| September 8, 2008 | Volume 83, Number 23 | |
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Stay of executionWe can never know what good our actions might have unless we exercise them and take the first steps. As a result of the action of the Catholic Bishops of Missouri and other religious leaders who urged clemency for a Death Row inmate, the Missouri Supreme Court granted a stay of execution for a man who was scheduled to die Aug. 27. One can only assume that if the bishops and other leaders from the Episcopal, Baptist, Church of the Brethren, Quaker and Lutheran churches had remained silent, Dennis Skillicorn would have been executed as scheduled. Missouri’s high court has granted a 30-day stay of execution which will allow the man’s attorneys to gather statements from other prisoners and prison staff which will be used to ask Governor Matt Blunt to grant clemency. Mr. Skillicorn’s attorneys are asking that their client’s sentence be commuted to life in prison without parole. Now that more facts about the crime have come out, we learn that Mr. Skillicorn did not murder anyone. The 49-year-old man was convicted along with Allen Nicklasson of killing Richard Drummond, then 47, during a robbery in 1994. But facts show that Mr. Skillicorn was a half mile away when Mr. Nicklasson shot and killed Mr. Drummond. He never denied being involved in the robbery or kidnapping of the victim, but the fact is he still did not kill the murder victim. He wasn’t even on the scene of the killing. Aside from that, the religious leaders based their appeal for clemency on the fact that Mr. Skillicorn had “turned his life around, becoming a model of rehabilitation and service to others.” Since his arrest he has compiled a book, “Today’s Choices Affect Tomorrow’s Dreams” in which he provides personal accounts of Death Row inmates who admit how their poor choices in life led to murdering another. The book is distributed to juvenile centers with the hope that young delinquents might recognize themselves heading down a wrong path and decide to turn their lives around. Yes, some might smirk at the thought of a convicted criminal turning his life around. But it does happen and it is real. We don’t know what Governor Blunt will decide during the interim. But the Missouri Bishops did the right thing to speak out and urge that Mr. Skillicorn’s life be spared from the state’s execution. They stated in an April 2006 pastoral letter that more violence “is not a solution to society’s problems.” People who claim to be pro-life should not support the death penalty. It consciously approves the killing of another. Two wrongs do not make a right. A sentence of death offers the illusion of closure and vindication, the bishops stated, “but no act, even an execution, can bring back a loved one or heal terrible wounds. The pain and loss of one death cannot be wiped away by another death.”
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