For Many Years I Believed Him

MVFHR member Aba Gayle's testimony before the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice was mentioned in an article in the Los Angeles Times yesterday:

After listening to more than a dozen lawyers, professors and a researcher from the Rand Corp., the commission heard moving testimony from Aba Gayle, whose teenage daughter, Catherine Blount, was murdered in Auburn in 1980. "The district attorney assured me that the execution of the man responsible for Catherine's murder would help me heal, and for many years I believed him."

She said she was consumed with a desire for revenge against Douglas Mickey, who was sentenced to death in 1983. But eight years after the killing, Gayle said, she had "a spiritual epiphany," forgave Mickey and has since visited him at San Quentin.

Two years ago, she said, a federal district judge overturned Mickey's death penalty because of the ineffectiveness of his defense lawyer. Gayle said she called the district attorney and asked him to drop his effort for execution.

"I told him I would be satisfied with a life sentence. I did not want state-sanctioned murder to tarnish the life of my beautiful child." But she said the D.A. ignored her request and asked the state attorney general's office to appeal the ruling. The case is still pending.