Reply #26: Another reason to oppose it that is rarely mentioned:

[Ms. Toad]

Execution creates another innocent family with a parent, child, or sibling who has been murdered.

Regardless of whether you believe the person who is being executed deserves to die, his or her family is is innocent. Even the most vile criminals rarely hold their victims hostage for decades, torturing their families by repeatedly announcing new execution dates which come and go, with the family never knowing whether this date is for real or another false alarm. Every time a new execution date draws near, the details of the planned execution are explained in great detail, and are nearly impossible for the family to avoid if they are maintaining contact with their loved one.

When the family of the victim does not support the execution, it is doubly hard on them because they have not only lost a member of their own family they also feel responsible in some measure for the loss of the killer's family because they were unable to convince the state not to carry out vengeance on their behalf.

Here are snippets of an article about one such story. If you want the full article, send me a PM with your e-mail and I will send you a copy. It is no longer available on on line or I would provide a link.

"Early Saturday morning, March 29, 1980, two Quaker families near Central City, Nebraska, received messages that are perhaps the most devastating in human experience. One family received news that a daughter and sister, Janet Mesner, 30 (and her visiting friend, Victoria Lamm, 28), had been stabbed to death. The other family learned that their son, Randolph Reeves, 24, had been arrested for committing those crimes, crimes that occurred in an upstairs apartment of the Friends meetinghouse in Lincoln, Nebraska, where Janet lived."

<<ship>>

"Kenneth and Mildred presented, on February 5, 1985, formal testimony to the Judiciary Committee that said in part: '. . . I am a member of the Religious Society of Friends. . . . I was born and raised in the belief that violence is not an acceptable method of solving the problems that arise in our daily lives. . . . The fact that my daughter, Janet, was a victim of murder has not changed that belief. . . . I would like to encourage this committee and the full legislature to repeal the death penalty in the interest of a less violent society. . . . The use of the death penalty only lowers the standards of government to the mentality of the murderer himself who may (have thought) at the moment of the murder that his life will benefit by the death of another. . . . For the government deliberately and methodically to execute one of its citizens is to put a black mark on a society that looks to Christianity as a standard to
live by. . . .'"

"But what of the parents of Randy? Don Reeves in the 1983 hearing on the repeal measure gave the following testimony (again in part) to the Nebraska Judiciary Committee: 'I first testified against the death penalty before this committee in 1961, and on two subsequent occasions, little dreaming that we might be here under the present circumstances. Our son Randy has been convicted of taking two lives. One of them was Janet Mesner, one of our favorite young persons, daughter of lifelong friends, member of our Friends meeting, family babysitter, Randy's good friend, and older sister of fellows he had lived with. . . . The Randy who killed Janet and Vicki was not the same person whom we know and love. . . . Neither we, nor any other person we know of, are aware of any other incident in Randy's life that remotely resembles this one. . . . Still we can't help wondering, what if Randy had been born in different circumstances? Or had been adopted by some other family? Were we too naive in accepting Randy's Indian heritage? What if our whole culture were less violent, or if we did not accept or even encourage the use of alcohol and other drugs? The presence of Nebraska's death penalty did not save Janet and Vicki. Taking Randy's life will not bring them back. It did not deter others in death row, or those who took life but with whom the courts dealt differently. . . . Capital punishment is applied fitfully. . . . In Nebraska, as everywhere, it falls most harshly on the poor and on the minorities."