Kentucky Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty
P.O. Box 3092
(502) 636-1330
email: kcadp@earthlink.net
Louisville Kentucky 40201-3092
website: www.kcadp.org
Wedekind Memoir a Story of Hope
By Doug Stern
First, change the title on the copy you buy. This is the
memoir of an amateur lobbyist. Amateur in the most literal
sense of the word.
Wedekind’s story relates how he stumbled into the is-
sue of the death penalty and emerged as one of our na-
tion’s most sure-footed abolitionists. It’s a tale that should
be required reading for anyone interested in how our
vaunted, lofty-appearing system of lawmaking looks from
the perspective of a small frog at the very bottom of a very
murky pond.
The book covers about five years, beginning just before
the July 1, 1997, execution of Harold McQueen in the
state penitentiary at Eddyville, Ky. Wedekind, a retired cor-
porate lawyer and businessman, was serving on an ACLU
legal panel when McQueen's lead counsel recruited him to
help that summer with last-ditch appeals.
As Wedekind puts it, “Harold McQueen’s journey
ended, and my journey as an abolitionist began.”
The book ends in the summer of 2002. That was when
Wedekind and other Kentucky abolitionists saw their
hopes fulfilled with the August 1 exoneration and release
of a young death row inmate, Larry Osborne.
In between McQueen’s alpha and Osborne’s omega,
Wedekind describes the birth of a social and political
movement. It was a painful labor and delivery.
Wedekind, a nationally respected civil libertarian, de-
scribes, for example, the utter frustration of opposing the
death penalty in Kentucky in 1997. “This taste of power-
lessness lit a flame that became a fire in my belly.”
He needed that fire to weather the chill he and other
abolitionists found in Frankfort when they started organ-
ized lobbying in earnest. Wedekind describes Kentucky's
capital city as the domain, with a few righteous exceptions,
of imperious, arch-conservative religious zealots...
sometimes all wrapped up in one.
There are many candidates, but the poster boy may
have been a “...pleasant, intense-looking man in his early
forties” named Stan Lee, a state representative from Lex-
ington. Wedekind tells how he and Rev. Pat Delahanty (the
father of the abolition movement in Kentucky) met this
newly-elected lawmaker.
The two were a few minutes into their routine briefing
when Representative Lee suddenly stood. He raised his
hands and delivered a lightning bolt from the Book of
Revelations, telling the slack-jawed lobbyists that their
concerns about this and all other worldly matters would
soon be over. What was over was the briefing.
But State Representative Gross Lindsay clearly took the
cake. As the all-powerful chair of the all-powerful House
Judiciary Committee, Lindsay deflected every question,
cajole, challenge, strategy and datum that Wedekind and
his crew threw at him.
Sometimes that deflection was delivered with aw-
shucks charm. Sometimes it felt like a sledgehammer.
Despite proof of Kentucky citizens’ growing opposition
to the death penalty, Lindsay bottled up death penalty bills
in his committee session after session. Other state repre-
sentatives were cowed by him or disagreed through the
veil of old-school gentility.
Wedekind pushed Lindsay to the boiling point. Finally
confronted, the chairman snapped. “Banging his fist on his
desk, Lindsay announced, ‘I don’t have to tell you why | do
anything. | don’t owe you, or anyone else, any explanation
for what | do.’”
So it goes when the lobbyist tries to go through the
wall.
Wedekind’s story, despite the frustrations, is ultimately
a story of hope. That hope has often come in the form of
the people who have fought the good fight alongside him.
He wraps up this way. “I continue to be amazed at the
workings of this world, but | decided it is simply better to
believe that if you keep after it, good things will eventually
happen. | believe this, and off we go again.”
Spoken like an amateur.
Doug Stern is a writer living in Louisville. He has lobbied against the death
penalty in Kentucky and currently serves as a grassroots abolition organizer
working with faith groups. He may be reached at stern.doug@gmail.com.
Pick up your copy in
the Capitol gift shop.
Or order online with
your credit card:
www.kcadp.org.
Page 2
September 2006
Phillip L. Brown, 25, of Columbia, was given the death penalty in
May in a retrial for the 2001 murder of Sherry Bland.
Brown had originally been convicted of the Adair County crime in
2003 and was sentenced to life without parole for at least 25 years.
The Kentucky Supreme Court, however, threw out the conviction last
year and granted Brown a new trial, ruling crucial evidence had not
been allowed to be presented.
He was sentenced to death in Bowling Green on Aug. 11.
In August a jury recommended the death penalty for Taquan C.
Neblett, 29, for shooting a Lexington music store employee two
years ago.
Neblett, of Lexington, was convicted of killing employee Derek
Elam and shooting store owner Sami Hajibrahim during a robbery of
Sami's Music.
He also had a prior murder conviction for killing a Louisville cab
driver at age 16. Neblett's senctencing is scheduled for Sept. 28.
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