadvertently embarrassing her by taking his daughter's teddy bear out of the car in front of her dorm. He described his daughter's gift for learning languages, her two semesters studying abroad and her determination to win scholarships to help pay for college. But Julie was a real person who also had her flaws, Welch said.

"I'm not going to tell you about those tonight," the retired service station owner said. But he shared one other memory: his daughter had opposed the 1991 Gulf War -- the war that McVeigh and co-defendant Terry Nichols returned from with post-traumatic stress syndrome. A devout Catholic, Julie also opposed the death penalty, her dad said, "because she said it was teaching children to hate."

And so, before the trial, Welch met with Bill and Jennifer McVeigh, Tim's father and sister, in their Buffalo home and promised to do whatever he could to keep Timothy from getting the death penalty.

"When I said that, I felt like a tremendous weight had been lifted from me," Welch said. "I never felt closer to God, and I'd met an even bigger victim of the Oklahoma City bombing. Every time I talk about Julie I keep her memory alive, but because of what happened Bill McVeigh was never able to say anything positive about his son."

Among the attendees Tuesday night was Joseph Benefico, a retired Milford police sargeant. His long career in law enforcement has left him with decidely mixed views on capital punishment, Benefico said. "On one hand there's the chance that the wrong person could be executed. There have been 138 people cleared by DNA evidence who were on death row. But then, with the Cheshire home invasion, it's really hard to oppose it in that case."

Connecticut appears close once again to abolishing the death penalty, said Bo Chamberlin, field organizer for the state network working for its repeal. A bill in the Judiciary Committee is likely to be approved next week and presented to the House and Senate for a full vote, and Gov. Dannel P Malloy has promised to sign it, Chamberlin said. Then-Gov. M. Jodi Rell vetoed a similar measure in 2009.

Source: Connecticut Post, April 6, 2011

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Texas: Many death row prisoners want to apologize, Canadian study finds

Wilfred Laurier University researcher Judy Eaton, who was part of a panel discussion at the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences conference in Toronto Wednesday, concluded in a study that nearly 1/3 of death row inmates made sincere apologies for their crimes.

When Canadian researcher Judy Eaton set out to study the human yearning to apologize she turned her sights to Texas’s death row.

In the final minutes before execution, condemned prisoners have no realistic hope of changing their fate and nothing practical to gain from telling victims they are sorry.

Yet many do.

In what is believed to be the first study of apologies in such a setting, Eaton, an associate professor of psychology at Wilfrid Laurier University’s Brantford campus, along with criminology student Anna Theuer, analyzed the last statements of 305 inmates executed by Texas between 1982 and 2007.

Nearly a third spontaneously apologized for their crimes and showed signs of true repentance, such as taking responsibility for their actions and expressions of empathy.

The results were presented Wednesday at a meeting of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences in Toronto.

While previous research on apologies focused on people with their lives ahead of them, the prisoners who apologized before being put to death in Texas could do nothing more to affect their sentence or gain leniency.

This doesn’t mean their apologies were all sincere, Eaton acknowledges, and it doesn’t discount the possibility inmates were apologizing to make themselves feel better or because of religious beliefs about being judged in an afterlife.

But it does reduce the possibility they offered regrets for purely manipulative reasons and also dispels the image of death row inmates as largely unrepentant and in denial about guilt, she said.

With research already confirming victims want and benefit from apologies, the results of the Texas study also suggest that criminal justice systems should devote more attention to ensuring offenders can provide them, Eaton said.

“The general take-home message is they (offenders) do want to apologize and victims do tend to want apologies,” she said in an interview. “So, clearly the apology needs to be considered in the criminal justice system."

In some ways, Canada has already taken the lead, Eaton said, with restorative justice programs as well as legislation in three provinces, including Ontario, which allows people to offer apologies without admitting legal liability.

In introducing the legislation three years ago, Attorney General Chris Bentley said the absence of an apology can lead to bitter and protracted litigation when people are wronged.

Wrongly convicted Canadians have also sought apologies from the courts and Prime Minister Stephen Harper apologized on behalf of Canadians in 2008 to former students of Indian Residential Schools.

But unlike Britain and Australia, the federal government hasn’t apologized for an early 20th century migration scheme that brought thousands of children to Canada as indentured labour.

University of Central Florida researcher Timothy Colyer, who also spoke at the Toronto conference, argues death row offenders may adopt a deferential tone in their final statements because they’re trying to cling to whatever thread of dignity they have and because they fell into a habit of showing respect to prison staff to receive humane treatment.

Dead Men Talking

Canadians Judy Eaton and Anna Theuer analyzed the last statements of executed offenders, which are published on the Texas Department of Criminal Justice website.

Their work was funded by a grant from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Here’s what some prisoners said:

Richard Dinkins, executed Jan 29, 2003

“If there were any way I could change things and bring them back I would."

Keith Clay, executed March 20, 2003

“I know you have suffered a great loss."

Douglas Roberts, executed April 20, 2005 (coded in the study as insincere)

“Okay, I’ve been hanging around this Popsicle stand way too long. When I die, bury me deep, lay two speakers at my feet, put some headphones on my head and rock and roll me when I’m dead."

Michael Hall, executed Feb. 15, 2011 (after the study)

“I would like to give my sincere apology to Amy’s family. We caused a lot of heartache, grief, pain and suffering, and I’m sorry. I know it won’t bring her back. I would like to sing. I would like to sing, for that person’s dead. The old is gone. I am not the same person that I used to be . . . As for my family, I am sorry I let you down."

Source: The Star, March 2, 2011

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Murder victim families urge death penalty repeal

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — The latest call to abolish Connecticut's death penalty is coming from the families of some murder victims.

A letter signed by 60 people who have had loved ones killed will be presented to the Legislature on Wednesday by the Connecticut Network to Abolish the Death Penalty.

The letter states that those who have dealt with the criminal justice system and struggled with the grief of having a loved one murdered have concluded the death penalty only inflicts more pain on survivors.

Governor Dannel P. Malloy, a former prosecutor, has said he is morally opposed to the death penalty. But he's facing a state budget deficit that's projected to top $3 billion and says repealing the death penalty is not an immediate priority.

Source: NECN, February 5, 2011

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