Victims' family members crusade against death penalty

Vengeance not the answer say relatives of those killed.

By Lilly Rockwell

AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF

Saturday, October 29, 2005

A cousin who died in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. A daughter killed in the Oklahoma City bombing. A sister brutally murdered by a teenager.

The family members of these victims have one thing in common: They all oppose the death penalty and are working to abolish it.

"The role of victims' voices is vital," said Jennifer Bishop-Jenkins, whose sister's family was murdered in Chicago by a 16-year-old in the late 1990s. Her sister's death is what prompted her to speak out against the use of the death penalty.

Shattering the perception that family members are the biggest advocates for the death penalty, Jenkins and others attended a national anti-death-penalty conference in Austin on Friday. Those grieving family members at the conference say -- either for religious reasons or a belief that the criminal justice system is flawed -- that vengeance is not the answer.

Renewed attention to these unusual advocates will bring the movement to a whole new level, said David Elliot, the spokesman for the National Conference to Abolish the Death Penalty.

About 300 people attended the annual conference at the downtown Hyatt hotel, and a protest is planned at the City Hall plaza at 3 p.m. today.

The conference sponsored workshops with family members of death row inmates and murder victims. It also featured documentary films on death row inmates and strategy sessions on how to be more media savvy.

"What we are trying to do is change the very basic psychology of our movement," Elliot said.

On the heels of a U.S. Supreme Court decision to abolish the death penalty for juveniles, Elliot said his group is trying to use a more sophisticated approach, catapulting off the success of smaller state victories.

One of these victories was the decision by Illinois Gov. George Ryan to commute all of the 156 death row sentences to life in prison.

Even in states such as Texas, which is largely pro-death penalty, Elliot said, there is optimism in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling and the state's shifting racial demographic.

Texas, which has executed 15 people this year, puts to death more convicted killers than any other state: 137 in the previous five years, according to Texas Department of Criminal Justice statistics.

Better media campaigns and more fundraising and lobbying are crucial, Elliot said.

Advocates said people such as Bud Welch, who frequently speaks out against the death penalty after his daughter died in the Oklahoma City bombing, and Juan Melendez, who spent 17 years on Florida's death row, put a face to their cause. Melendez was released in 2002 after another person's confession to the crime was revealed.

One popular panel discussed ways to present anti-death-penalty arguments.

A study by a Pennsylvania State professor showed that certain arguments resonated better with death penalty supporters than others.

For instance, saying there are problems in the justice system that put innocent people on death row is more effective than using a moral argument that killing is wrong, said Frank Baumgartner, the Penn State professor who did the study.

"People need to hear stories that hit home," Baumgartner said. "Make comparisons between the people that run (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) and the people that run the justice system."