Icon viewers:

Members from the Bluffton Community will gather Thursday at 9:45 a.m. on the Corner of Main and Cherry Street to speak out against the Ohio Death Penalty.

Frank Spisak is scheduled to be killed by the State of Ohio at 10am that morning. Those at the vigil plan to pray for Spisak as well as the victims of his racially-motivated crime: Rev. Horace Rickerson, Cleveland State University student Brian Warford, and Timothy Sheehan.

A vigil is held at this location every time Ohio kills an inmate, protesting the death penalty. Protesters believe that restorative justice is more healing for the victims of crime than vengeance, that murder is not made right by more killing, and that the death penalty is economically and socially ineffective.

The morality of the death penalty was questioned in the movie Dead Man Walking, about a nun and her relationship with a man on death row.

The nun depicted in that movie was Sister Helen Prjean of New Orleans. Sister Helen will be coming in person to speak at Bluffton University March 1 at 11am and at First Mennonite Church March 1 at 7pm

Wendy Chappell-Dick