Dear Kentucky lawmaker:
| am writing to you as a legislative colleague from New Hampshire and as Executive
Director of a national victims’ organization to urge you to support legislation that
exempts people with severe mental illness from capital punishment. That support could
take the form of a YES vote in committee or on the House floor. It could mean you sponsor or
co-sponsor legislation of this type, as have legislators in other states.
Murder Victims’Families for Human Rights (MVFHR) and the National Alliance on
Mental Illness (NAMI) recently released a report titled Double Tragedies: Victims
Speak Out Against the Death Penalty for People with Severe Mental Illness. This
document, available at www.nami.org/doubletragedies, brings you the voices of
experience: family members of victims killed by persons with severe mental illness,
and family members of persons with severe mental illness
who have been executed. These family members, who know firsthand
the devastation of homicide, are calling for the elimination of the death penalty
for people with severe mental illness. As a legislator, | know how busy a session can
be, but | encourage you to read about Linda Gregory, whose husband, a deputy
sheriff, was killed by a man with severe mental illness, or Ken and Lois Robison,
whose son Larry was executed after they had tried for years to get help for his severe
mental illness.
Several prominent Kentucky groups support a ban on the death penalty for people
with severe mental illness: the Kentucky Mental Health Coalition, the Mental Health
America of Kentucky, the National Alliance on Mental Illness of Kentucky, the Catholic
Conference of Kentucky, the Kentucky Council of Churches and others. The Kentucky
Mental Health Coalition consists of nearly 60 mental health service providers and
more than twenty NAMI chapters throughout the state which advocate for treatment
and prevention, not execution.
If you would like more information about mental illness and the death penalty in
Kentucky, | encourage you to contact Sheila Schuster
at advocacyaction@bellsouth.net, (502) 836-4222, or Cathy Epperson, Executive
Director of NAMI-KY, cepperson0565@bellsouth.net, (606) 451-6935.
Sincerely,
Renny Cushing
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