wfn.org | Former inmate joins speakers in condemning death penalty

[NewsDesk@UMCOM.UMC.ORG]

Nov. 27, 2000 News media contact: Thomas S.
McAnally·(615)742-5470·Nashville, Tenn.     10-31-32-71BP{529}

NOTE: This report is accompanied by a sidebar, UMNS story #530, and a
photograph.

By Ted Langdell*

SAN FRANCISCO (UMNS) - William Nieves, sentenced to death but later freed
when new evidence proved his innocence, was among the speakers at a
first-ever gathering of political, faith, gender and ethnic-based coalitions
opposing capital punishment Nov. 16-19.

A Philadelphia resident out of prison for just four weeks, Nieves said his
freedom had to do with "being lucky." Lucky that he got a retrial from the
Pennsylvania court system, which found that he had ineffective counsel at
his original trial. Lucky that the attorney for his mandatory appeal was
experienced. Lucky that the new lawyer had once worked with the prosecutor
in the original trial and knew the prosecutor's tricks. Lucky that his new
attorney turned up an exonerating eyewitness that the prosecution had
suppressed.

During the retrial, the same prosecutor had a witness he had not told the
defense about come to court. The witness told officers accompanying him that
Nieves was not the man he saw shoot a 21-year-old man. Nieves said the new
witness described the shooter as a short, black man, possibly Cuban. The man
got a good look at the shooter from about 20 feet away under good lighting,
Nieves recalled. Nieves is a Puerto Rican and is at least five feet 10
inches tall. His second trial produced a "not guilty" verdict.

Nieves was arrested a year after the crime was committed and couldn't recall
by that time where he was the night the murder happened. The prosecution's
only witness in the original trial was a woman Nieves described as a
"crack-cocaine-using prostitute who was wanted by the police on five
outstanding fugitive warrants." The night of the murder, she told police
that two black men did the shooting. She fled police before they could take
her to headquarters for further questioning and to look at pictures. "The
police never made contact with her again until nearly a year later, when
they decided to arrest me," Nieves said.

Now 35, Nieves said there is an upside to the six-year experience. "My case
made a difference in the state's capital, where a senator is convinced that
a moratorium is needed in Pennsylvania. My impact on these two senators is
worth more than any settlement from a false arrest or wrongful prosecution
lawsuit," he said.

"Faith played a major part in pushing me toward trusting God in helping me
prove my innocence."

More than 1,000 participants in the San Francisco gathering explored how to
network, start grass-roots efforts in local churches, educate the public,
and mobilize the vast forces of organized labor. They met individuals who
are working to abolish the death penalty in other countries.   They also
spoke with parents and children of death row inmates across the country and
members of murder victims' families.

Donna Doolin-Larsen related the story of her truck-driver son Keith Doolin.
Her son was home for a couple of weeks to help her recover from surgery and
took someone to the bus station rather late one night, Doolin-Larsen said.
"On his way home, someone pointed a finger at him and said, 'That's the
man.' That was the end of the investigation and the beginning of our
nightmare," she said, speaking outside San Quentin prison where her son
lives on death row.

Then 22, Keith Doolin was arrested Oct. 18, 1995, for the murders of two
prostitutes and the attempted murders of four others, according to his
mother. 

Doolin-Larsen leveled a number of charges at police, prosecutors, the trial
judge and her son's defense attorney, whom she said did little to help
defend her son. A paralegal, she believes she has put together the evidence
needed to free her son if she can get it into court. An appeal is pending,
delayed by the lack of qualified attorneys, she said.

During the arrest and trial, Doolin-Larsen said her faith support system
failed. "Our church and pastor turned their back to us," she said. A United
Methodist minister in Fresno, Calif., heard about her plight, and stepped in
to help. Now appointed to San Rafael, Calif., near the prison, the Rev. John
Auer still talks with Doolin-Larsen and visits her son on death row.

Aba Gayle remembers the prosecutor telling her that the execution of the man
who stabbed her 19-year-old daughter to death "would be the magic bullet
that heals you." 

"Unfortunately, having someone else murdered can't possibly heal anyone,"
Gayle later concluded. "I went through eight years of total anger, total
rage, and a lust for revenge that was unbelievable." She finally enrolled in
a meditation class and then began to explore the meaning of forgiveness.

Gayle's friend urged her to forgive the man who was convicted of her
daughter's murder, but she couldn't bring herself to act until she got a
notice telling her the execution date had been set. "The very night I got
the notice, I heard a voice, and it was really loud and really clear, and it
said, 'You must forgive him and you must let him know,'" Gayle recalled. "I
couldn't sleep, that voice was so persistent." At 4 a.m., she wrote the man
a letter. 

"I told him how much Katherine meant to me and her family, how much her
death hurt us, how it had changed our whole lives and how so much of what I
planned was never going to happen." She told him about her recent spiritual
enlightenment and her willingness to forgive him. Gayle made it clear that
she didn't think he was blameless and added that he shouldn't look to her to
be his advocate "because the law of the land would take care of his fate."

"I can still remember the tingles up my spine when I recall mailing that
letter," she said. "The mailbox was a little one up on the wall, and it made
a click when you let go of it. When I heard that click... all the anger, all
the rage... that ugliness that I'd been carrying around for 12 years... it
instantly was gone. And, in its place, I was filled with a sense of love and
joy and peace, and I was in a state of grace!"

Her daughter's killer wrote back. "I was afraid to open the letter," Gayle
remembered. But, in the note, she found an intelligent, spiritual and
remorseful man.

She accepted his invitation to visit, and after talking for quite some time,
left San Quentin "knowing that I would be his advocate, and the advocate for
all the other men there."

Gayle wants people to know that "the people we're incarcerating are all
human beings, capable of rehabilitation and of making a spiritual change in
their lives."

"Forgiveness as it has happened to me is the powerful gift that can happen
to them," Gayle said. "Forgiveness isn't a gift that you give away.  It's a
gift that you give to yourself ... because it heals." 

Speaking at an awards banquet at the close of the four-day conference, U.S.
Sen. Russ Feingold challenged President Clinton to spare a convicted
murderer who is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection Dec. 12 (see
UMNS story #530). Juan Raul Garza was convicted under the federal "drug
kingpin" statute for killing three men in Texas.

Feingold urged participants at the conference to join him in pressuring the
president. A Democrat from Wisconsin, Feingold cited polls that show
two-thirds of those asked "support a suspension of executions while issues
of fairness are studied."

The San Francisco conference was supported in part by the United Methodist
Board of Church and Society.  That support is an extension of the biblical
commandment "Thou shall not kill," according to Frances Jett, a staff member
of the Washington-based agency. 

"We are advocates for reconciliation and forgiveness," Jett said of the
abolition movement. "We want folks to value life. That is part of our
Christian calling."

The denomination has officially opposed the death penalty for many years,
Jett said. "We believe that capital punishment is a violation of human
rights, not just a criminal justice issue." Lay and clergy leaders of the
church added the human rights language to official positions at General
Conference in May.

General Conference also adopted resolutions supporting the moratorium
campaign and encouraging United Methodist bishops to speak out more
regularly and loudly against the death penalty, Jett said.

Kathy Harris came to the conference, even though her home state, Alaska,
doesn't have a death penalty. A member of First United Methodist Church in
Anchorage, Harris moved north from Texas, "so I've seen it from both sides."

As a Texan, "like most people, I supported the death penalty because that
was the law, it seemed to work, and I'd never heard of a reason not to
support it," Harris said. That changed when she started attending meetings
of Amnesty International and saw how the death penalty is so "racially
applied."

Harris, an accountant, contends that a capital case ends up costing two to
three times more than if a convicted person were locked up for life. She
says her research reveals that death penalty cases are more expensive
because of the method for selecting jurors, the need for more lawyers, the
length of such trials, and the appeals process. Add to that the cost of
maintaining "death rows" in prisons around the country.
 
Feingold said he was proud to be from a state that abolished executions
after a particularly ugly one in 1851.

A death penalty opponent since he was 8 years old, Feingold noted that the
movement to abolish slavery took decades to bear fruit. Progress toward
abolishing the death penalty is happening, he said, with the support of
unlikely partners. He noted that Roman Catholic Pope John Paul II and
conservative television preacher Pat Robertson have expressed reservations
about how America administers the most severe criminal penalty.

Feingold said bills now in Congress would set minimum standards for legal
representation of people facing the death penalty, provide for
post-conviction modern DNA testing, impose a nationwide moratorium on
executions and create an independent commission to investigate the death
penalty system.

He lauded Illinois Gov. George Ryan for imposing a moratorium on executions
and establishing an investigative commission. "His action was one of the
most courageous actions any public figure has ever taken," Feingold said as
he raised his voice to be heard over the cheering crowd, which stood to
honor the governor.

Ryan was given the conference's "Outstanding Public Service award." 

"I supported the death penalty," Ryan said. "I spoke for the death penalty.
I voted for the death penalty, and I believed in the death penalty."

Recalling a debate in the Illinois General Assembly, Ryan said an opponent
of capital punishment asked, "Is there anybody who is for this proposal
today, who is willing to throw the switch?"

Wishing he could take back his support for executions, Ryan said, "The fact
is, now, that as governor, the responsibility is mine, and I do throw the
switch.

"That's the toughest part of being governor... deciding who lives and who
dies. It's an awesome responsibility. It's not one that a human should
have," he concluded.  

As governor, Ryan said he's learned a lot more about the administration of
capital punishment in Illinois than he knew as a legislator. "The more I've
learned, the more troubled I've become." Since the Illinois death penalty
was restored in 1977, "12 inmates have been executed and 13 have been
exonerated," Ryan said.

He cited the case of Anthony Porter, a man freed after 16 years on death row
by the work of Chicago journalism students and a private investigator who
turned up the real double-murderer and obtained a confession. Porter came
within two days of death. "I've got to tell you, I was stunned, quite
frankly," the governor said.

"Those kids are really the ones who should be here tonight," Ryan stated as
he pointed at his award. 

In an interview, actor Mike Farrell told conference participants that
churches and centers of faith can play an important role in abolishing the
death penalty. Farrell is president of Death Penalty Focus, a co-sponsor of
the event. Doing away with capital punishment would carry an economic
benefit, he said. "Californians would save $90 million a year if they
abolished the death system." 

Another speaker at the conference was Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead
Man Walking.  "There's a moral threshold that's been crossed," she said.
"People are good and decent. They don't want to kill innocent people along
with guilty people." 

Closing the conference, about 50 people chanted while they carried signs and
banners several miles through the heart of San Francisco and then on a ferry
across the bay to San Quentin Prison, home to California's death row.  

Doolin-Larsen found herself closer to - but not close enough to see -- her
son on death row. And Gayle was nearer the man she had forgiven for the
murder of her daughter.
 #  #  #
*Langdell recently served as interim editor of the California-Nevada Annual
Conference edition of the United Methodist Review. A 27-year news veteran,
he owns a print, video, audio and web production services company in
Marysville, Calif.

*************************************
United Methodist News Service
Photos and stories also available at:
http://umns.umc.org