Press Releases

Mar 30, 2000
Lecture on Capital Punishment

Contact:
Darren Johnson
(631) 287 8313
Fax: (631) 283 4081

Is capital punishment moral? That question will be asked during a talk at Southampton College of Long Island University.

Sponsored by the College's Peconic Campus Ministry, Reverend Walter Everett of the United Methodist Church of Hartford, Conn., invites those for and against the death penalty to a discussion titled "Capital Punishment: Is There Another Way?" in the Avram Theater on Thursday, April 27, at 8 p.m. The event is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served. For more information call (631) 287-8110.

A drug addict murdered Everett's 22-year-old son, but the pastor learned to forgive the killer. In a bereavement group for families who had lost a child to homicide, he found people focused on retribution, not healing, "looking for the state to take a life to even the score." He found himself the only one asking how the life of someone else could mean as much as the life of his son. He came to believe, "there is no way to get even. With something as big as the death of my son, there is no way to fix it. The only thing left is forgiveness. That doesn?t mean you forget what happened, but it allows for a healing process to begin."

Everett's revelation led him to speak widely on the subject, including lectures at universities such as Brown, Wisconsin and Rhode Island.