Relatives oppose it

It's helpful when news headlines recognize that not all victims' family members support the death penalty -- like this recent headline on the mynorthwest.com news site, "Relatives of murder victims oppose death penalty":

Relatives of murder victims in Washington hope their voices carry some extra weight in the debate over the death penalty.
 
Retiring State Senator Debbie Regala, D-Tacoma, was among a group of death penalty critics speaking out in Olympia Thursday. The six-term state lawmaker has a personal story to share.

"In 1980, my brother-in-law was murdered and his body was dumped in a park in Seattle," Regala told KIRO Radio. His killer was never prosecuted.

Still, she favors abolishing the death penalty. "We spend six to ten times as much money pursuing a death penalty as we would if we went for life without the possibility of parole," claimed Regala.

"When we look at the high cost, the staggering amount of money that gets spent on this, that money could be so much better used in giving police officers better tools to prevent crime, tools for helping solve some of these cold cases."

Other relatives of murder victims share Regala's viewpoint, including Karil Klingbill, the sister of Candy Hemmig, a bank teller murdered by Mitchell Rupe in Olympia in 1981.

Those who support the death penalty often cite closure for victims as an argument for keeping the law. But death penalty appeals can last for 10 years or longer.

"That prolonged process means that there is no closure for a long period of time and for many people, it re-opens the wound over and over and over again," Regala countered.

Washington is among 33 states, as well as the military and the federal government, that allow the death penalty.

Legislative opponents plan to re-introduce a measure in Olympia next session to abolish the death penalty and they are planning a rally on the steps of the Capitol building in January.

KIRO Radio host Dave Ross said he appreciates hearing from people like Regala. It's a different perspective that isn't always considered. It stops him from wanting to totally abolish the death penalty.
Dave says he knows it's hard for family members to relive the horror every time there's an appeal, but he suggests setting limits and not dragging out the process might be a solution.

One benefit of the death penalty is it gives prosecutors a bargaining chip. They cut a deal with the Green River Killer, Gary Ridgway, to avoid trial and he plead guilty. He would have been up for the death penalty, but those trials never happened and the victims got closure. He's not on death row, but in prison in Walla Walla for the rest of his life.

However, Regala doesn't believe it's appropriate to use it as a bargaining tool.

"We have people like Gary Ridgway who committed multiple multiple murders and they have life without the possibility of parole. And someone who committed one murder is on death row and may be executed." 

64 years later, 8 years later

Today is International Human Rights Day marking the anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UNDR) in 1948. 

In her book The Death of Innocents, Sister Helen Prejean writes that initially there was some debate about whether abolition of the death penalty fell within the scope of the ideal that the Universal Declaration represented:

It was to be expected when Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was debated back in the 1940s that such a declaration, which granted everyone the right to life without qualification, would provoke debate, and one of the first proposed amendments was that an exception ought to be made in the case of criminals lawfully sentenced to death. Eleanor Roosevelt urged the committee to resist this amendment, arguing that their task was to draw up a truly universal charter of human rights toward which societies could strive. She foresaw a day when no government could kill its citizens for any reason.

We are, of course, still working toward that day, and although there is a great deal left to do, we can also appreciate that 64 years after Eleanor Roosevelt made her argument, the majority of the world's countries have abolished the death penalty.

Today is also the 8th anniversary of the founding of Murder Victims' Families for Human Rights. Eight years ago, the founding group gathered at the UN Church Plaza in New York City, offered public testimony, and signed a document stating, "In the name of victims, we pledge to end the death penalty around the world."



In MVFHR's first public statement shortly thereafter, we said:

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a document that sets forth the most basic principles regarding the value of human life and the way human beings ought to treat one another, was inspired by victims, demanded by victims. It grew out of the suffering of millions of civilians murdered under the brutal regimes of the Second World War, and its adoption on December 10, 1948 was a way to honor the loss of these lives, and an attempt to give meaning to the loss, by asserting that such violations are neither moral nor permissible under any nation or regime.

Now is the time to raise our voices again and insist that violations of human life in the form of the death penalty or other state killings are not permissible under any nation or regime. It is time to call for the abolition of the death penalty because the only way to uphold human rights is to uphold them in all cases, universally.

We believe that survivors of homicide victims have a recognized stake in the debate over how societies respond to murder and have the moral authority to call for a consistent human rights ethic as part of that response. Murder Victims’ Families for Human Rights is the answer to that call.

Our deepest thanks today to all MVFHR's members and supporters who have helped answer that call and who have accomplished so much in these past eight years.

Cities for Life

MVFHR members are participating in "Cities for Life - Cities Against the Death Penalty" today, the international event organized each year by the Community of Sant'Egidio. Take a look at the link to see what's happening around the world, or check out this short video.

In Tokyo

Kate Lowenstein is representing MVFHR in Tokyo today at "No Justice Without Life: The Death Penalty in a Globalized World," a symposium organized by the Italian Community of Sant'Egidio. Here's a description:

The special aim of the Tokyo Symposium: how Japan may be closer to the rest of the World? The broad consensus on the issue found in Tokyo today shows that it is possible to begin to build bridges between the Japanese islands and the world. The same Justice Minister Makoto Taki, renamed by Prime Minister Noda, said three days ago in a Press Conference that Japan, on capital punishment, must come out of its isolation and begin to open to an international dimension.

The Conference, realized with the support of the European Commission and hosting the significant contribution of the Vice President of the European Parliament as well as the Ambassador of the European Union to Japan, brings together many of the major Japanese organizations, as Amnesty International, Bar Association, Forum 90, Center for Prisoners’ Rights, ADPAN, Japan Interreligious Network Against the Death Penalty, and others.

Including a truly broad range of witnesses and guests from Europe and the United States, Japanese representatives of institutions, of the world of politics, culture, the press, the arts, voices of the great world religious traditions – including the voice of Pope Benedict XVI – but also representatives of the new generations. In this context, the great composer and conductor Ken Ito will offer over his words also his music.

Today in Tokyo we will listen to a marvellous polyphonic choir, which will sing a hymn towards the future : No Justice Without Life!

Both sides grieve

MVFHR member Lois Robison, whose son Larry was executed in Texas and who has been active in our Prevention, Not Execution project, is quoted extensively in yesterday's story, "Wisconsin Spa Shooting Brings Back Painful Memories for the Moms of Mass Killers."  MVFHR Executive Director Renny Cushing is quoted too:

News of Sunday’s shooting at a spa in Wisconsin brought back painful memories for Lois Robison, more than 1,000 miles away in Burleson, Texas.

Robison’s son, Larry, was executed in 2000 for the brutal murders of five people near Ft. Worth, Texas, in 1982. Every time it happens again, every time a gunman takes to a mall or a Sikh temple or a school playground, bent on rampage, Robison remembers her own son.

This past week, it was the shooting at the Azana Spa in Brookfield, Wis., that triggered those flashbacks. There, Radcliffe Haughton Jr. reportedly shot seven women, three of them fatally, including his wife, before turning the gun on himself.

It didn’t take television crews long to reach the man’s distraught father, Radcliffe Haughton Sr., the following day. “All I can say is, I want to apologize to the people of Milwaukee who have been hurt,” Haughton Sr. told a reporter on Monday. “He did not give me any hint of what he would do.”

He did not give me any hint of what he would do.

Haughton Sr. appeared to be answering an implied question, one that’s asked either directly or indirectly of parents and other relatives every time such a tragedy unfolds—“Did you see this coming? Why didn’t you stop it?” It’s why, when Arlene Holmes told a reporter “You have the right person,” after her son allegedly went on a shooting rampage in Aurora, Colo., last summer, many assumed she was saying, “I knew it was him.” Holmes later clarified she was talking about herself, not her son. ...

These are unfair queries, says Renny Cushing, executive director of the Boston nonprofit Murder Victims’ Families for Human Rights. Cushing’s own father, Robert, was murdered in 1988, and Renny has dedicated his life to opposing the death penalty. He has worked with many relatives of murder victims and of killers over the years. Both sides grieve, but in different ways, he says.

“Being the family member of a murderer is incredibly isolating,” Cushing says. “There’s a shame attached to it, a stigma, so they remain silent about their loved one. People will impute responsibility on them for the actions of the family member. Society’s fear gets projected upon you, and you end up being pretty isolated.”

Lois Robison knows that all too well. She knew the day she found out her son had gone on a shooting rampage, she said in the fragile Texas drawl of a 79-year-old woman. That day, she recalls, she turned to her husband and said, “Now our whole lives will be different.”

She was right. Robison had talked to her son Larry just the night before, she said. He was at his sister’s house, and something was wrong. Mom was trying to talk her son into coming over, to her home in Burleson. Larry said he couldn’t.

“The next morning, I woke up and found out he was the one who killed all those people,” she said.

Read the full article.

The Way Forward: Today at the UN

In conjunction with the 67th Session of the UN General Assembly, the Special Procedures Branch of the Office of High Commissioner on Human Rights will host a side-event this evening at the UN in New York, on the topic of "The Death Penalty and Human Rights: The Way Forward." We are honored that Renny Cushing has been asked to speak at this event, representing Murder Victims' Families for Human Rights.

The event features the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Christof Heyns, and the UN Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, Juan Mendez. Other speakers will be representing the World Organization Against Torture, Penal Reform International, Amnesty International, and the U.S. Program of Human Rights Watch.

In Geneva

We just got this photo of Renny Cushing representing MVFHR at the panel discussion on World Day Against the Death Penalty, held in Geneva last week. Thanks to all who helped to organize this powerful event.

Speaking out in Oklahoma

From the Associated Press, 10/10/12, "Okla. church leaders, murder victim's daughter to join national effort, denounce death penalty":

OKLAHOMA CITY — The daughter of a slain Kansas Highway Patrol trooper will join church leaders from across the state as part of an anti-death penalty initiative in Oklahoma.

Neely Goen (GOH'-ehn) and members of the Oklahoma Conference of Churches will release a theological statement in opposition to the death penalty during the event Wednesday at the Oklahoma State Capitol.

Goen is an ordained minister from Wellston whose father, Kansas Highway Patrol trooper Conroy O'Brien, was gunned down on a Kansas turnpike east of Wichita in 1978. Goen is now an advocate for the abolishment of the death penalty.

Oklahoma has executed four inmates so far in 2012, and Attorney General Scott Pruitt has asked the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals to set execution dates for two other death row prisoners.

And from KOKH-TV in Oklahoma City, "A Murder Victim's Daughter Speaks Against the Death Penalty":

OKLAHOMA CITY, OK -- Opponents of capital punishment gather at the Capitol to observe the 10th World Day Against the Death Penalty.

"I am here today because I believe we need to abolish the death penalty in Oklahoma," said Bishop Michael Girlinghouse of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

Neely Goen is the daughter of a slain Kansas Highway Patrol Officer Conroy O'Brien.

"There was some issues with dealing with the anger," said Goen.

Goen never knew her father. He was killed five months before she was born.

"I was a huge supporter of the death penalty until age 24 or 25 then God showed me this guy's life is worth just as much as mine," said Goen.

Goen says through her faith she came to forgive her father's killer and form a relationship with him.

"I want people to realize that everybody no matter right, no matter wrong, no matter whether they've cut you off in traffic or killed your brother, they're still a human being and all you're doing by taking them is causing more pain."

While Goen's perspective on the death penalty changed as she got older, she quickly learned not everyone would agree with her.

"I believe these people should pay the ultimate price in my opinion," said State Rep. Mike Sanders.

Rep. Sanders argues capital punishment serves as a deterrent. He also believes it holds people accountable for their actions.

Oklahoma has executed four inmates so far in 2012. Attorney General Scott Pruitt has asked the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals to set execution dates for two other death row prisoners.