Delaware State News: Op-Ed: Abolishing death penalty the greatest gift

[Stefanie Faucher]

http://delaware.newszap.com/delawarestatenews/

Abolishing death penalty the greatest gift
Delaware State News

Op-Ed

By Kristin Froehlich

December 24, 2014

As the holidays approach, I’ve been thinking a lot about a gift I’m hoping my state legislature will give me in the new year. When Delaware’s lawmakers return to work in January, I hope they will finally pass a bill to end the death penalty.

I often hear, “I would want the death penalty if it happened to my child” or “If someone kills my loved one, they deserve to die.” Swift and sure, right? Wrong. I know something about the death penalty, and it isn’t the gift to victims’ families that many believe it to be.

My younger brother, David, was 22 and living in Connecticut when he and four of his friends were brutally murdered by his landlord, who burnt down the house to hide the evidence.

David was identified by dental records. Prosecutors sought the death penalty. The families had no say in that decision.

If I had to invent something that would inflict the most pain on victims’ family members, it would be the death penalty. Imagine having to wait, sidelined, voiceless, while the killer receives undeserved attention in countless media stories. Imagine sitting just yards from the killer during the trial, sentencing, and years of appeals without being able to speak or express emotion. Imagine having to be immersed in the excruciating details of the murder repeatedly for years.

Family members receive a false promise that an execution will heal their pain. They can wait for years for a day that often doesn’t come. Other needs are ignored or postponed; needs like grieving privately, achieving legal finality, getting help to begin healing, and finding ways to put their lives back together. During those years, family members’ lives are bound to the killer’s, the person who hurt them and their loved one the most.

Delaware’s death penalty is neither swift nor sure. The wheels turn very slowly and there is no guarantee that they will arrive at the destination you expect. More than half of Delaware’s death row inmates have been on death row for over a decade.

More than one-third of death sentences given since Delaware’s death penalty was reinstated in 1976 have been reduced during post-conviction proceedings to life without parole, life, or a term of years. A failure rate higher than 33 percent is not worth the torture inflicted on family members.

My family waited three torturous years for the trial to begin. Meanwhile, the killer took center stage. As in many Delaware cases, the death penalty was eventually dropped and my brother’s killer received life with out parole. I learned fi rst-hand that the death penalty is a false promise. It increased the pain and helplessness our families felt.

Now, I consider myself lucky that my brother’s killer’s received life without parole because that meant that his sentence began immediately and we got the legal finality we so desperately needed. By then, I knew I didn’t want the death penalty. I didn’t want my brother’s killer to take my life, to take the focus of my heart and mind for years, able to inflict even more pain on me and my family. I was able to turn my attention to honoring my brother’s life and healing my own.

I know some will say, “Get rid of the appeals.” I just can’t stomach that. In the U.S., over 150 men and women have been wrongfully convicted and later exonerated from death row, many after decades. Knowing an innocent person could be executed is a burden too great to bear. The only way to avoid executing an innocent person is to end the death penalty.

Punish killers with prison. Give murder victims’ family members the legal finality they need to break free of the killer and to move forward with their lives. End Delaware’s death penalty.

Kristin Froehlich
Wilmington, DE

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Stefanie Faucher

Communications Director

8th Amendment Project

sfau...@8thamendment.org 

Mobile 510.393.4549

8thamendment.org