Faith leaders and numerous civil rights and human rights organizations on Tuesday spoke out against the state's death penalty, calling it immoral and unlawful.
Cox pleaded guilty in 2012 in the killing of his wife, Kim Kirk Cox. The execution is set for 6 p.m. at Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parchman. It would be the state's first execution since 2012.
Leaders with Death Penalty Action, an organization leading the campaign to abolish the federal death penalty, are traveling throughout the state to highlight the resumption of executions in states where the death penalty had been dormant for several years, according to a news release.
Standing on a grassy patch on the south side of the Mississippi State Capitol, Lea Campbell with Mississippi Rising Coalition, a multiracial, multigenerational coalition of Mississippi residents committed to advancing human rights and racial and economic justice, said the death penalty does not deter crime, but rather perpetuates violence and degradation of the value of human life.
"The death penalty is a racist and classist practice that overwhelming kills poor people and people of color," Campbell said.
The Rev. Lincoln Dall of the Catholic Dioceses of Jackson and Rev. Warren Coile of The United Methodist Church said the death penalty goes against their churches' teachings.
"We believe the death penalty denies the power of Christ to redeem, restore and transform all human beings," Coile read from a 2016 statement by The United Methodist Church on social principles. "When governments implement the death penalty (capital punishment), then the life of the convicted person is devalued and all possibility of change in that person's life ends."
Among those who also spoke out was SueZann Bosler of Florida. In 1986, Bosler witnessed as her father, the Rev. Billy Bosler, was stabbed 24 times in a church parsonage before the killer turned the knife on her. Bosler's father died.
Bosler advocated against giving the death penalty to her father's killer and in June 1997, the man convicted of killing the reverend was sentenced to four consecutive life sentences. It was a win for Bosler and her family, she said.
"I thought to myself, if I was going to help the government kill him, execute him, what would that make me," Bosler said. "That would make me a murderer too."
Campbell urged Mississippians to call their legislators and Gov. Tate Reeves' office to stop the execution and to find a better way to execute justice instead.
"Executing human beings is not executing justice," Campbell said. "It is not a process that ensures accountability to the harm-doer or true reparations for the victims and families. There is a better way. And we want to work with all people of conscious in Mississippi to end the death penalty."
Death Penalty Action will host a prayerful protest vigil Wednesday in front of Parchman at 5 p.m. and a simultaneous virtual vigil online via Zoom and livestreamed on various Facebook pages, according to a news release.
Source: clarionledger.com, Gabriela Szymanowska, November 16, 2021
Mississippi to have 1st execution since 2012. What happens to the person's body after?
In most cases, the state executioner will release the body of the inmate to either their family or friends who can claim the body, according to state law about criminal procedure.
However, if no one claims the body or the family simply can't afford to bury the person, then the corrections commissioner will be in charge of the burial.
According to the Mississippi Department of Corrections website, the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman has a pauper's cemetery which sits on two acres of land where the remains of those not claimed can be buried.
Records indicate that the first burial at the cemetery was that of an inmate named Columbus Story on Sept. 22, 1930.
A total of 273 inmates — 264 men and nine women — have been buried in the cemetery since.
The last inmate to be buried in the cemetery on April 30, 2015, was Gerald Peterson, according to correction records.
If it's the case that no one claims the remains and they are buried at Parchman, then the county where the inmate was convicted will be responsible for the expense of the burial, according to state law.
The commissioner may also donate the unclaimed inmate's body to the University of Mississippi Medical Center for scientific purposes.
Source: Clarion Ledger, Gabriela Szymanowska, November 15, 2021
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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde