Death penalty opponents kick off two-week Texas tour

A coalition of death row survivors and murder victim family members is kicking off a two-week tour in Texas opposing capital punishment.

Dubbed the Texas Journey of Hope from Violence to Healing, the effort opens Saturday in Houston with a 7 p.m. screening of "The Gathering," a film focused on death row exonerees. It will be followed by a panel discussion at Strake Jesuit College Preparatory.

"These are the voices of experience on the death penalty," said Abe Bonowitz with Death Penalty Action.

A coalition of death penalty opponents launched the Journey of Hope back in 1993 with a tour through Indiana.

"For 17 days, we barnstormed that state and it actually made a difference," Bonowitz said.

Afterward, they took their tour to other states – anywhere they were wanted or needed.

This visit will be Journey of Hope's fifth swing through the Lone Star State since 1998.

"We feel that our message that the death penalty prevents healing and only creates more victims has helped reduce the desire for executions in Texas," Bill Pelke, Journey of Hope founder, said in a release. "Now, the vast majority of killers in Texas get the alternative sentence of life without parole. One thing we know from experience is that when there is no death sentence in your case, the healing process begins a lot sooner."

On Sunday, there's an 11:30 a.m. restorative justice presentation at First Congregational Church of Houston. Later in the day is a "From Fury to Forgiveness" panel discussion at 3 p.m. at the 6501 Almeda Road residence of the Houston Dominican Sisters.

On Tuesday at 7 p.m. is a question-and-answer session with murder victim family members and representation from the district attorney's office at the First Congregational Church of Houston.

Finally, on Wednesday there's a 5 p.m. film and panel discussion at Texas Southern University's Thurgood Marshall School of Law. The event coincides with a scheduled execution of a Houston serial killer, though the tour was planned long before the death date was set.

Some of the public events will be livestreamed on the group's Facebook page, and afterward the Journey of Hope will move on to Dallas and then San Antonio before ending in Austin.

Source: chron.com,  Keri Blakinger, October 14, 2017

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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde

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