"It's amazing how angry some people
get when others stand on a corner to say, 'Don't kill.' "
- David Giacopassi
Wearing a sweatshirt with the words, "I oppose the death
penalty. Don't kill for me," Dr. Peter Gathje takes his place
every Wednesday at the corner of Union and McLean.
There a band of a dozen or so members of the Memphis
chapter of the Tennessee Coalition to Abolish State Killing
take part in a 60- to 90-minute vigil, as they have for three
years, protesting capital punishment.
"We don't have the money to buy billboards but we can put
our bodies out on the street," said Gathje, professor of
religion at Christian Brothers College.
They hold signs with messages like:
"Those without capital get the punishment."
"Redemption, not revenge."
" 'I do not think God approves of the death penalty for any
crime,' Martin Luther King Jr."
"Honk if you oppose the death penalty."
These days the group hears lots more honks and sees more
thumbs-up signs from motorists.
"When we first started we got a lot more angry responses
with middle fingers and people yelling out things like 'fry
them all,' " said Gathje.
But recent happenings have led to an opening of dialog on
the subject and less angry responses to the demonstrators, he
said.
Governors in Illinois and Maryland imposed moratoria on
death penalties when new evidence proved the innocence of
several death row prisoners. (Maryland, which has a new
governor, lifted its moratorium Wednesday when a judge agreed
to sign a death warrant allowing a capital case to forward.)
Then on Jan. 11 George Ryan, outgoing governor of Illinois,
commuted the death sentences of all 167 of the state's death
row inmates to life in prison without chance of parole.
"We've been fighting the death penalty with everything we
have for three years," said Celeste Wray, the 81-year-old
keeper of the signs for the group. "But now the tide is
turning. Ryan's move created a lot of dialog. We have to
address the issue now. We can't rake it under the rug."
There's a movement to nominate Ryan for the Nobel Peace
Prize, said Dr. David Giacopassi, a demonstrator who is a
professor in the criminology and criminal justice department
at the University of Memphis.
Giacopassi, who is writing an article on Tennessee slave
codes in 1854 and lynchings, thinks the death penalty will
eventually be abolished.
"In the future I think we'll be looking at the death
penalty in the same way we look at slave codes," he said. "The
political and religious leaders who espoused these laws as
fair and just will be seen as terribly misguided."
Over the years, Giacopassi has heard shouts of "I hope
someone kills your mother," and other unprintable jeers as he
stands with the group.
"It's amazing how angry some people get when others stand
on a corner to say, 'Don't kill.' "
While Ryan and Giacopassi are optimistic now, there hasn't
been reason for positive thinking among death penalty
opponents in the past 30 years. A Gallup poll taken in May
2002 found 72 percent of Americans favor the death penalty; 25
percent oppose it and 3 percent are undecided. In 1966, 42
percent favored the death penalty, 47 percent opposed it and
11 percent were undecided.
The Tennessee Coalition to Abolish State Killing has five
other chapters across the state.
"We have a cross-section of members in Memphis," said
Gathje, leader of the Memphis group. "The leadership has
tended to be from academia but that's changing."
He estimates about half of the members come to their views
about the death penalty from religious convictions. The
mailing list for the local chapter includes about 120
households.
Up until Robert Glen Coe was executed April 19, 2000,
Tennessee had not put anyone to death in four decades. About
100 inmates are on Tennessee's death row. Gov. Phil Bredesen,
who took office Saturday, is on record as supporting the death
penalty.
During last week's vigil a counterprotester showed up on a
nearby corner with a sign saying "kill the bastards."
It was only the third time in three years a counterprotest
has been mounted, said Giacopassi.
The white man, who appeared to be in his 30s, refused to
identify himself to a reporter for The Commercial Appeal and
refused to let a CA photographer take his picture. He said he
saw the death penalty protesters the week before and decided
to make a sign of his own.
"Sometimes people pull over and thank us for being on the
corner," Giacopassi said.
He's observed that support for the demonstrators seems to
be greatest among African-Americans and least among young
white men.
Wray typically begins the vigil standing with others in the
group. When she gets tired, she sits on her lawn chair. She is
on the corner in all kinds of weather, from the blazing heat
of a July afternoon to bone-chillingly cold January days.
She opposes the death penalty because she thinks the rich
get off and the poor get iced; it diminishes our country in
the eyes of the world; and as a Christian, she can't imagine
Jesus administering a lethal dose. But she isn't soft on
crime.
"I'm against crime and violence in any form," said Wray.
If someone killed one of her family members she is sure she
would "probably want to kill the perpetrator with my bare
hands."
"But I hope I would be able to stand by my principles,"
said Wray, a hospice and Church Health Center volunteer who
regularly visits prisoners at the Memphis Federal Correctional
Institution.
The argument about family members of victims not having
closure unless the death penalty is carried out doesn't ring
true to her.
"I don't think there is any such thing as closure," she
said. "Even when you lose someone in a natural death, there's
no closure. It's always there."
Gathje said he knows he would be angry and have "desires of
vengeance" if someone killed his wife or another member of his
family.
"But I'm a person of faith and I'm not aware of any
religion that says vengeance is a legitimate emotion," he
said. "All religious traditions call for us to seek some
redemptive purpose out of the evil that was done. It's not
easy and not a short process."
Gathje's opposition to the death penalty was cemented when
he was in graduate school at Emory University in Atlanta. A
research project sent him to live with a Christian community
that ministered to prisoners and death row inmates.
During the six weeks he spent with them in the summer of
1987, four people were executed. One of them asked the
community to organize his funeral.
"I ended up being one of the people who carried his casket
to the cemetery," said Gathje, who grew up in Minnesota where
there is no death penalty. "It was a powerful experience."
He met the family of the executed man, an often-forgotten
group in capital punishment debates.
"They feel as though they are being punished for something
they haven't done," he said.
While the families of many murder victims support the death
penalty, others have banded together to oppose it.
Murder Victims Families for Reconciliation formed in 1976
and has about 5,000 members.
"There's a widely held belief that all survivors of
homicide victims want the death penalty to heal or bring
closure," said Renny Cushing, executive director of MVFR,
based in Cambridge, Mass. "But a number of people, while
muddling through their pain, come to the conclusion that a
ritual killing by the state won't bring back their loved ones.
"People who oppose the death penalty don't want to lose
their values as well as their family member," said Cushing,
whose father was murdered in 1988.
Execution of a murderer does not get rid of the pain of
losing a loved one, said Dudley Sharp, resource director for
Justice for All, a Houston-based organization focused on
victims rights. Members favor the death penalty.
"What we hear most from families is relief that the
offender can no longer harm anyone else," said Sharp.
The group at Union and McLean will be keeping its vigil
indefinitely.
As Wray said:
"I'm going to continue as long as there is breath in my
body."
- Christine Arpe Gang:
529-2368
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