Delaware State News: Delaware death penalty opponents gear up orchestrated campaign

[Stefanie Faucher]

http://delaware.newszap.com/centraldelaware/136611-70/delaware-death-penalty-opponents-gear-up-orchestrated-campaign
Delaware death penalty opponents gear up orchestrated campaign

By Craig Anderson
Delaware State News

Updated November 16, 2014

DOVER — Death penalty opponents are going public in Delaware the next few days.

“Death Penalty Awareness Days” started Friday and runs through Nov. 23.

The orchestrated push was designed to “educate the public about the inherent flaws in a capital punishment system and grow support for repeal of the death penalty in Delaware,” according to a The Delaware Repeal Project news release.

Town hall-style forums are scheduled in Bear (Tuesday), Middletown (Wednesday) and Dover (Thursday) next week.

Among the keynote speakers is retired Manchester, N.H., police officer John Breckinridge, who said he initially supported the death penalty but has come around for repeal. Mr. Breckinridge’s law enforcement partner was shot and killed as they investigated a disturbance in 2006.

When asked why, in a nutshell, the death penalty should be repealed, Mr. Breckinridge answered via email with:

“The death penalty should be repealed as it is about revenge, not justice,” he said. “It prolongs the legal process potentially by decades making the families of all involved suffer for that length of time.

“The death penalty is not cost efficient as the bills for a DP case are in the millions while similar cases where the sentence is life in prison without parole tend to cost significantly less.

“The sole death row inmate in New Hampshire has cost the state $5 million plus to date with appeals yet to happen while the estimate for his case would have been under $1 million if the death penalty had not been sought.

“There have been people that were sentenced to death who were later found to be not just not guilty under law but innocent in every sense. The execution of even one innocent person is enough reason to repeal the death penalty.”

Mr. Breckinridge will speak at St. Joseph Catholic Church Parish Hall at 115 Cleaver Farm Road in Middletown on Wednesday, followed by an appearance at Wesley United Methodist Church at 209 S. State St. in Dover on Thursday. The first meeting is Tuesday at St. Elizabeth Anne Seton R.C. Parish Hall at 345 Bear-Christiana Road in Bear.

The meetings are scheduled from 7 to 9 p.m.

Emotions likely will run high at the death penalty repeal gatherings, Mr. Breckinridge said.

“The (gatherings) that I’ve seen tend to be a pep rally of sorts for the people attending, it gets them excited about their cause, lets them meet and connect with like-minded people, and shows that lots of people from very different lives and points of view can agree about a cause,” he said.

“On the other hand there are some people who become very upset at these events. It can be a very emotional and polarizing issue. ...”

“It’s True: Police Support Repeal” is the theme for the town-hall forums, officials said.

Other keynote speakers include West Orange, N.J., Police Chief James Abbott, Terrence Dwyer and George Kain of Western Connecticut State University, both past and present police officers.

“The death penalty system is broken beyond repair, and the fact that police officers and others in law enforcement support repeal illustrates that the death penalty does not contribute to our safety,” The Delaware Repeal Project Campaign manager Ti Hall said in a news release.

“We can replace the death penalty with life without parole and use the tax dollars saved to fund violent crime prevention and services for victims’ families.”

The Delaware Repeal Project will visit church worship services throughout the state as well, which started Friday.

Currently, there are 16 convicted murderers, all men, sentenced to death in Delaware, according to the Delaware Department of Correction.

More information on The Delaware Repeal Project is available online at www.DERepeal.org.

Staff writer Craig Anderson can be reached at 741-8296 or cand...@newszap.com. Follow @DSNAnderson on Twitter.


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Stefanie Faucher
Communications Director
8th Amendment Project
sfau...@8thamendment.org
Mobile 510.393.4549
8thamendment.org