[...](David) Kaczynski, exonerated death-row inmate Juan Melendez and Eddie Hicks, whose daughter was murdered at age 26, gave a presentation at Risen Christ Catholic Church in Evergreen Thursday afternoon as part of a 50-event state campaign for an end to the death penalty in Montana.[...]Justice never can be achieved for Hicks. In May 2000, his daughter, who had been an athlete and an honor student in high school, was shot in the head in High Point, N.C., in front of her younger sister and brother.
His daughter’s killer was released after eight years in prison; the charge had been reduced from first-degree murder to manslaughter.
Although the short sentence was decried as an injustice by all three of the speakers Thursday, Hicks said he has never supported the death penalty — before his daughter’s murder or since.
The retired firefighter remembered heated debates in the firehouse when he felt that he was the lone voice speaking in opposition to the death penalty. He considered it barbaric that the government should take life so deliberately and that its deterrent value was unproven.
“Without fail the conversation would end with someone saying, ‘You wouldn’t feel that way if you lost a loved one to murder,’” Hicks said. “At the time, it was so far-fetched, I didn’t even consider it.”
In the early days after his daughter’s death, Hicks said he would have considered “doing the guy in myself. But after that passed, I realized that the reasons I was opposed to the death penalty before remained.”
Hicks said he continues to share his painful story because he’s heard too many politicians and law enforcement officers say that “all” of those who have lost loved ones to murder are in favor of the death penalty.
“It’s important for them to know they’re not speaking for everyone,” he said. [...]
Taken from "Their journeys of hope" by HEIDI GAISER/Daily Inter Lake
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