A question of life and death: Catholics confront death penalty issue as another death-row execution nears
Mary Winnecke takes time after Mass to pray at Holy Redeemer Church in Evansville, Ind., in the Evansville Diocese, on Aug. 19. Winnecke’s daughter, Natalie Fulkerson, was killed by Matthew Eric Wrinkles in 1994. Wrinkles is on death row, but Winnecke opposes the death penalty. Winnecke says that her faith has allowed her to forgive Wrinkles. Read her story of faith and forgiveness on page 9. (Photo courtesy Molly Bartels/ Evansville Courier & Press)
(Editor’s note: As the State of Indiana prepares to carry out the Dec. 11 execution of a death-row inmate, three Catholics from Indiana share their stories of how death penalty cases have touched their lives.
Mary Winnecke is a mother whose daughter was killed by Matthew Eric Wrinkles, who is scheduled to be executed on Dec. 11. Click here to read her story
Will McAuliffe is a young Catholic who has started an organization that hopes to end the death penalty in the state. His story is below.
And former Indiana Gov. Joseph Kernan has faced the decision of determining whether a person should live or die. Click here to read his story
Also, read what the Cathechism teaches about the death penalty by clicking here)
By John Shaughnessy
Will McAuliffe tries to stay calm when he talks about the death penalty, knowing how the issue often becomes a source of heated conflict for people.
The 24-year-old Catholic from Indianapolis keeps that matter-of-fact approach when he cites the statistic that, through the years, 139 individuals in the United States who were sentenced to the death penalty were later exonerated.
Still, the emotion begins to flow through McAuliffe’s words when he describes one of the key moments that led him to form the Indiana Coalition Acting to Suspend Executions, a non-profit organization that hopes to help end the use of the death penalty in the state.
The moment took place in early May of 2007, just days before McAuliffe was to graduate from the University of Notre Dame. He drove to the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City, Ind., to be part of a vigil for David Woods, a 42-year-old man who was scheduled to be executed by lethal injection near midnight. During a burglary nearly 23 years earlier, Woods had repeatedly stabbed to death 77-year-old Juan Placencia, a greatly loved father and grandfather.
On that cool, clear night of the vigil, McAuliffe listened to someone sing “Ave Maria” as he watched others in the crowd hold candles that flickered in the darkness. He thought of Placencia.
“God forbid you find yourself in that situation where your father or grandfather is killed,” he says.
He also thought about Woods. And then he saw a hearse pass by and head into the prison, knowing it had to be for Woods.
“You see the hearse pull up. You know somebody just died behind that [prison] wall,” he says. “That’s just so strange and disappointing.”
Questions of life, death and forgiveness
More than two years later, the sadness that McAuliffe felt for the killing of Placencia and the execution of Woods seeps into his memories of that night.
Those feelings—and the debate about the death penalty—loom again as the State of Indiana prepares to carry out the Dec. 11 execution of Matthew Eric Wrinkles for the murders of his estranged wife, Debbie, her brother, Tony Fulkerson, and Tony’s wife, Natalie Fulkerson, in 1994.
“In these cases, a lot of people say, ‘That person did an awful thing,’ ” McAuliffe says. “We know that, but does that mean we should walk them down a hall and execute them when there is another way [life in prison without parole] of keeping society safe?”
McAuliffe knows how he would respond to that question, and his answer is shared by at least two people who have had to endure the murder of people they love.
Mary Winnecke is the mother of Natalie Fulkerson, one of the three people that Wrinkles killed. This past summer, Winnecke—a member of Holy Redeemer Parish in Evansville, Ind., in the Evansville Diocese—started a letter-writing campaign asking Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels to commute the death sentence for her daughter’s killer to life in prison.
Another supporter of McAuliffe’s efforts is Tim Streett, an ordained minister in the Independent Christian Church. As a 15-year-old youth, Streett saw his father murdered during a robbery as he and his dad shoveled snow at their Indianapolis home in 1978.
“My dad was a great dad,” Streett recalls. “He was an athlete. He was a Presbyterian chaplain in the Army. He served as a field chaplain in Vietnam. His family was the most important thing in the world to him. Being the only son, I had a special relationship with him. So did my two sisters.”
Witnessing the killing of his father rocked Streett’s life to its foundation. Yet in the nearly 32 years since his father’s death, Streett has rebuilt his world. He’s a husband, a father and a minister who works to improve the lives of children from the inner city—the same background of the three men who were involved in his dad’s death.
Now 47, Streett doesn’t believe in the death penalty. He has forgiven the men who were involved in the crime. He even worked to get the sentence of one of the men—the one who drove the car during the crime—reduced. They are now friends.
“There are some members of my family who are not very pleased that I’ve made public statements about being opposed to capital punishment,” Streett says. “Forgiveness is a personal issue. I reached the point where I knew forgiveness was something I needed to do. Anne Lamott is one of my favorite writers. She wrote that not forgiving is like drinking rat poison and waiting for the rat to die. It’s a great image because not forgiving just eats you up inside.
“The only thing that brings you to peace is being able to forgive and move on. Mentally, I’m a pretty healthy person and a happy person. It’s because I’m able to move on, because I was able to forgive. A lot of what I believe is informed by my Christian faith. It’s hard to read the Bible and not come away convinced that we are commanded to forgive others, to be forgiving people.”
Streett believes the one person who would best understand his transformation would be his late father, Alan.
“Everything I’m doing is consistent with the legacy he was a part of—to pursue justice and righteousness,” Streett says. “I think he would be very happy and comfortable with what I’m doing.”
Streett is a member of the advisory board of McAuliffe’s organization, InCASE. So is former Indiana Gov. Joseph Kernan. During his time as governor from 2003 to 2005, he commuted the death sentences of two death-row inmates to life in prison without parole.
“My involvement with Will is a part of where I stand [on the issue],” Kernan says. “I’ve been acquainted with him since he was at Notre Dame. I have great admiration for him to fight for something he believes in so strongly. He not only believes in it, but he’s willing to do something about it.”
The Catholic influence
With a small, sparse office in Indianapolis, McAuliffe travels across the state, talking to the media and making presentations at churches and civic group meetings.
“We’re trying to give people the information they need to plug into their moral framework,” McAuliffe says. “The death penalty doesn’t jive with who we are as people and what we do as a society. I’m doing this because it’s a unique intersection of the things I care about most: democracy, government and my faith—my Catholic faith and my faith in humanity.”
He cites the influence of the late Pope John Paul II, who stated in 1999, “ … The dignity of human life must never be taken away, even in the case of someone who has done great evil. Modern society has the means of protecting itself, without definitively denying criminals the chance to reform. I renew the appeal I made most recently at Christmas for a consensus to end the death penalty, which is both cruel and unnecessary.”
McAuliffe’s efforts have also been marked by his years at Notre Dame and his youth as a member of St. Andrew the Apostle Parish in Syracuse, N.Y.
“They had a dedication to prison ministry there,” McAuliffe recalls about the parish of his youth. “Their call to action was how to be a seven-day-a-week Church. Who are we going to help? What are we going to do?
“At Notre Dame, everything you study is with a view of how to use that for the good of humanity.”
The good of humanity is the heart of the death penalty issue for McAuliffe. So is the goodness of humanity. He sees it in the approach of Mary Winnecke and Tim Streett. He reads it in the Beatitudes when Jesus calls people to have mercy.
“At some point, the qualities of compassion and mercy fell by the wayside because they are considered too soft,” McAuliffe says. “People confuse those qualities with absolution for the crime. At the end of the day, we’re talking about who we are, and what are our responsibilities to each other and ourselves. It all goes back to the human question, ‘Should we be in this business of killing people?’ ”
(For more information about the Indiana Coalition Acting to Suspend Executions, log on to www.indianacase.org or call 317-519-5204.) †