Debating South Dakota's death penalty

About 100 yards of grass and a life-shattering experience separated Lynette Johnson and Russ Freeburg from about 50 proponents of abolishing the South Dakota death penalty.

Johnson and Freeburg stood Friday afternoon near a sign advertising the RJ Johnson Training Academy on a lawn of the South Dakota State Penitentiary. They watched as the death penalty opponents gathered in a circle just off the prison property and for the 17th year conducted a service memorializing murder victims and their killers who have been put to death by the state.

"They'll never understand how we feel unless they've had somebody kill or try to kill one of their kids or their spouse. Hopefully, they'll never have to," Freeburg said of death penalty protesters.

His son, Matt Freeburg, and Johnson's husband, Ron "RJ" Johnson, were prison guards when inmates Rodney Berget and Eric Robert, in a failed escape attempt in 2011, killed Johnson. Robert, who said he also wanted to kill Matt Freeburg, was executed in 2012.

Berget remains on death row after challenging his own death sentence.

After hearing Russ Freeburg's assertion that circumstances shape perception about the death penalty, Frank Barnett acknowledged, "I know that."

"This is not us versus them. We understand the grief, the hurt and the pain they are going through," Barnett said.

At the service, Barnett sang a spiritual. The words were snatched by a blustery April wind the moment they left his mouth, but Barnett said a theme conveyed in his song was that death ripples out to harm people not directly affected by it; all death, including state-ordered executions.

"Fighting violence with violence doesn't work. Nonviolent Jesus taught us that," Barnett said.

Freeburg challenged the analogy.

"How can they make any comparison with Jesus and Berget?" he asked. "The one perfect man, and they make a comparison with someone like Rodney Berget?"

He acknowledged, though, the gulf that divides South Dakotans with regard to the death penalty.

"We're not going to change their minds," Freeburg shrugged. "They're not going to change ours."

The service, sponsored by South Dakota Peace and Justice Center, South Dakotans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, Pax Christi and Just Peace, was more in the nature of participants affirming their own long-held opposition to execution.

"It's just bringing the circle together of people who know the death penalty only promotes violence in our state," said Mark Sanderson, who helped organize the event.

The annual ceremony this year comes less than a week after a jury in Sioux Falls made James McVay the newest death row inmate. McVay stabbed Maybelle Schein, 75, to death in 2011. McVay pleaded guilty to the murder but said he was mentally ill when he killed Schein.

"Can't we see killing someone who is mentally ill is not justice?" said Denny Davis, of South Dakotans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.

"To murder someone because they have murdered? We're better than that."

In prepared remarks, the Rev. Rachel Ciupek-Reed pointed to the array of spiritual and humanist traditions that offer no grounding to executions.

"Justice without mercy is vengeance," she said. "Mercy without justice is foolishness. Justice without humility tears our humanity from us. We need to seek justice with mercy and walk humbly as we do so."

As the ceremony concluded, Elaine Engelgau moved to the sidewalk along busy North Drive and displayed a pair of brightly colored signs. "End the Death Penalty," read one. "South Dakota Stop Killing," read the other. Engelgau says she regularly attends ceremonies opposing the death penalty and vigils at the prison when executions are scheduled.

"My heart just broke when they instituted the death penalty in South Dakota," she said.

Tears welled in her eyes."I love South Dakota," she said. "It hurts to have South Dakota choose to murder somebody."