DP in Texas



Sara Hickman

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

In the early 1990s, I started correspondence with a man on death row. 
After a few years of writing, I went to visit him in person.
What I experienced shocked me. Thinking I was going in to see an 
angry human being, I met an intelligent person who seemed broken. 
Someone who had lived an abused, unloved life had lived the only way 
he knew how: in survival mode. His lifestyle was far from mine, but 
his upbringing was like nothing I could imagine, either. Leaving the 
prison, I was completely struck with the thought that people do what 
they know. While in his early twenties, uneducated, drugged up, and 
jobless, he had struck out and viciously murdered an innocent woman, 
had spent 20 years on death row, and still had no understanding of 
what it meant to be "productive" or a part of society. He had killed 
out of revenge for the murder of his best friend. Kill or be killed. 
That is what he knew. Several years later after our meeting, he was 
executed by the state, in each of our names.
As a society, without a doubt, we can agree that murdering a fellow 
human being is a horrendous act. It stains the perpetrator, or even 
an entire country, for life, for all time. So, here in Texas, we have 
the death penalty to terminate the life of the guilty who have taken 
a life.
But how does killing anyone, whether someone is in a crazed state who 
murders or a state sanctioned killing occurs, ever solve anything? 
Murdered, or put to death, left behind are grieving family members, 
children without parents, loved ones and friends all caught in the 
never ending questions of, "Why? What was solved? Will this heartache 
ever end?" And what about those we execute who are innocent? The 
greatest example, here, is Jesus Christ. Or Bruno Richard Hauptmann. 
The list goes on.
As a mom and a musician, I wanted to start a dialogue about the death 
penalty. Because I live in Texas, the state with the greatest number 
of executions, I wanted to get people to think about what the death 
penalty means: spiritually, economically, and morally. My hope was to 
start a dialogue that was open to all in the spirit of healthy debate 
and information—-a forum where people who were opposed to or for or 
conflicted by the death penalty could meet and discuss the issue 
without fear or hostility.
So, last spring, I had a meeting with the Texas Coalition to Abolish 
the Death Penalty (TCADP) here in my home.
We discussed ways to raise awareness, and I suggested a series of 
monthly concerts around the state of Texas, starting in Austin and 
ending in
Austin, going to 11 cities along the way. We decided to include 
musicians and speakers. In October 2007 we had our first event with 
Linda White, mother of a young woman who was murdered by two teenage 
boys and reverends John McMullen (First United Methodist Church) and 
Bobbi Kaye Jones (St. Johns United Methodist). Barbara Kooyman 
(Timbuk 3) was our first guest musician.
Since then, we have traveled to Huntsville, Corpus Christi, San 
Antonio, Houston, San Angelo, Beaumont, El Paso, and Denton.
Attendees have heard comments from a variety of speakers including El 
Paso Mayor John Cook (who has joined our tour, singing and speaking 
and challenging other Texas mayors to come out to the events), the 
amazing account of Rev. Carroll Pickett (the death row minister who 
witnessed 95 executions in Huntsville; he is convinced that at least 
15 of those men were innocent), prosecutor Sam Millsap, victim's 
families talking about why they are opposed to the death penalty and 
listened to the music as diverse as Shelley King to Austin Lounge 
Lizards (who will be at our Waco event on Sept. 18) and Kinky 
Friedman, who will be at our Antone's finale October 1.
My hope is twofold: that you will come out and join in on this 
conversation, and that in five years we will have a moratorium on the 
death penalty here in Texas. Please, come express your opinions at 
one of the events and meet family members of murder victims, meet 
family members of those executed on death row. Come hear music and 
get involved at the same time. This isn't easy. In fact, it's intense.
To end with a thought, when Cain murdered Abel in the old testement, 
God didn't destroy Cain. He banished him, yes, but he set him out in 
the world marked with protection that no one would harm a hair on his 
head. Why would God do such a thing? I challenge you to start the 
dialogue.