ALABAMA: Clergy: End youth executions - Interfaith group pens letter to state officials

 4 Episcopal and Methodist bishops, a rabbi and a Lutheran minister on Monday released a letter calling on the Alabama legislature and governor to take action to stop juvenile executions.

 "In the case of juveniles, the death penalty is excessive and immoral," said Bishop Henry N. Parsley, head of the Episcopal Diocese of Alabama, who hosted the clergy group at his office.

"The basis for executing children is not to be found in our faith," said United Methodist Bishop Robert E. Fannin, head of the North Alabama Conference.

 CME Bishop Lawrence Reddick, Episcopal Suffragan Bishop Mark Andrus, Temple Emanu-El Rabbi Jonathan Miller and Shades Valley Lutheran Pastor Mark Scott also joined in the release of the letter. It asked the state to commute the sentences of the 14 men on death row who committed their crimes as juveniles. It also asked the state to raise the minimum age of eligibility for the death sentence from 16 to 18.

 Parsley previously lobbied former Gov. Fob James to commute the death sentence for Judith Ann Neelley, who had been convicted of the 1982 kidnapping and murder of 13-year-old Lisa Ann Millican of Cedartown, Ga. Neelley, a teenager at the time of the killing, testified that she injected drain cleaner into the girl, then shot her and dumped her body into Little River Canyon.

James commuted Neelley's sentence before he left office in 1999. "We thought that was a wise and merciful action on his part," Parsley said.

 "In all of our faiths, there's a golden thread of forgiveness," Fannin said.

The religious leaders in Birmingham felt it was time to speak out on the broader issue of executing those who were juveniles at the time they committed crimes, Parsley said.

"We're trying to speak out on behalf of all the juveniles on death row," Parsley said. "We see it as a moral issue as a whole."