Carolyn Lee

The recent headlines concerning the death penalty compel me to write a bit of my story and to present the other side and what the death penalty can mean to a victim’s family.

It’s been almost 35 years since my mother, at the age of 75, was victim of a violent home invasion in her small South Carolina town. She was brutally murdered. Three months later a suspect was brought to trial, found guilty and sentenced to the death penalty. At that time in South Carolina, life with no chance of parole was not a sentencing option.

Initially I mistakenly thought that this would be the end and derived small comfort in feeling that he would never again be able to commit such a crime against someone else. However, due to technicalities in our flawed justice system, I found myself having to relive the horror in court through two more trials over the next few years. Each time a different jury found him guilty and sentenced him again to the death penalty, thus starting the process all over again. It seemed that every time I was able to move slightly forward in my grieving or healing process, I would receive another call from the attorney general’s office informing me of the next step in the appeals process. Even though I had once been a legal secretary and tried to research and understand the procedures, it was all overwhelming to me.

And in spite of doing everything humanly possible to protect myself and shield myself from the media, the sensational nature of this case got picked up by national newspapers and television shows. As the case dragged on and the defendant became one of the longest death-row inmates, media interest became intense. Over the years, my mother’s case has been the subject of national newspaper stories, a television true-crime show, a major network documentary, and a book which painfully twisted the facts to the point of almost blaming my mother for her own death.

The defendant has since been exonerated and released – so all of this has served no purpose and I will never know the truth of what happened in my mother’s case. But I do know that the past 30-plus years would have been so different and I would have been allowed to grieve and move forward privately had this not been a death penalty case.

In my desperation to seek solace somewhere, I found a group in North Carolina called Murder Victims Families for Reconciliation where families of victims have come together to speak out against the death penalty. They define reconciliation as “accepting that you cannot undo the murder but you can decide how you want to live afterwards.” There is a terribly disempowering effect of victimization. There must be a way to reconcile the demands of justice and fairness that still allows families to reclaim power, honor their loved one, and be allowed to put their lives back together without feeling prey to the media and our system of justice. We can begin by abolishing the death penalty.

Carolyn Lee lives in Pensacola.