Death penalty opponents share stories

Shirley Cochran fought back tears as she made her way to the podium.

She was the last of 4 panelists to speak out against the death penalty, but as she said, certainly not the least.

Before a quiet audience Cochran recalled the day she found out her first husband was murdered. She remembers wanting his killer to die.

But years later she would marry her new husband, James Bo Cochran. Her new husband spent 19 years and 4 months on death row before being exonerated for the murder that sent him there.

She remembers wanting him to live.

"The death penalty should not be," Cochran said shaking her head. "I know that if it was someone in your family, you wouldn't want it to happen."

Cochran and a group of death penalty opponents spoke out last week at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Alabama. It was an open forum, where members of the panel took questions from the audience. The speakers included Cochran's husband and former Tuskegee Police Chief Leon Frazier, a one-time supporter of the death penalty who now opposes it.

Eliminating the death penalty does not mean criminals should not pay for the crimes they commit, just that they do not have to die for it, Cochran said.

" I can understand how people can feel that way. All I could think of was my husband was murdered and that my children don't have a father," she said.

But after giving her life to God, Cochran said she realized revenge wouldn't change anything and she found mercy in herself for the man who killed her husband.

"No one should get away with doing a crime, but when we sentence them to death are we sure? Are we very sure, (they did it)?" she said.

Her husband, James Bo Cochran, was sure he didn't do it, but he said for almost 20 years that didn't make a difference.

"I had no business being there, he said, "I just used to cry and cry and my mom would say put God in your life and take it easy," he said.

James Bo Cochran said he was arrested in 1976 for murder (although) he left a store with nothing more than something to eat. According to a report from Project Hope, an organization that works to abolish the death penalty, Cochran is 1 of 7 men released from (Alabama) death row that authorities found have been wrongfully convicted.

Esther Brown, executive director of Project Hope, said Alabama has the largest per capita death row population nationwide and has sentenced more people to death per capita than any other state.

James Bo Cochran had a number of trials before he was convicted of robbery but not of murder. He maintains he is innocent of that crime, as well.

He said his life changed for the better after he was brought to Christ by another inmate on death row.

James Bo Cochran said he was on death row for such a long time that when he was finally free to go he struggled with his decision to leave.

"When I got ready to go I didn't want to. Those were my brothers," he said about fellow inmates.

Leon Frazier, who came to oppose the death penalty after spiritual self-exploration, said that it is better to let a guilty man go free than to see an innocent person executed, and he believes many innocent people have been executed in Alabama.

"If you kill them, you can't just say 'Oops,'" he said. "I think we should punish them but, 'an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth' is barbaric. The death penalty is not the answer."

Cora Cobb's son, Melvin Hodges, has been on death row for nine years and she is fighting to save his life. She said the jury voted by an 8-4 margin to give Hodges life, but the judge overturned the recommendation and gave him the death penalty.

Cobb said she thinks that judges should be appointed instead of elected.

In her son's case it was re-election year, and Cobb thinks judges not wanting to seem "soft" on crime are quicker to sentence someone to death.

According to Brown, a quarter of prisoners on death row in Alabama are there because a judge overruled a jury's recommendation.

(source: Montgomery Advertiser)