In These Times

USA: We Become What We Hate

I could have cheerfully killed someone myself when I found out [my daughter] was dead," says Anne Coleman. Her daughter was murdered while driving through Los Angeles in 1985, and the case remains unsolved. "But that doesn't mean I wanted the death penalty. I was opposed to the death penalty, and I always had been."

 Coleman travels on the "Journey of Hope . . . From Violence to Healing," a national public education speaking tour led by people who have lost a loved one to murder and oppose the death penalty. Some participants, like Coleman, have forgiven their loved ones' killers, while others share the anger they still feel.

 "Forgiving the person who killed Frances has given me peace of mind," Coleman confesses. "Hate can literally destroy you." After her daughter's death, she and the mother of a death row inmate founded another organization, Because Love Allows Compassion, that gives support and advice to families of death row inmates and to murder victims' families.

 Bill Pelke, co-founder of Journey of Hope, lost his grandmother to a brutal murder; she was stabbed and killed by 4 9th-grade girls she invited into her home after they knocked on her door and inquired about the Bible lessons she taught. At first, Pelke supported one of the girls, Paula Cooper, receiving a death sentence. "I was there at the courtroom the day she was sentenced to death, and that was fine with me," he admits.

 But over time he grew to oppose it. Several months after Cooper's sentencing, while at work as a crane operator, Pelke experienced a "moment of enlightenment": "I begged God to please give me love and compassion for Paula Cooper on behalf of my grandmother. I realized I no longer wanted this girl to die." He began to correspond with her and worked for years to overturn her sentencing, an effort that was eventually successful.

 Death penalty opponents are often accused of thinking only of perpetrators' needs, and never of victims' needs. Victims' rights are narrowly defined in terms of retribution and the alleged closure state-sponsored vengeance will bring. The Journey of Hope shares the narratives of those who can answer, from horrific personal experience, the accusation that they'd feel differently if it happened to them. "When we do talk to murder victim family members that don't agree with how we feel, we know where they're coming from . . . pain, [and] a desire for revenge," Pelke says. "By sharing our stories, people can be very fully aware they support people on both sides of the issue -- people on death row, death row families and the victims' families."

 Journey of Hope, founded in 1993, has travelled to countless schools, community centers and houses of worship throughout the United States. The group hosts an annual two-week public education event and conducts year-round tours here and in other countries, drawing both those who oppose the death penalty and those who support it. The group began as a project of Murder Victims Families for Reconciliation, a victims' advocacy group that opposes capital punishment. After speaking to thousands of people, Journey of Hope became its own organization in 1997.

 The speakers' stories contrast starkly with the myths often used to support the death penalty, such as its perceived cathartic power for victims. "The death penalty definitely does not bring closure," Coleman says. After an execution, many victims are left with the same gnawing pain and anger they hoped the execution would ease.

 "Unfortunately, the prosecutors don't have a desire to see the victims heal," Pelke says, echoing Coleman. "They want to keep the victim angry and go to the courtroom and let the jury see the tears." The lengthy appeals that inevitably follow a death sentence force a grieving family to revisit the murder -- "to relive it and relive it and relive it," Pelke says. "It's like . . . opening the wound again.

 "The death penalty has absolutely nothing to do with healing. [It] just continues that cycle of violence and creates more murder victim family members," Pelke says. "We become what we hate. We become killers."