Post by Anja Nieser on Sept 19, 2006 16:34:46 GMT -5
Speaking out for life
The rape-murder of her daughter tested a mother's faith, but it eventually
led her to come out against the death penalty.
Vicki Schieber's Catholic religion taught her that capital punishment was
evil because it went against the sacredness of life.
But she questioned that belief system after her daughter, Shannon, was
raped and murdered in Philadelphia in May 1998. Maybe Troy Graves, who was
charged with the slaying in 2002, deserved to be executed.
"It tested everything about my faith," Schieber told the congregation of
St. Stephen's Parish in Pennsauken yesterday. "It was the hardest decision
I ever had to make. But we had to find a way to come to peace with it in
our own hearts."
For her and her husband, Sylvester, it meant coming out against the death
penalty. Not just for Graves - the so-called Center City rapist who was
also charged with attacking 5 other women - but for everyone on death row.
Prosecutors were stunned when the Schiebers requested that Graves receive
life in prison instead of execution.
"I could not, and my husband could not, become complicit in the choice of
that sentence," she said. "The ultimate form of hatred is the deliberate
taking of another person's life."
Schieber, who lives in Chevy Chase, Md., is treasurer of the nonprofit
group Murder Victims' Families for Human Rights. She is in the Garden
State on a speaking tour sponsored by New Jerseyans for Alternatives to
the Death Penalty, which is lobbying the Legislature to ban executions.
A former death-row inmate in Florida, Juan Melendez, is accompanying
Schieber.
Melendez, who was introduced to parishioners yesterday but did not speak,
spent 18 years in prison before he was exonerated in 2002. Florida has
released 23 other death-row inmates after they were found to be innocent.
New Jersey lawmakers voted in January to halt executions while a 13-member
commission studies the merits of capital punishment. The body's
recommendations are due to Gov. Corzine by Nov. 15.
9 inmates reside on New Jersey's death row. Nobody has been executed since
1963, when Ralph J. Hudson went to the electric chair for fatally stabbing
his estranged wife while she waited tables in an Atlantic City eatery.
The U.S. Supreme Court declared capital punishment unconstitutional in
1972 but reinstated the death penalty 4 years later.
New Jersey put a new law on its books in 1982.
(source: Philadelphia Inquirer)
The rape-murder of her daughter tested a mother's faith, but it eventually
led her to come out against the death penalty.
Vicki Schieber's Catholic religion taught her that capital punishment was
evil because it went against the sacredness of life.
But she questioned that belief system after her daughter, Shannon, was
raped and murdered in Philadelphia in May 1998. Maybe Troy Graves, who was
charged with the slaying in 2002, deserved to be executed.
"It tested everything about my faith," Schieber told the congregation of
St. Stephen's Parish in Pennsauken yesterday. "It was the hardest decision
I ever had to make. But we had to find a way to come to peace with it in
our own hearts."
For her and her husband, Sylvester, it meant coming out against the death
penalty. Not just for Graves - the so-called Center City rapist who was
also charged with attacking 5 other women - but for everyone on death row.
Prosecutors were stunned when the Schiebers requested that Graves receive
life in prison instead of execution.
"I could not, and my husband could not, become complicit in the choice of
that sentence," she said. "The ultimate form of hatred is the deliberate
taking of another person's life."
Schieber, who lives in Chevy Chase, Md., is treasurer of the nonprofit
group Murder Victims' Families for Human Rights. She is in the Garden
State on a speaking tour sponsored by New Jerseyans for Alternatives to
the Death Penalty, which is lobbying the Legislature to ban executions.
A former death-row inmate in Florida, Juan Melendez, is accompanying
Schieber.
Melendez, who was introduced to parishioners yesterday but did not speak,
spent 18 years in prison before he was exonerated in 2002. Florida has
released 23 other death-row inmates after they were found to be innocent.
New Jersey lawmakers voted in January to halt executions while a 13-member
commission studies the merits of capital punishment. The body's
recommendations are due to Gov. Corzine by Nov. 15.
9 inmates reside on New Jersey's death row. Nobody has been executed since
1963, when Ralph J. Hudson went to the electric chair for fatally stabbing
his estranged wife while she waited tables in an Atlantic City eatery.
The U.S. Supreme Court declared capital punishment unconstitutional in
1972 but reinstated the death penalty 4 years later.
New Jersey put a new law on its books in 1982.
(source: Philadelphia Inquirer)