Renny Cushing, ‘fervent’ opponent of the death penalty, died at 69 –

Renee Cushing outside the state house in Concord, NH, 2013. (Jim Cole / AP)

New Hampshire Congressman Renny Cushing has become a major advocate for the abolition of the death penalty due to his grief over the murder of his father. He was 69 in his home of Hampton, NH.

Her daughter, Marie Cushing, said the cause was prostate cancer with complications from the coronavirus.

Mr. Cushing spent half a century as an activist in a campaign against the Vietnam War, the use of nuclear energy and as a Democratic member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives, including the legalization of same-sex marriage.

But he was best known for his role in trying to end the death penalty, a practice he has embraced most in the United States. It is defined as “state-sanctioned ritualized murder”.

“I didn’t choose to kill the survivors; I chose the situation, “Mr. Cushing once told the interviewer.” However, I may have some influence on how I define the rest of my life. And this is my way of honoring my father’s memory. “

Bill Pelke, an anti-law enforcement activist, died at the age of 73 from a sad passion.

Mr. Cushing, Robert R. Cushing Sr., a retired math teacher, was at home with his wife on the evening of June 1, 1988, when there was a knock on his door. There was a policeman standing outside without a shift sitting nearby. Like a curse on Cushing for more than a decade described in press releases. A police officer, Chief Robert McLaughlin, took a rifle and shot Cushing twice, leaving him for dead.

Laflin was found guilty of murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole. He did not risk the death penalty. But after his father’s death, Mr. Cushing recalled meeting an acquaintance who said he hoped the killer would be “angry” to “make peace” with the Cushing family.

“There is a myth that the families of the victims need another murder to be treated,” Cushing said. I told the interviewer. “The truth is, many people are afraid of the idea of ​​the death penalty.” … We know exactly what a violent death means and we don’t want society to do it. “

Mr. Cushing became the Executive Director of the Organization for the Reconciliation of the Families of Murder Victims and in 2004 helped establish the families of murder victims for human rights. He has spoken out against the death penalty nationwide and has funded multi-year bills at his home in New Hampshire, where he is serving his eighth consecutive term to abolish the death penalty in the state.

The move was successful in 2019, when lawmakers approved Governor Chris Sununu’s (right) veto to make New Hampshire the 21st state to reject the death penalty.

During the hearing of his father’s case, Mr. Cushing at one point met the attacker’s son, whom he recalled with emotion.

“We were side by side,” Mr. Cushing told American Prospect years later. Because it was a terrible event and we both got involved even though we didn’t want to.

“We both lost our fathers on June 1, 1988,” Adama recalled.

“Somehow,” thought Mr. Cushing, “I was lucky because my father’s life was extraordinary.” I am the son of a murder victim. He lives as the son of a murderer. And I didn’t want the pain I felt when I lost my father to go with him. “My pain will not be relieved by making him suffer.”

In 2011, 23 years after his father died, Mr. Cushing lost another family member to the violence when the husband of Mr. Cushing’s brother Matthew was shot and killed by his grandson, who he later committed suicide. Police report at that time.

During the decades that Mr. Cushing has been at the center of the death penalty debate, Mr. Cushing has been given the opportunity to broaden the discussion to present a range of views among the victims’ families, some of which are in favor of death. sanction like Mr. Cushing objected.

Through his defense, he met David Kaczynski, who helped law enforcement identify his brother Ted Kaczynski as a bomber in the mid-1990s and later became a leading advocate of the death penalty.

(Ted Kaczynski, acknowledging the 1998 postal bombings that killed three people and injured many, has not been threatened with death and is serving a life sentence.)

In an interview with Mr. Cushing, David Kaczynski said, “This was a man who came from a place of deep pain and loss.” He said. On the traumas experienced by the victims “.

“Ren had a kind heart,” she added, “which helped her see beyond her own pain to the pain of others.”

Robert Reynolds Cushing Jr. was born on July 20, 1952 in Portsmouth, NH. His mother taught him to read.

Mr. Cushing became politically active at an early age, arguing that the voting age should be lowered from 21 to 18 in a New Hampshire legislature at a young age. He saw his high school friends killed and family members badly injured – he claimed you were old enough to vote.

Mr. Cushing went to college briefly, but dropped out of formal education to lead an itinerant life, which allowed him to see the world through the eyes of others. His daughter said he harvested grapes in California and oranges in Florida, was a garbage man in Atlanta and produced gold in Ontario.

Mr. Cushing was arrested in 1971 and charged with trespassing during a rally at the Select Service headquarters in Washington in May. He was tried along with other protesters and sentenced to one year of probation. When a judge asked about his profession, Mr. Cushing, then 18, replied that he was a “hoboologist” or “someone who lives to study the life of the oboe,” according to a Washington Post article at the time. .

Mr. Cushing worked in welding and woodworking jobs in his hometown of New Hampshire and became a union organizer. He later dedicated his organizational energies to the anti-nuclear movement and helped found the Clamshell Alliance against the construction of the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant in New Hampshire.

According to his daughter, Mr. Cushing earned his first two-year term at his New Hampshire home in 1986. He returned for another term in 1996 and a second term in 2008. He has served as a Democratic leader continuously since he was elected to the State Assembly in 2012, until his death.

Mr. Cushing and his wife raised their baby in Keyhouse, where his father died.

“It seemed very important not to lose this house,” he said. I told the interviewer. “It was built by my father and my grandfather. The killer may have taken my father away from me, but he wouldn’t even take my roots. Also, over time, the house has become completely different. “Floors that were once stained with my father’s blood are where my daughters learned to walk.”

He outlived his wife for over thirty years, Christy Conrad Hamptonell, as well as his daughter from Memphis; Two other daughters, Elizabeth Cushing of Dover, NH and Grace Cushing of Portland, Maine; Three sisters; And three brothers.

The death penalty is becoming increasingly rare in the United States, mainly due to the activism of lawyers like Mr. Cushing. Eleven executions were carried out in 2021, fewer than 98 in 1999, the largest since the US Supreme Court reintroduced the death penalty in 1976. Death Penalty Information Center. The practice is still allowed in 27 states.

Perhaps the most prominent activist against the death penalty is Helen Prejan, a Catholic nun, played by Susan Sarandon in the 1995 film Dead Man Walking, based on the book of the same name by Prejan.

Arriving on the doorstep of the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, Prezin thought about the cell phone of Mr. Cushing’s life as a lawyer.

He was “very strong and resilient” in an effort to end the death penalty in New Hampshire. In the end, she said, “she has finally won”.

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Source: Washington Post

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