[malakhi]

Continued...

http://www.nbc4.tv/News/1572986/detail.html



Thousands of mourners packed the Crystal Cathedral on Wednesday to say goodbye to 5-year- old Samantha Runnion, a child many knew only through a photograph flashed during news reports of her abduction and murder...

"I can't even imagine losing a child in that way," she said, holding her 2-year-old daughter Bailey.

Orange County Sheriff Michael Carona drew a standing ovation when he moved to the podium to address the mourners. Holding back tears, Carona said Samantha was "America's little girl."

She said the message for her children was "stay close to us, tomorrow's never promised."

Even though she was too young for kindergarten, Samantha left her preschool playmates behind and sat with the kindergartners at her school, learning her numbers and her ABCs. She was supposed to start classes this fall at Lawrence Elementary School. Her favorite subject was reading, in which she excelled. She was proud that she had recently lost both bottom teeth and then an upper one, earning visits from the Tooth Fairy.

Samantha would have celebrated her sixth birthday this Friday. She was playing with a friend when a man who said he was looking for a puppy grabbed her. He put her in a car as she kicked and yelled to a playmate: "Help me." ...

Samantha's nude body was found a day later alongside a mountain highway between Orange County and Lake Elsinore. An autopsy showed she was asphyxiated and assaulted.

Alejandro Avila, 27, who has been charged with kidnap, murder and sexual assault, claimed he was at an Ontario shopping mall when Samantha was abducted while she played near her Stanton home on July 15. Credit card and cell phone records contradict his story, the Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday.

"Fortunately for us, if he hadn't used his cell phone or his credit cards," the trail would have been harder to follow, an unidentified source told the Times.

Two years ago, Avila was acquitted by a jury of molesting two girls in Riverside County. One of the girls, the 9-year-old daughter of an ex-girlfriend, lived in the same town house complex as the Runnion family. Avila often visited the area, said Lewis Davis, 39, the ex-girlfriend's foster brother. Samantha and friend Sarah Ahn, 5, were playing about 150 feet from Samantha's home last week when a man drove up in a two-door light green Honda or Acura after making a U-turn. The man got out and asked for help finding his puppy, then took off with the kicking and screaming girl.

Samantha's body was discovered the following day in neighboring Riverside County near Highway 74 on the edge of the Cleveland National Forest.

Explain why this man does not deserve the death penalty.

[al_c]

The manner in which you are presenting these cases doesn't seem to be calling for justice but for vengance. There is a difference. The death penalty is in place to remove a menace to society from that society. It is not in place to seek vengance.

[Sass]

In the interest of continuing the game of anecdotes (a game which I admit that I began), I will share with you why I actually care about this issue. Often I find that we don't care about issues unless they somehow connect to our own personal experience.

My first encounter with the death penalty was in my home congregation. I was taking one of the youth out to lunch after a Sunday school morning service. This youth began to share with me how her uncle was on death row. She told how her mother no longer speaks to her aunt because the aunt accused her mother of not doing enough to hire a decent lawyer to get their brother off death row. This youth's mother had moved out of their home, sold everything they had and lived in a hotel for a while in order to raise money for an appropriate attorney, but this was not enough sacrifice for the family. Keep in mind - this is an African American family in which the mother works at a gas station to make ends meet while raising two children. The mother and the aunt were appauled at the ineptitude of the public defender that was assigned to their brother's case. Is this truly justice when the rich hire top rate attorneys (O.J. Simpson) yet the poor sell everything they have only to be given a third or fourth rate attorney?

This was followed by further damage to the family. The mother of the man on death row who attended my church also experienced mental delusion because of this sentence. The mother blamed herself. As my youth-grouper put it, she went "mad" as a result of the judicial system failing them. Fortunately, this mother was able to see her son removed from death row this last summer before she died in August because the Supreme Court ruled that the mentally ill and those sentenced by a judge are not able to be put on death row. It was actually a weird but tremendous joy at her funeral when the African American minister could celebrate this break through. Now this man who was on death row will spend the rest of his life in prison with no possibility of parole, which provides some sense of sanity to the family.

The second personal experience I have with the death penalty involves a close friend here at my seminary. Her cousin was executed last April (2002) in his late twenties. She is very upfront with the fact that her cousin raped and murdered a young woman. This friend of mine was asked by her cousin to be his chaplain at his death. This meant that she spent her final hours with him. My friend expressed immeasurable mercy when she said that she only hoped that something good could come from his execution. The husband of the woman had said that he wanted revenge and he hoped that her cousin would rot in hell. My friend hoped that perhaps some sense of revenge would be fulfilled through her cousin's death so that this man might find some healing. Only after the death, the newspaper reported that the husband felt no better or less angry. I was wondering why this man felt no sense of relief at the extreme punishment of his wife's killer. Perhaps this is because revenge does not truly offer comfort. It reminds me of Jesus' statements that "you have heard it said an eye for an eye but I tell you ..."

The death penalty affects more than the person executed - it affects an entire community with immeasurable pain. It also brings little relief to the family of the victim. Now that I've shared my own personal experience (which drives my argument more than any rational argument) What personal events in your life evoke such passion for you on this subject? I am often reminded of the last place Gulliver visits in his voyages. In Gulliver's Travels, he visits the island of the only rational horses. This place of supreme rationality, though, was unfulfilling in living an authentic life. I openly admit that I am moving beyond an Enlightenment paradigm with the above refelctions, but I find it to be a much more fulfilling paradigm. So if you would like to join me in this new paradigm - share your personal experience that is driving your passion on this subject.