The Witness

Today we bring you our final reports from the recently completed 11th Annual Fast & Vigil to Abolish the Death Penalty. Today's reports, written by NCADP Maxine Moffett, both involve people who have lost loved ones to murder -- but who nonetheless organize against the death penalty. These people are involved with groups such as Murder Victims' Families for Reconciliation and Journey of Hope...from Violence to Healing.

Both of these groups are playing a vital role in changing how this country thinks about the death penalty. They are changing the conventional thinking that has long held that if you lose someone to murder, you automatically are going to support execution for the murderer.

Here is the story of SueZan Bosler:

Inside of the confines of her home, SueZan Bosler witnessed her father, Reverend Billy Bosler, being brutally attached and stabbed over 24 times by an intruder. When she tried to come to her father’s aid, she was stabbed in the back and the head. To survive, she had to pretend to be dead. As she lay limp on the floor while the intruder ransacked the house, she heard her father take his last breath.

“I could vividly remember my father saying that if he were ever killed, he would not want his killer to receive the death penalty,” Bosler says. “His favorite quote was, ‘let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me.’”

Bosler’s memory of these words acted as a living halo for grace – and it is only through grace and forgiveness that Bosler was able to forgive James Bernard Campbell, the murderer of her father. She went one step further by aiding Campbell in his commutation process. “I actively fought for 10 years, during 3 trials and 2 sentencing to save his life. I found myself in the enemies’ chair of the Florida DA, who proactively attempted to keep me from expressing my sentiments of ‘life in prison’ to the jury. On June 13, 1996, Campbell’s sentence was commuted to life in prison.