CRIME VICTIMS' ADVOCATE ELECTED CHAIR OF NCADP BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Tennessee Represented on Board of National Anti-Death Penalty Organization
Nashville, TN: Bill Pelke, who lost his 78-year-old grandmother to murder yet has campaigned relentlessly against the death penalty, will serve a one-year term as chairman of the NCADP Board of Directors, the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty announced today.
Joining Pelke as newly elected Board officers are Renny Cushing and Rich Curtner, each of whom were elected vice chairs. Cushing is policy director of Murder Victims' Families for Human Rights and Curtner is a member of Alaskans Against the Death Penalty in Anchorage.
Pelke, a resident of Alaska who formerly lived in Indiana, said he believes it is the first time that family members of murder victims have served as NCADP's chair and vice chair. Paula Cooper killed Pelke's 78-year-old grandmother, Ruth, in 1985. Cooper, who was 15 years old at the time, received a death sentence. However, the Indiana Supreme Court commuted her sentence after Pelke engaged in an international campaign against her execution.
"We are confronting the stereotype that murder victims' family members automatically support death for the people who took our loved ones away," Pelke said. "In my case, I came to understand that my grandmother would not have wanted death for Paula Cooper. I could not be faithful to my grandmother's memory unless I worked against death – unless I worked for healing and forgiveness."
Cushing, a former New Hampshire state legislator, experienced the murder of his father, Robert Cushing Jr., in 1988. "Survivors of crime want three things," Cushing said. "First, they want to know exactly what happened to their loved one. Second, they want justice. And third, they want to heal. For many of us, justice and healing come not in the form of taking another life but rather in reconciliation. We wish to reconcile the terrible thing that has happened to us with our belief that no one, not even the least among us, is beyond redemption."
Also winning election to the NCADP Board were Bud Welch, whose daughter, Julie, died in the Oklahoma City bombing; Ajamu Baraka, director of the new Human Rights Network and former regional director of Amnesty International's southern regional office; Abe Bonowitz, executive director of Citizens United for Alternatives to the Death Penalty and Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty; Judy Caruso, a member of the steering committee of the New Mexican Coalition to Repeal the Death Penalty; T.J. Geiger, a Lamar University student in Beaumont, Texas and a member of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty; Ivan Held, a public relations and marketing expert with Time Warner Books; Brian Henninger, a lawyer and former NCADP program coordinator; Shani O'Neal, a Fulbright Scholar, youth activist and New Voices Fellow; and Brian Roberts, a lawyer with death penalty appellate experience who now works for Washington, D.C.'s Public Defender Services.
Re-elected to the Board were Thomas Mariadason, secretary; and Veronica White, treasurer. Mariadason works for the Vera Institute of Justice in New York City and White works for New York City's Food Bank. Also re-elected were Jane Bohman, executive director of the Illinois Coalition Against the Death Penalty; Randy Tatel, executive director, Tennessee Coalition Against State Killing; and Claudia Whitman of Citizens United for Rehabilitation of Errants.
The Board elections took place at the annual NCADP conference held last weekend at Galluadet University for the deaf and hard of hearing in Washington DC. At the organization's award banquet Elaine Jones, former director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and a longtime lawyer in the fight against the death penalty, received NCADP's Lifetime Achievement Award.
