As the sister of a murder victim and the wife of a death-row exoneree, LaShawn Ajamu has a unique perspective on what victims’ families need and how they are treated as criminal cases wend their way through the legal process. And the co-chair of the Murder Victims Families Support Project at Ohioans to Stop Executions strongly believes that the death penalty fails victims’ family members. Ajamu, the wife of 150th U.S. death-row exoneree Kwame Ajamu, spoke in London, England on April 7 at a conference of LifeLines, an international organization that provides support for prisoners on death row in the United States. Ajamu’s brother, James Nero, was shot to death, but his accused killer—the son of a former Stark County, Ohio sheriff—claimed self-defense and was acquitted. “When the court case was over,” Ajamu said, “[t]here was no help except from our own community. My parents, my two other brothers, James’s fiancé and my nephew never received any information about resources available to help us deal with the situation in which we found ourselves. None of us had ever experienced traumatic loss like this.” Ajamu said that states need to provide “a simple guide and a list of resources that can help the loved ones of murder victims,” including trained grief counselors, assistance with funeral arrangements, and financial assistance. Frustrated at the lack of support available to her family, Ajamu became an advocate for the families of murder victims. Ajamu also advocates protecting the integrity and neutrality of government victim assistance programs by making them independent of county prosecutors, where they are housed in most states. “I’m here to tell you that if the crime victim is somehow found in disfavor, or if the victims’ family disagrees with the prosecutors’ office, their services dry up. That must be unacceptable. Victim services personnel should not be beholden to the county prosecutor.” These services, not the death penalty, are what truly help victims’ families, she said. “[E]very time they are trying to execute a prisoner, the politicians come out and say ‘We need to do this for the murder victims family.’ ‘We need executions so that the victims family can heal, or have closure.’” Instead of executions, she said, family members “want the truth about what happened, and we want the killer held accountable in a way that he can’t do it again. No amount of killing is going to bring our loved one back, and we certainly don’t want the state using our pain and suffering to justify another family losing their loved one — even if they are guilty.” The death penalty further victimizes families, she said, because the comparative infrequency with which it is sought and obtained is “really saying to most of us is that our loved ones were not valuable enough to them.” Finally, she says, her husband’s experience proves that “the state makes mistakes. … No murder victim[’s] family wants an innocent person held accountable for the loss of their loved one. Not only does that create more victims, but it leaves the real killer free to kill again. Get rid of the death penalty and you won’t risk executing the wrong person,” she said.

(LaShawn Ajamu, How the death penalty fails murder victim family members and what victim families really need, Prepared Remarks at Lifelines Conference in London, Medium, April 7, 2018.) See Victims.

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