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Pennsylvania
Journey By Kathy Harris The
Patriot News
in Harrisburg carried a photograph of Lois Robison wearing what was called the
“Bush Head”, a box with a picture of George Bush’s head pasted to all four
sides. She was standing in front of
the Governor’s mansion, holding a stop sign that read “Stop me before I kill
again.” Lois Robison’s oldest
son was executed in Texas on January 21, 2000.
The
Pennsylvania Journey began on August 4, on the heels of the Republican
Convention, in Philadelphia. The
opening event was a meeting with some family members of men on Pennsylvania’s
Death Row. Lois shared the story of
how her son, Larry, was diagnosed with schizophrenia shortly after his 21st
birthday. He was no longer covered under his parent’s health insurance and his
family couldn’t afford the $200 a day to keep him in a private facility. She
had tried to get him help, but one hospital after another discharged him. She
was told, “If he ever does
anything violent, then he will be able to get the long-term treatment he
needs.” In the only act of violence that Larry ever committed, five people
died horribly. Instead of getting
the long-term treatment everyone agreed Larry needed, he got the death penalty.
Everyone agreed Larry was mentally ill when he killed those five people,
and everyone agreed he was still mentally ill when Texas wanted to execute him.
He was able to answer the two questions that make one competent, in spite
of mental illness, to be executed in Texas.
He knew the state of Texas planned to kill him and he knew why. Lois
spent the last sixteen years traveling around the country telling Larry’s
story, trying to save his life. Although
she lost that battle seven months ago, she is still talking, frequently through
tears, trying to change the system that kills their mentally ill, rather than
treating them. “If Larry had
gotten the help he needed, six lives could have been saved.
The lives of his five victims and his.”
Two mothers of death row inmates cried as they hugged Lois, welcoming one
of their own, someone that understood their pain. Lois
finds a lot of her support from an unlikely source, family members of murder
victims. Now that her son has been
killed, she is considered one of them. Bill
Pelke fondly refers to her as “Mom”. At a rally in front of the Liberty Bell in downtown
Philadelphia, Bill said that it was Paula Cooper that got him involved in this
work, but it is the people like Lois Robison that keep him involved.
Paula
Cooper was fifteen years old when she and three of her companions murdered Bill
Pelke’s grandmother, Ruth Pelke. When
she was sentenced to death, Bill supported that decision. Four months later he
had a change of heart. High on top
of his crane at Bethlehem Steel, reflecting on the problems in his own life, he
thought of a young girl with more serious problems than his.
He imagined Paula Cooper sitting in her cell, tears in her eyes, moaning
“What have I done?” He recalled the day in the courtroom when she was sentenced
to death. An old man started crying
and wailing “They’re going to kill my baby!”
Bill had watched the man, tears rolling down his cheeks, be escorted from
the courtroom. He later learned it
was Paula’s grandfather. Bill
watched as Paula was led from the courtroom, tears falling from her eyes and
leaving big blotches on her blue prison dress.
He pictured his grandmother, the same beautiful picture the newspapers
had used each time they carried stories about the murder, but with one
difference. There were tears coming
from his grandmother’s eyes. Bill knew these tears his grandmother was
shedding were tears of love and compassion for Paula Cooper and her family.
He knew his grandmother wanted someone in her family to have that same
love and compassion, and he felt it fell on his shoulders. Not knowing what else
to do, in tears, he prayed for God to give him love and compassion for Paula and
her family and to do that on behalf of his grandmother.
Bill realized his prayer had been answered when he started thinking about
writing Paula a letter, telling her he forgave her and sharing his
grandmother’s faith with her. That prayer changed his life. Eventually Paula’s sentence was commuted to sixty years. Bill helped organize the first Journey of Hope...From Violence to Healing in Indiana in 1993. Murder victim family members came from across the country to share their stories of their own personal journeys from violence to healing, from fury to forgiveness. One
of those on the first Journey was George White. The Citizens’ Voice
of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania carried a photograph of him speaking at the First
Presbyterian Church. George was telling a harrowing tale about how he came to
his convictions about the death penalty at the end of a gun.
He and his wife were robbed and shot at his place of business.
His wife died, he lived. Sixteen
months later he was charged with her capital murder. Since George was white with
perceived economic status, he got life instead of death.
He spent two years, 103 days in prison before his sentence was
overturned. After living in legal limbo for another three years, the case was
dismissed. What began with a bang ended with a whimper.
The real killer was never found. George knows first hand how easy it is
for the criminal justice system to convict and potentially execute an innocent
person. George
explains the mission of the Journey. “We
are amateur story tellers, doing grassroots education, humanizing the issue of
the death penalty. Making it real
diffuses the slogans.” Journey
members like Bill, George and SueZann can directly respond to the slogan
“You’d feel differently if it happened to you.” SueZann
Bosler’s father, a Brethern minister, had told her that if he was ever
murdered he would not want that person to get the death penalty.
That rhetorical statement became reality when her father was stabbed to
death in a home invasion. SueZann
was stabbed six times in the same attack and barely survived.
The man who killed her father and tried to kill her, was sentenced to
death. She says she got the closure
she needed when she was able to stand up in court and say “James Bernard
Campbell, I forgive you.” In a
re-sentencing hearing in 1997 she was able to convey to the jury, over the
objections of the prosecutors, that she did not want her father’s killer
sentenced to death. He received a
life sentence. Today her favorite
rhetorical question is “Why do we kill people who kill people to show that
killing people is wrong?” After
a rally in front of Governor Ridge’s office in Erie, SueZann was featured in a
live interview by a local television station.
Less than a week later, on August 16, the city of Erie passed a
resolution calling for a moratorium on the death penalty.
Similar resolutions passed earlier this year in Philadelphia and
Pittsburgh. Several
members of Amnesty International joined the Journey as activist participants,
providing facts and statistics about the death penalty.
Andrew Eager came all the way from Ireland to share how the Irish and
other Europeans view the American fondness for the death penalty.
He pointed out that the U. S. helped draft the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights. It is hard for Ireland to fathom why we continue to violate the
international laws we helped to create, and claim to support, by continuing to
execute our citizens, especially juveniles.
Continued executions undermine the American claim to leadership in the
realm of human rights. No European
country retains the death penalty. Many Europeans would like to see the United
States join the rest of the civilized nations of the world in abolishing the
death penalty. Journey
participants traveled across Pennsylvania in very visible style aboard
“Abolition Movin”, a 1965 GMC Trailways bus, painted green and white with
“Journey of Hope...From Violence to Healing” written along the sides. A sign
that says, “I oppose the death penalty. Don’t kill for me” fills the rear
window. The honks accompanied by thumbs up signs were interspersed with other,
less welcoming hand signals. Good
or bad, the bus always generates attention.
At one truck stop, an angry trucker climbed aboard demanding to know
“who pays for this thing?” More
often, people stop to say thanks and to offer encouragement.
The
organization responsible for bringing the Journey to Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania
Abolitionists United Against the Death Penalty, worked closely with local groups
and churches to arrange speaking events, pot-luck meals, and housing. The open
hospitality of the hosts reminds one of the bible verse: “Be not forgetful to
entertain strangers; for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.”
(Hebrew 13:2) Journey participants
were touched by the warm welcome they received from these many people willing to
feed and house them. The
Journey culminated on August 13 with a march to SCI Greene, Pennsylvania’s
largest death row. The march and vigil was organized by the Children’s Crusade
2000 and The Bruderhof Communities. The
marchers, many of them children, wearing yellow t-shirts and flowers in their
hair, carrying yellow balloons that said “Life!” and brightly colored
banners, were a sharp contrast to the counter-protesters. The Fraternal Order of
Police stood next to their motorcycles in black t-shirts, their backs turned
toward the marchers, silently protesting their presence. The vigil featured well-known abolitionists such as Sister
Helen Prejean, Bud Welch and Rubin “Hurricane” Carter. It closed powerfully
with hundreds of voices singing “We Shall Overcome.”
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