Additional Resources

DPIC Resources

• Podcast: Rep. Renny Cushing on Empowering Crime Survivors and Repealing New Hampshire’s Death Penalty

Archival DPIC Content

• Victims News and Developments: 1998-2003

Related Websites

• National Center for Victims of Crime - provides resources including a support hotline staffed by victim advocates and referrals to support services.
• National Organization for Victim Assistance - promotes victim rights and services through national advocacy, direct services to victims and assistance to professional colleagues.
• Office for Victims of Crime - oversees diverse programs that benefit victims of crime.
• Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Alliance - provides educational resources to those at risk of developing PTSD.
• Murder Victims’ Families for Human Rights - is an organization with a national and international focus actively working to abolish the death penalty. MVFHR members are murder victims’ family members and family members of the executed who are opposed to killing in all cases whether it be homicide, state killing, or extrajudicial killings and “disappearances.”
• Journey of Hope…from Violence to Healing - is an organization led by murder victim family members joined by death row family members, family members of the executed, the exonerated, and others with stories to tell, that conducts public education speaking tours and addresses alternatives to the death penalty.
• California Crime Victims for Alternatives to the Death Penalty - is a coalition of families, friends, and loved ones of murder victims who oppose the death penalty. The coalition supports families, friends, and loved ones in telling their stories and being heard.
• Victim Offender Mediation Association - provides resources, training, and technical assistance in victim-offender mediation, conferencing, circles, and related restorative justice practices.
• Families of Homicide Victims and Missing Persons, Inc. (FOHVAMP) - is a nonprofit organization working in Colorado to find, support and empower families suffering from a loved one’s murder or long-time disappearance.

Reports and Studies

• Susan A. Bandes, Closure in the Criminal Courtroom: The Birth and Strange Career of an Emotion, Edward Elgar Research Handbook on Law and Emotion (September 2019).
• Oregonians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, Not in Our Name (December 2017)
• Michael Radelet, The Incremental Retributive Impact of a Death Sentence Over Life Without Parole, University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform (2016).
• Leo Barille, “I Forgive You, but You Must Die: Murder Victim Family Members, the Death Penalty, and Restorative Justice,” Victims and Offenders (2014).
• Corey Burton and Richard Tewksbury, “How Families of Murder Victims Feel Following the Execution of Their Loved One’s Murderer: A Content Analysis of Newspaper Reports of Executions from 2006-2011,” Journal of Qualitative Criminal Justice and Criminology, Vol. 1, Number 1 (2013).
• Marilyn Peterson Armour & Mark S. Umbreit, “Assessing the Impact of the Ultimate Penal Sanction on Homicide Survivors: A Two State Comparison,” 96 Marquette Law Review 1 (2012).
• California Crime Victims for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, Voices from California Crime Victims for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (January 2008)
• Murder Victims’ Families for Human Rights, “Creating More Victims: How Executions Hurt the Families Left Behind” (2006).
• Murder Victims’ Families for Reconciliation, “Dignity Denied: The Experience of Murder Victims’ Family Members Who Oppose the Death Penalty” (2002).
• Symposium: Pamela Blume Leonard, Michael Mears, John H. Blume, Stephen P. Garvey, Samuel R. Gross, Richard Burr, et al.: “Victims and the Death Penalty: Inside and Outside the Courtroom,” 88 Cornell Law Review 257 (2003).
• Vivian Berger, “Payne and suffering - a personal reflection and a victim-centered critique,” 20 Florida State University Law Review 21 (1992).

Books By and About Victims’ Family Members

• Kimberly Cook, Shattered Justice: Crime Victims’ Experiences with Wrongful Convictions and Exonerations, Rutgers University Press, 2022.
• Bill Pelke, Journey of Hope … From Violence to Healing, Xlibris Corporation, September 2003.
• Susan F. Sharp, Hidden Victims, Rutgers University Press, 2005.
• Judith W. Kay, Murdering Myths: The Story Behind the Death Penalty, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., June 2005.
• James R. Acker and David Reed Karp, Wounds That Do Not Bind: Victim-based Perspectives on the Death Penalty, Carolina Academic Press, 2006.
• Bill Jenkins, What To Do When the Police Leave, 3rd Edition, In-Sight Books, 2001.
• Rachel King, Don’t Kill in Our Names: Families of Murder Victims Speak Out Against the Death Penalty, Rutgers Press, 2003.
• Rachel King, Capital Consequences: Families of the Condemned Tell Their Stories, Rutgers University Press, 2005.
• Antoinette Bosco, Choosing Mercy: A Mother of Murder Victims Pleads to End the Death Penalty, Orbis Books, 2001.
• Brian MacQuarrie, The Ride: A Shocking Murder and a Bereaved Father’s Journey from Rage to Redemption, Da Capo Press, 2009.
• Naseem Rakha, The Crying Tree, Broadway Books, 2009.
• Richard Stack, Dead Wrong: Violence, Vengeance, and the Victims of Capital Punishment, Praeger Publishers, 2006.
• Elizabeth Beck, Sarah Britto, and Arlene Andrews, In the Shadow of Death: Restorative Justice and Death Row Families, Oxford University Press, 2007.
• Courtney Vaughn, Living With the Death Penalty, Xlibris Corporation, 2006.
• Jody Lyneé Madeira, Killing McVeigh: The Death Penalty and the Myth of Closure, New York University Press, May 2012.
• Jeanne Bishop, One Woman’s Journey After Her Sister’s Murder, Westminster John Knox Press, 2015.

News Articles

• Dakin Adone, “The Pittsburgh synagogue shooter faces the death penalty despite a pause on federal executions. Here’s what those who mourn the slain have said about it,” CNN, August 2, 2023.
• Eli Hager, “They Agreed to Meet Their Mother’s Killer. Then Tragedy Struck Again.” The Marshall Project, July 21, 2020.
• Richard Pompelio, “For survivor’s sake, abolish the death penalty.” Star Ledger, June 12, 2006.
• Frank Green, “Some murder victims’ kin reject capital punishment; others endorse the sanction.” Richmond Times-Dispatch, December 22, 2003
• Spiegel, David, “Closure? The Execution Was Just the Start” The Washington Post, April 29, 2001.
• Rich, Frank, “It’s Closure Mongering Time” New York Times, April 28, 2001 (op-ed).
• Carlson, Margaret, “Don’t Give Him the Satisfaction” Time Magazine, April 22, 2001.
• Cohen, Richard, “The Wrong Kind of Closure” The Washington Post, April 17, 2001 (op-ed).
• ”My Brother’s Guilt Became My Own: I had always watched over him, but he got away from me” By Bill Babbitt as told to Gabrielle Banks, New York Times Magazine, January 14, 2001.
• Briscoe, Ivan, “U.S. death penalty: victims seize the high ground,” UNESCO Courier, October 2000.

Multimedia

• NPR: STORYCORPS: Recording America “Father Finds Peace in Forgiveness”