‘Honoring life by abolishing the death penalty’ was the motto students championed Saturday morning when discussing capital punishment.
“One of the challenging things about justice is it has multiple parts,” said Lipscomb history professor Dr. Richard Goode.
The 7th Annual Tennesseans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty student conference was hosted yesterday by Lipscomb’s department of History, Politics and Philosophy. A TADP board member since 2011, Dr. Goode first joined the group in 1999.
“The first thing I did when I got involved is I started visiting a guy on death row,” Goode said. “I visited him for 10 years. He eventually died from cancer.”
Goode became involved after a former student told him about the group. Goode said he had been talking about issues of retribution, justice and reconciliation, but it wasn’t until his student told him about TADP that he decided to act on his feelings.
“It stopped being an issue and became a very human concern,” Goode said. “It’s important to understand the policy and the practice, and the system and structures, because they are important. But, they’re important because they hit real people.”
Students from across the state gathered for the conference in Ward Hall. Universities and colleges such as Belmont, Vanderbilt, Middle Tennessee State, Bell, Martin Methodist, Volunteer State and Lipscomb were all in attendance.
The conference began with a short opener from Stacy Rector, who has been the executive director of TADP since 2006. Rector also serves on the national board of People of Faith Against the Death Penalty. Recognizing her audience did not have a unified opinion, Rector asked students to be respectful of others.
“We all ultimately want the same things,” Rector said. “We all want to be safe. We all want our families to be safe. We all want support for murder victims’ families. We all want offenders to be held accountable. We all want a system that works for everybody, fairly and justly. So, we have a lot in common.
“The three areas of the death penalty that I want to focus on are the issues of fairness, cost, and accuracy,” Rector said.
Since 1983, New Jersey taxpayers have paid over $253 million for their death penalty system over what they would pay for a system that sought life without parole. New Jersey had 10 inmates on death row and one executed in that time period. Tennessee has had 85 inmates on death row and six executed since 1976. But, unlike New Jersey, Tennessee does not track the amount of money spent to keep inmates on death row.
A total of 140 people since 1973 have been released from death rows nationwide upon evidence of wrongful convictions. Three of those people were on death row in Tennessee.
The keynote address was given by Ray Krone, the 100th person exonerated from death row in the United States. Despite the evidence that pointed to his innocence, Krone was convicted of murder, kidnapping and sexual assault in 1992 and was sentenced to death.
“How do you mitigate something you didn’t do?” the Air Force veteran said. “How do you show remorse or regret for something you didn’t do? That’s what they wanted me to do. So, I was labeled a monster, an un-remorseful killer, and I was sentenced to death.
“My friends and family supported me and believed in me,” Krone said. “I reacquainted myself with my faith. I found strength in stories of Jonah and Job.”
Krone went through appeal and was granted a retrial in 1994 when he was convicted a second time and sentenced to 46 years. In 2002, Krone was able to prove himself innocent by proving that the DNA samples found at the scene matched that of another man.
Following Krone’s keynote, a panel of surviving family members of murder victims addressed the audience and answered questions. Patricia Earnhardt, James Staub, Father Charles Strobel and Clifford O. Sullivan, Jr. each talked about their own experience and what it means to honor their loved ones without seeking retribution.
Sullivan asked students to recognize that perpetrators are people just like victims.
“We become so numb from culture and television. We fail to realize these people are people,” Sullivan said. “Feel something about it.”
The conference concluded with a panel featuring Paul House, joined by his mother, Joyce House, Ray Krone and Ndume Olatushani, three men who had been wrongfully convicted. Attorney Brad MacLean led the discussion.
Emma Greene, a freshman entrepreneurship major at Belmont University, said she had been undecided before Saturday’s conference, but can now say she is against capital punishment.
“The justice system is flawed,” Greene said. “What happened to [Ray Krone] isn’t just a fluke thing. It could happen to a lot of people. And, that’s made me reconsider my view point.”
Besides offering students a deeper look at the lives of death row inmates and what it means to be wrongfully convicted, TADP gave students sources to help them really choose which side they are on.
Melissa Pinhal, a Lipscomb sophomore from Nashville, said she feels better equipped to explain what she thinks about capital punishment and why.
“I was always against the death penalty, but sometimes, I didn’t necessarily know how to properly express that,” Pinhal said. “Today gave me a lot of factual basis for the beliefs I already had.”
Students are encouraged to attend Justice Day on the Hill on April 3rd to discuss the death penalty and voice their opinion with Tennessee legislators. For more information on Justice Day, or on how to become involved with TADP, visit their website at www.tennesseedeathpenalty.org.
Video by Erika Thornsberry