I could spout out
statistics (such as the state governments spend about $3.2 million on each death row inmate, compared to about $535,000 for a life sentence), but the discerning
everything2 reader can find those on his own.
My story is
personal: I always wondered what would happen if a close friend was murdered. Would I still be
pro-life? What if the
crime was so
cold-blooded that it had no
excuse?
Tragically, I found out last Saturday.
My friend was brutally murdered.(In the twenty years since 1973, at least 48 people were put on Death Row, and were innocent)She had spent her entire life helping the under-priveledged youth of our city, from her job as a low-salary inner-city school teacher, where she was constantly threatened and she saw signs of domestic violence in many of her pupils:scars,burns,worse.
She acted: calling the police, at danger of backlash to herself and danger of phyical violence. She stayed late at school, working hours with troubled kids. As if this wasn't enough, she worked countless hours, every Sunday, creating out of almost nothing a vibrant and active Youth Group, a place where many desperate loners could have, if only for 2 hours on Sunday, a place where they were at home.(A black man who kills a white person is 11 times more likely to receive the death penalty than a white man who kills a black person.) A friend of mine, and hers, once asked me to deliver her a letter. Not remarkable, except that she was one of the two adults he trusted as he was recovering from an attempted suicide.
But she didn't stop there: she created a summer camp for young immigrant children, most of who had a radically different faith from her and who lived in poverty, and gave them American friends and a chance to acclimate to the often breakneck speed of American culture.
Her entire life: devoted to helping the troubled. Finally, she adopted one of her troubled teens, who had moved from Vietnam. She tried her best to raise him, devoting her life and trust in her one greatest act of caring. 9 days ago, her foster child, in his late teens/early twenties, murdered her. After repeated run-ins with the police and her family, he had been banished from the house. Yet a week later, she was willing to take him back in, to spend the day with him, to talk to him.
I tell her story here, not to praise her, though she is certainly worthy of it, but to make a point: she was certain in her pro-life convictions, certain that there was hope for all human life, up until the very end. I grappled with the question, why? But there was one thing certain in my mind. She would have wanted her killer to live, to earn a chance at redemption, if not out of prison, and least in his heart.
And yes, now I can say with certainty that I feel the same way.
Facts courtesy of theelectricchair.com