October 24-30, 2011
Headline News
US representative shares personal story on why victims’ families lose out in death penalty
Reported by Sam Lee
Written by Lydia Ma
“The death penalty cannot comfort victims’ families,” said Renny Cushing at a conference in Taiwan, adding that it’s a lose-lose situation that will advance neither justice nor peace in society. He believes Christian principles would affirm that no one – not any person or government – is authorized to take the life of another human being. Because of his conviction that human rights and justice can advance significantly when the death penalty is abolished, Cushing hopes that Taiwan will someday abolish the death penalty.
Cushing is the founder and Executive Director of Murder Victims’ Families for Human Rights (MVFHR). His father’s murder in 1988 has shaped his work as an advocate for crime victims and as an opponent of capital punishment. A lifelong social justice activist, he has been a Justice of the Peace for the past 25 years and he has also served two terms in the New Hampshire House of Representatives.
MVFHR and Ocean, another similar organization in Japan, were recently invited by Taiwan Alliance to End the Death Penalty to deliver a series of speaking engagements across Taiwan, including Yushan Theological College and Seminary, National Cheng-Kung University (NCKU), National Taiwan Normal University, and more.
During the presentation at NCKU, Cushing recounted his ordeal soon after his father’s murder and said many people are misguided when they think the death penalty would comfort the families of murder victims. He also said that the wishes of the victims are often muted and executions cannot right the wrongs done against them because it cannot bring their loved ones back from the dead.
Cushing underscored that though he still doesn’t have closure over his father’s death, he and many people like him wouldn’t want to see another family lose a loved one because of the death penalty. His opposition to the death penalty is rooted in his Christian convictions that humans are not allowed to take away the life of another. He said that when he saw the son of his father’s murderer in court and saw the boy’s whole family hurting, he realized the death penalty would only result in more murderers – by making the victim’s family murderers this time around.
Though some people have questioned the economics behind the death penalty, contrasting these costs with the costs of keeping inmates for life in prison, and are opposed to using taxpayer money toward housing and feeding criminals for life, US statistics actually show that the cost of carrying out an execution far exceed that of keeping a person in prison for life. Cushing pointed out this information to indicate how governments have not budgeted taxpayers’ money efficiently and how mistaken it is to think that it’s more economically efficient to carry out an execution.
According to Amnesty International’s 2011 Report on human rights, Taiwan stopped carrying out executions since 2005, but resumed again this year, a sure sign that human rights is regressing in Taiwan. MVFHR hopes Taiwan will consider current international trends and put a moratorium on the death penalty once more and eventually abolish it.
