Victims' Voices: Chicago Event to Highlight Murder Victims' Family Members Who Favor Clemency

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Tuesday, December 3, 20002 CONTACT:Renny Cushing 617-868-0007, RRCushing@earthlink.net Kate Lowenstein 617-868-0007, MVFRKate@aol.com

"VICTIMS' VOICES:" CHICAGO EVENT TO HIGHLIGHT MURDER VICTIMS' FAMILY MEMBERS WHO FAVOR CLEMENCY

Dec 3, 2002 - Members of Murder Victims' Families for Reconciliation (MVFR) will speak out in support of clemency for people on Illinois' death row at a public event at 1 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 8 at Loyola University School of Law. The purpose of the event will be to highlight victim opposition to the death penalty and to help build public support for commutation.

MVFR is a victim-founded, victim-led organization that represents murder victims' families who oppose the death penalty. MVFR is organizing its Illinois membership to ask Gov. George Ryan to commute the sentences of the approximately 150 people on Illinois' death row to life without parole before he leaves office in January.

Speakers at the Sunday event will include Ross Byrd Jr., son of James Byrd, who was murdered in East Texas as part of a hate crime; Mamie Till Mobley, mother of Emmett Till, whose gruesome murder in Mississippi in the 1950s helped awaken the nation to the horrors of racism in the Deep South; Bud Welch, whose daughter died in the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City and is an VFR board member; Gary Gauger, a survivor of Illinois' death row who was wrongly accused of murdering his parents; and Jennifer Bishop, whose sister and brother-in law were murdered in Winnetka in 1990. Bishop, a Chicago-area resident, is national chair of MVFR's board of directors.

"For those of us who have had a family member murdered or executed and who oppose the death penalty, now is the time that our voices must be heard," said Renny Cushing, MVFR executive director and a former New Hampshire state legislator whose father was murdered in 1988.

Bishop said that prosecutors in Illinois have rallied murder victims' survivors who favor the death penalty to oppose clemency for death row inmates, but have ignored the voices of those survivors who oppose state-sponsored executions. "We are an integral part of the victims' rights movement and we will not be silenced," Bishop said. "Our voices deserve and need to be heard too." # # # Return to Press Releases