Post by gellibee on Jun 18, 2006 4:14:43 GMT -5
We Become What We Hate: Murder Victims' Families and the Death Penalty
"My daughter [Frances] was murdered and I originally wanted to kill her murderer," Anne Coleman explains, "but that doesn't mean I wanted the death penalty.... I was opposed to the death penalty and I always had been, but I could have cheerfully killed someone myself when I found out Frances was dead."
Coleman's daughter was murdered while driving through Los Angeles in 1985. The case remains unsolved.
"Don't we have some rights?" she pointedly asks, "Don't we have a right to some closure? You mention a cold case to a DA's office. The first thing they say is we don't have the funding for it. If they don't have the funding, then they can't afford the death penalty."
For years, Coleman has fought injustices in the U.S. justice system, including racism in the courts and the death penalty.
Anne Coleman travels with the Journey of Hope...From Violence to Healing (JOH), a national public education speaking tour led by people who have lost loved ones to murder and oppose the death penalty.
Some JOH travelers, like Coleman, have forgiven their loved ones' killers, others share the anger they still feel.
"Forgiving the person who killed Frances," Coleman confesses, "has given me peace of mind…hate can literally destroy you."
After her daughter's death, Coleman and Barbara Lewis, the mother of a death row inmate, founded an organization called Because Love Allows Compassion, which provides families of death row inmates with support and advice.
The JOH speakers' stories contrast starkly with the pervasive myths surrounding the death penalty, namely its supposed cathartic power for victims.
"The death penalty definitely does not bring closure," Coleman asserts forcefully. The victim's family members "have been led by the DA to believe that it will solve all their problems, and every problem they have while they're waiting for so many years - they put those problems on to the person who is awaiting execution."
After an execution, many victims are left with the same gnawing pain and anger they hoped the execution would ease. "They told me I was going to feel better. Now, whom am I going to hate?" one woman asked Coleman, after her loved one's murderer was executed.
"Unfortunately, the prosecutors don't have a desire to see the victims heal," Bill Pelke, co-founder of the JOH, says, echoing Coleman. "They want to keep the victim angry and go to the courtroom and let the jury see the tears."
The lengthy appeals that inevitably follow a death sentence force a grieving family to revisit the murder - "to relive it and relive it and relive it," Pelke emphasizes. "It's like having a scar that's trying to heal, [and then] just ripping that scab off and opening the wound again.... The death penalty has absolutely nothing to do with healing."
Pelke's grandmother, Ruth Pelke, taught Bible lessons to neighborhood children in Indiana. One day, four ninth grade girls knocked on her door and asked about the lessons; she led them inside. Two of the girls then stabbed Ruth Pelke 33 times; they had planned to rob her for money to play in an arcade. Paula Cooper, the ringleader of the heinous attack, was 15 years old at the time of the murder and was sentenced to death.
"I was there at the courtroom the day she was sentenced, and that was fine with me," Bill Pelke admits. "As long as the law called for the death penalty I was fine with that." At Cooper's sentencing hearing,
Bill Pelke's father testified that it would be a "travesty of justice if Paula Cooper did not get the death sentence."
Three months after Cooper's sentencing, while at work as a crane operator, Pelke experienced what Sister Helen Prejean calls a 'moment of enlightenment.'
"I found myself asking the question why, why, why and looking up and talking to God. Why had he allowed one of his most precious angels to suffer such a horrendous death?
I thought about my grandmother's faith, the Christian faith…Jesus says forgiveness should be a way of life…I begged God to please give me love and compassion for Paula Cooper on behalf of my grandmother…I realized I no longer wanted this girl to die."
Believing that his grandmother had called on him to help Cooper, Pelke began to correspond with Cooper and worked for years to successfully save her life.
"The death penalty just continues that cycle of violence and creates more murder victim family members," Pelke declares. "We become what we hate. We become killers."
"When we do talk to murder victim family members that don't agree with how we feel, we know where they're coming from -- pain [and] a desire for revenge," Pelke remarks. "They are getting to air their revenge, their retaliation, and revenge is never, ever the answer."
The JOH shares the narratives of those who can answer, from horrific personal experience, the accusation that they'd feel differently if it happened to them. Death penalty opponents are often accused of thinking only of perpetrators' needs, and never of victims' needs. Victims' rights are narrowly defined in terms of retribution and the alleged closure state-sponsored vengeance will bring.
"By sharing our stories," Pelke concludes, "people can be very fully aware that they support people on both sides of the issue - people on death row, death row families, and the victims' families."
2002 Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg. A longer version of this article ran in "In These Times
"My daughter [Frances] was murdered and I originally wanted to kill her murderer," Anne Coleman explains, "but that doesn't mean I wanted the death penalty.... I was opposed to the death penalty and I always had been, but I could have cheerfully killed someone myself when I found out Frances was dead."
Coleman's daughter was murdered while driving through Los Angeles in 1985. The case remains unsolved.
"Don't we have some rights?" she pointedly asks, "Don't we have a right to some closure? You mention a cold case to a DA's office. The first thing they say is we don't have the funding for it. If they don't have the funding, then they can't afford the death penalty."
For years, Coleman has fought injustices in the U.S. justice system, including racism in the courts and the death penalty.
Anne Coleman travels with the Journey of Hope...From Violence to Healing (JOH), a national public education speaking tour led by people who have lost loved ones to murder and oppose the death penalty.
Some JOH travelers, like Coleman, have forgiven their loved ones' killers, others share the anger they still feel.
"Forgiving the person who killed Frances," Coleman confesses, "has given me peace of mind…hate can literally destroy you."
After her daughter's death, Coleman and Barbara Lewis, the mother of a death row inmate, founded an organization called Because Love Allows Compassion, which provides families of death row inmates with support and advice.
The JOH speakers' stories contrast starkly with the pervasive myths surrounding the death penalty, namely its supposed cathartic power for victims.
"The death penalty definitely does not bring closure," Coleman asserts forcefully. The victim's family members "have been led by the DA to believe that it will solve all their problems, and every problem they have while they're waiting for so many years - they put those problems on to the person who is awaiting execution."
After an execution, many victims are left with the same gnawing pain and anger they hoped the execution would ease. "They told me I was going to feel better. Now, whom am I going to hate?" one woman asked Coleman, after her loved one's murderer was executed.
"Unfortunately, the prosecutors don't have a desire to see the victims heal," Bill Pelke, co-founder of the JOH, says, echoing Coleman. "They want to keep the victim angry and go to the courtroom and let the jury see the tears."
The lengthy appeals that inevitably follow a death sentence force a grieving family to revisit the murder - "to relive it and relive it and relive it," Pelke emphasizes. "It's like having a scar that's trying to heal, [and then] just ripping that scab off and opening the wound again.... The death penalty has absolutely nothing to do with healing."
Pelke's grandmother, Ruth Pelke, taught Bible lessons to neighborhood children in Indiana. One day, four ninth grade girls knocked on her door and asked about the lessons; she led them inside. Two of the girls then stabbed Ruth Pelke 33 times; they had planned to rob her for money to play in an arcade. Paula Cooper, the ringleader of the heinous attack, was 15 years old at the time of the murder and was sentenced to death.
"I was there at the courtroom the day she was sentenced, and that was fine with me," Bill Pelke admits. "As long as the law called for the death penalty I was fine with that." At Cooper's sentencing hearing,
Bill Pelke's father testified that it would be a "travesty of justice if Paula Cooper did not get the death sentence."
Three months after Cooper's sentencing, while at work as a crane operator, Pelke experienced what Sister Helen Prejean calls a 'moment of enlightenment.'
"I found myself asking the question why, why, why and looking up and talking to God. Why had he allowed one of his most precious angels to suffer such a horrendous death?
I thought about my grandmother's faith, the Christian faith…Jesus says forgiveness should be a way of life…I begged God to please give me love and compassion for Paula Cooper on behalf of my grandmother…I realized I no longer wanted this girl to die."
Believing that his grandmother had called on him to help Cooper, Pelke began to correspond with Cooper and worked for years to successfully save her life.
"The death penalty just continues that cycle of violence and creates more murder victim family members," Pelke declares. "We become what we hate. We become killers."
"When we do talk to murder victim family members that don't agree with how we feel, we know where they're coming from -- pain [and] a desire for revenge," Pelke remarks. "They are getting to air their revenge, their retaliation, and revenge is never, ever the answer."
The JOH shares the narratives of those who can answer, from horrific personal experience, the accusation that they'd feel differently if it happened to them. Death penalty opponents are often accused of thinking only of perpetrators' needs, and never of victims' needs. Victims' rights are narrowly defined in terms of retribution and the alleged closure state-sponsored vengeance will bring.
"By sharing our stories," Pelke concludes, "people can be very fully aware that they support people on both sides of the issue - people on death row, death row families, and the victims' families."
2002 Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg. A longer version of this article ran in "In These Times