20th anniversary of Earl Washington s freedom nears as abolition of Va death penalty is considered roanoke.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from roanoke.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Marie Deans poses outside her office at the Virginia Coalition on Jails & Prisons in March 2017. (Wikimedia Commons/B. Pitler)
It was on one of the many adventuresome times in the 1990s that I took my students to visit death row inmates in Virginia s Mecklenburg Correctional Center that I came to know and admire Marie Deans. Her 30-plus year ministry to the condemned included finding pro bono lawyers to file post-conviction habeas appeals and comforting them in their spare cells in the final hours of living, before being electrocuted or drugged to death by the state.
Deans singular grace was not only that she was intellectually opposed to capital punishment, but also that she was emotionally against it for the escaped convict who killed her mother in 1972 in Charleston, South Carolina. She once recalled to me that a police officer at the crime scene pledged that we ll find the bastard and fry him to which she replied, Don t do it for me.
It’s time to help make peace. That starts with education. Courtland Milloy Noted pacifist Colman McCarthy didn’t get to teach his peace studies class at American University this semester because of coronavirus school disruptions. So, I called him for a crash course to share with readers, figuring we could all use a lesson in peacemaking these days. Homicides and aggravated assaults are on the rise, in both the D.C. area and the nation. Stress continues to build over health concerns and economic uncertainties. Food lines are getting longer. In many cities, homeless shelters and shelters for victims of domestic violence are at capacity.