South Texas Catholic (Corpus Christi, Tex.), Vol. 41, No. 6, Ed. 1 Friday, March 17, 2006 Page: 6 of 24
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- South Texas Catholic
life issues
March 17, 2006
Three execution vigils
at IWBS convent the
last week of March
The diocesan Alliance for Human
Life designates each month for the
cause of a particular life issue. March is
dedicated to death penalty awareness.
Locally, the Corpus Christi Chapter
of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the
Death Penalty (TCADP) and the
Sisters of the Incarnate Word and
Blessed Sacrament hold prayer vigil
services for those being executed by
the State of Texas, and for victims and
their families, on the day of the
execution at the Incarnate Word and
Blessed Sacrament Convent, 2930 S.
Alameda.
A service will be held at 6 p.m. on
March 22 for Robert Salazar Jr., on
March 28 for Raymond Martinez, on
March 29 for Kevin Kincy, and on Apr.
25 for Pedro Sosa. Vigil attendees are
asked to meet on the front lawn by the
statue of the Sacred Heart.
The TCADP is affiliated with the
National Coalition to Abolish the
Death Penalty (NCADP), which issues
execution alerts, short biographies of
those to be executed and information
about death penalty awareness.
More information is located at
www. N C ADP o rg.
Freed from death row, ex-prisoners tell how
faith sustained them, saved their lives
By Priscilla Creear
HAMPTON, Ga. (CNS) — Juan Roberto
Melendez Colon can remember holding a
rope in his hands preparing to strangle
himself in his prison cell on Florida’s
death row, but something held him back.
Instead, he went to sleep and dreamed
he was swimming again as he loved to do
as a boy in the tranquil aqua waters of the
Caribbean.
“The sun was bright. The sky was blue.
The palm trees looked so good from the
shore of the beach, and I was right there
in the Caribbean swimming. Then I saw ...
four dolphins ... flipping and jumping like
dolphins do. And then I looked to the
shore and I saw my mama waving at me.
... I was happy,” he recalled.
He awoke with new hope that one day
he would be found innocent, and he
flushed the rope down the toilet.
In January 2002, he became the 99th of
122 former death-row inmates to be
exonerated in the United States since the
death penalty was reinstated in 1976. He
and 12 other exonerated men took part in
a recent retreat in Hampton sponsored by
the Witness to Innocence project.
Melendez spent 17 years, eight months
and one day in prison for a crime he did
Bishops hail abortion ban, urge more
efforts to build culture of life
PIERRE, S.D. (CNS) - Two Catholic
bishops hailed South Dakota's new law
banning nearly all abortions, but they also
urged efforts to transform people's hearts
and minds to reject abortion and build a
culture that respects all life from the
moment of conception to natural death.
On March 6 in Pierre, the state capital,
Gov. Mike Rounds signed into law a bill
prohibiting all intentional abortions
except those to save a mother's life.
Bishop Blase J. Cupich of Rapid City
said South Dakota citizens and their
elected officials "can be justifiably proud
of their efforts to restore the rights of the
unborn child," but "a change in law and
structures," he said, "is not sufficient."
Society must build a culture of life that
"begins with the unborn" and also ensures
livable wages, education, adequate health
care, help for single mothers and "an end
to the death penalty," he said.
In a separate statement, Bishop Samuel
J. Aquila of Fargo, N.D., apostolic admin-
istrator of the Sioux Falls Diocese in
South Dakota, said: "There is no question
about the church's position on abortion —
human life is sacred because it involves
the creative action of God. ... None of us
can claim the right directly to destroy an
innocent human being."
He hailed the new law but said the
church is "dedicated to promoting a
culture that respects human life."
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Freed from death row, ex-
prisoners tell how faith
sustained them and saved
their lives. Sister Helen
Prejean, left, speaks before
a gathering of former death-
row inmates who were
exonerated, their family
members, some attorneys
and death-penalty
opponents at the Calvin
Center in Hampton, Ga.,
last fall. The event was
sponsored by the Witness to
Innocence program, in
conjunction with the Death
Penalty Information Center.
CNS photo/Michael Alexander, The Georgia Bulletin
not commit, clinging to his faith as he
battled the criminal justice system. Twice
in 18 years he had visitors, both family
members.
A Catholic, he had several times
contemplated suicide as his escape, but
“my Creator would send me beautiful
dreams from my childhood and hope that
one day I would be free,” he said.
“I had to go back to my roots
and to what my mama told me
about Jesus Christ, the Virgin
Mary and the Holy Ghost,” he
told The Georgia Bulletin,
newspaper of the Archdiocese
of Atlanta. “The condemned
men who didn’t turn to
something spiritual either went
crazy or committed suicide.”
The guest speaker at the
retreat was Sister Helen
Prejean, the Sister of St. Joseph
of Medaille who wrote a best-
selling book about her death-row ministry,
“Dead Man Walking.” Her new book,
“The Death of Innocents,” addresses flaws
in the criminal justice system that she
says lead to the execution of innocent
people.
Witness to Innocence is a project of the
Moratorium Campaign, which brings to
light wrongful death sentencing because
of errors.
“The condemned
men who didn't
turn to something
spiritual either
went crazy or
committed
suicide.''
The retreat participants were gathered
in a state that has been at the center of the
death penalty debate. As a result of
Georgia cases, the death penalty was
declared unconstitutional in 1972, but
then reinstated in 1976 and upheld again
in 1987 even as the U.S. Supreme Court
acknowledged inherent racial disparities
in its implementation.
In 2002 the Supreme Court
declared it unconstitutional
to execute mentally retarded
inmates, and last March ruled
against killing juveniles.
Condemned to death based
on circumstantial evidence,
Ray Krone, now director of
communications and training
for Witness to Innocence, was
the 100th person to be
exonerated from death row.
In 2002 he was released after
10 years in prison.
With the help of lawyer Alan Simpson,
Krone was able to get an appeals court to
allow DNA testing on evidence found at
the murder scene that pointed not to him,
but to a convicted sex offender. DNA
evidence is available in only about 15
percent of cases.
“(Simpson) took my case because he
believed in me,” Krone said. “We couldn’t
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P.O. Box 18955 Corpus Christi, TX.78480 ( 361) 931.6500
ROME-MEDJUGORJE
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Goldapp, Paula J. South Texas Catholic (Corpus Christi, Tex.), Vol. 41, No. 6, Ed. 1 Friday, March 17, 2006, newspaper, March 17, 2006; Corpus Christi, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth855732/m1/6/: accessed April 25, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; .