"Death Penalty Not the Answer for Many Victims’ Family Members" by Ben Griffith, 2015

Death penalty not the answer for many victims’ family members
By Ben Griffith

My brother Chris was murdered on September 9, 1986, at a state-owned shooting range
in Salina County, Missouri. His murder was the fourth committed by Donald Reese on
that day; Reese knew none of his victims. My brother was shot in the back four times as
he was fleeing 75 yards from the gruesome scene. As he sat against the trunk of an oak
tree losing his life, Reese put a bullet in his head.

Given the steadfastness of the notion that the death penalty gives closure to homicide
survivors, most people would understand the anger I felt when my brother Tim called me
at my Frankfort home in the middle of the night with the news of his murder. Most
people would understand how I would have loved to see Donald Reese die right then and
there. And certainly for my first year of living with the knowledge of how Chris died, I
had some feelings that justice may be served by another death.

This reasoning is often the final argument that death penalty proponents will advance
after the many good reasons have been established on why the death penalty system is
broken and should be abolished.

My job here is to help debunk the notion that all homicide survivors want more death
and that it is the state’s job to sanction our revenge. For you see, many of us “survivors”
are unable to support the death penalty because of our moral or religious convictions.

I now belong to two national organizations of other like-minded survivors: Murder
Victim Families for Reconciliation (MVFR) and Murder Victim Families for Human
Rights (MVHR). There are thousands of us who are opposed to this revenge killing. And
as the momentum to abolish the death penalty continues to grow state by state, one
common thread to each new victory for abolition has been the presence of murder victim
families who are opposed to the death penalty. I can assure the commonwealth that we
will be present at any legislative judicial committee hearing where a serious consideration
of abolition is on the agenda.

Tam aware of some victim survivor families who feel differently than I do about the
death penalty. I can only give them my understanding that I, too, have wanted the
murderer to die. It is my experience that most survivors become somewhat ambivalent to
the death penalty — for or against. The long decades of waiting for the justice system to
work through all the appeals only rekindles our horror to be relived. Many of us become
weary of that anger and wish for some resolution so we might escape living in the past
and get back into life. We don’t want to keep hearing all the arguments for sparing a life
or for taking a life. Indeed, the thing uniting all survivor families is the strong feeling that
the only thing that would ever truly repair our hurt is the life and breath of our loved one
restored.

Is it any wonder that a 2012 study conducted on the wellbeing of homicide survivors
found that those who lived in a state where the ultimate penalty was life without parole
fared much better than those in a state with the death penalty? (Assessing the Impact of
the Ultimate Penalty Sanction on Homicide Survivors: A Two State Comparison.
Amour, Marilyn Peterson and Umbreit, Mark S., Marquette Law Review, Fall 2012. Vol.
96, Article 3.) This difference in our wellbeing has every connection to the difference in
how long the justice system takes to find final resolution. Appeals to life without parole

are resolved in a couple of years on average. Compared to the decades long averages of
resolving death penalty appeals in death penalty states, survivors in life without parole
states are more able to find a way forward. This is a big reason why I fight for the
abolition of the death penalty in Kentucky. It is healthier!

So maybe with some of the money our state saves by abolishing the death penalty,
better victim services can be provided in the commonwealth. It is certainly my family’s
experience that we would be better served if victim services were moved out of
prosecutors’ offices and kept independent because we feel that the system for victim
survivors is often too closely managed in the prosecutor’s interests and not in the interests
of the long-term health of survivors. My family was literally discarded and shunned by
the prosecutor’s office when my parents announced opposition to the death sentence
during Reese’s sentencing phase. It was a small victory for abolition when the judge
gave Donald Reese life without parole for Chris’s murder. However, for the other
murders, a death penalty was issued and Reese was executed on August 13, 1997. His
death made me feel victimized yet again.

Ben Griffith lives in Frankfort with his wife Patricia. He is secretary on the Board of the
Kentucky Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, a practicing Quaker and works as a
professional piano technician in Central Kentucky.