(The following is provided by Maryland Citizens Against State Executions (MD CASE), the coalition of which LWVMD has been a member since we achieved consensus on repeal, and the subsequent adoption of repeal by LWVUS.) Saturday, November 17, 7 p.m. St. John’s Lutheran Church, 8808 Harford Road, Parkville, with speakers Bud Welch and Kirk Bloodsworth. Kirk Bloodsworth is an exoneree from Maryland’s death row. Kirk, an honorably discharged former Marine with no criminal record, was convicted of and sentenced to death for the 1984 rape and murder of nine-year old Dawn Hamilton. In 1993 DNA testing proved conclusively that Kirk was innocent and he was released after spending nearly nine years in prison, two of them on death row. Bud Welch “I was opposed to the death penalty all my life until my daughter Julie Marie was killed in the (1995) Oklahoma City bombing,” Bud Welch has said. “For many months after that, I could have killed Timothy McVeigh myself. Temporary insanity is real and I have lived it. You can’t think of enough adjectives to describe the rage, revenge and hate I have felt. But after time, I was able to examine my conscience and I realized that if McVeigh was put to death, it wouldn’t help me in the healing process. People talk about executions bringing closure. But how can there be closure when my little girl is never coming back. I finally realized that the death penalty is all about revenge and hate, and revenge and hate are why Julie Marie and 167 others are dead.”