Dolores Schuh, CHM
Davenport, Iowa
I read the Newsleader online. This morning I read your fine column on the death penalty by Dennis Dalman. I am vehemently opposed to capital punishment and have learned a great deal during the past two years as I have a pen pal on death row in Raleigh, N.C. There are 150 inmates on death row in Raleigh and most of them have been there well over 10 years; some as long as 25 years. I have joined the National Coalition for the Abolition of the Death Penalty, which is working hard to abolish it in the 32 states that still use this inhumane form of punishment.
I wish a federal law would be passed to abolish these executions in all 50 states. I think it so unfair a guy who has committed a crime in North Carolina can be sentenced to death row and be executed and if he happened to have committed the same crime in, say, West Virginia, he would not be on death row.
As a retired nun of the Congregation of the Humility of Mary who worked on the campus of St. John’s Abbey and University from 1974 to 2004, my ministry at this time is to send birthday cards to each of the 150 death-row inmates in Raleigh and to find pen pals for those inmates who would like to correspond with someone “on the outside.” As Fr. Don Tauscher, OSB, a monk of St. John’s Abbey, has reminded us, death-row inmates are some of the most forgotten people in the world.
Thank you for calling attention to a national problem. I pray each day the death penalty will be abolished nationally.
