 About Linda L. White
In 1986, Linda White’s 26-year-old daughter, Cathy, herself a mother of a young child, was raped and murdered by two teenaged boys in Texas. Following this tragic event, Linda White struggled to overcome her grief and anger. She returned to college to study some of the issues she was struggling to understand in her own life—grief, loss, violence prevention. Finally finishing her dissertation on Texas’ program of Victim Offender Mediation/Dialogue in crimes of extreme violence, and earning her PhD, she began working in a variety of ways to support efforts at restorative justice and to oppose the death penalty. .
Did you have a clear opinion about the death penalty before your daughter’s death? How did you came to be involved in the death penalty and prisoners’ rights.
I was not the slightest bit interested, involved or knowledgeable about any of those issues prior to my daughter’s death. I was pretty complacent, like I think the majority of people are and so I just assumed everybody was doing their job and doing a good job of it. I was pretty happy about the way things were going. My involvement actually began when I started attending meetings with a victims’ rights group following Cathy’s death and I began to notice some things. In the beginning, they were incredibly helpful because they’d gone through similar circumstances and were helpful and sympathetic and I knew I was with people that understood what I was going through. But after a while, I noticed that nobody moved forward. We told the same stories, month after month. Nobody wanted to hear anything about grief, about dealing with it or the resolution of grief.
We had a speaker once who talked about phases [of grief] and everybody criticized her up one side and down the other. I had been reading about grief and loss by that time and actually thought the speaker was really interesting. She had a lot of good things to say but because she hadn’t been through what they’d been through, they didn’t want to listen. I was pretty surprised by the level of criticism afterward. I also noticed that the only speakers they cared anything about were the ones who were part of the criminal justice system. They talked about ways to make the system harder, how to make it leaner and meaner. That’s what they wanted to hear.
We signed parole-blocking petitions. At every meeting somebody’s parole was being blocked because a person from the victim’s family was part of our group and we didn’t want that prisoner to get out on parole. That seemed to be what everybody did and I wanted to be part of it, so I did that too for a short period of time. Then I didn’t do it. The reason I didn’t do it anymore was because I thought, “I don’t know anything about that person. Maybe that person is ready for parole. Maybe they did deserve parole.” I didn’t think that parole was something that should be blocked just as a matter of course.
So little by little, over the course of a year, I began to feel a little uncomfortable there. I asked myself questions that nobody seemed to ask. My husband only went with me three times in the 12 months I went, but after the last time he went with me, he said, “Where do they get the energy for all that anger and all that bitterness?” I finally realized that was one of the things I was wondering too. My husband and I had, from the beginning, just been crushed once we came out of the shock of what had happened to our daughter. We went into total desolation over her death but we didn’t stop at anger and bitterness. We just didn’t have that much energy. I realized I was doing a lot of self-care for myself and for my family, reading and taking my granddaughter, Amy, to counseling. She turned six toward the end of the time I went, which was approximately a year beginning in Dec, 1986.
Our case ended up being a little different from everyone else’s. We didn’t have to go to trial. It was pled out. I was grateful that it had been pled out. They consulted us about what was accepted and asked if that was ok with us. We were glad that we weren’t going to have to go through a trial and that our son wasn’t going to have to testify. That would be hard for him.
Back then, I didn’t know anything about court appointed attorneys and I assumed that the court appointed attorneys did a good job for the boys. At that point, I really didn’t care if they did or not. I’ve since come to care about those kinds of things. You know, it doesn’t serve us well if people don’t get good representation. So, as I said, I became more and more uncomfortable and I quit going to the support group. I was getting support on my own. I had gone back to school there toward the end. Cathy was killed in November and I went back to school in September, the following year. That was one of the things I knew I wanted to do for myself. It would be something I could do good for me and it was something I could have control over. The boys hadn’t been sentenced yet and we didn’t know if Amy was going to be left with us. We had temporary custody of her but we didn’t know if we were going to get final custody. We were really living in limbo, so going back to college, to something I had control over, was a very appealing to me.
Why do you think people hold onto negative feelings?
I think one of the reasons we cling to that bitterness and anger and sense of revenge is because even we don’t want to question how much we loved our husband or daughter or whomever. The idea of healing and moving past this in your life, in any way, shape or form, is abhorrent to you. It takes a while to be able to translate that into the idea that moving forward doesn’t mean you forget, because you never do. You never get over it. You’re always different. That doesn’t mean your life is over or that your life is ruined but it does mean that your life is different and there’s no help for that. It happened and you’re different and that loved one’s loss will forever be a part of who you are.
Do you know to what extent, if any, the courts take into account the surviving family members’ opinions during sentencing?
That’s going to depend totally upon the particular jurisdiction in the state of Texas. In the past, DA’s in some jurisdictions like Harris County, the death penalty capitol of the world, were incredibly vengeful. I don’t think they would have given a damn if the family wanted the death penalty or not. I know one very infamous case in which a woman, Andrea Yates, killed her five children. Even though they were his five children, her husband, Rusty Yates, knew his wife was mentally ill and did not want her prosecuted as a death penalty case. They paid absolutely zero attention to him, so he became more collateral damage. He was forced into the situation of supporting his wife after she killed their children. It was awful. That’s the jurisdiction that I live closest to. I know the immediate past DA in Travis County, where Austin is located. He prosecuted very few capital cases but he’s cut from a different cloth. I think he would have been very sensitive to the wishes of the family. In our case, it wouldn’t have mattered because the boys were too young and they didn’t execute 15 year-olds. Over the years, my husband and I have been very grateful that we didn’t have that possibility. I am very grateful we didn’t have life without parole for anyone either. I think that is a pretty cruel and unusual penalty for youngsters, no matter what they’ve done. I think the number of people that it should apply to is very, very small.
You have said that the death penalty is portrayed as being for the families of the victims, but it’s not. Why not?
I think a lot of victims’ families want the death penalty because and have been given they idea that it’s going to bring them the closure they need. Of course, the idea of that kind of retribution or revenge is very powerful and very attractive in those early days of getting past your loss. If you are one of the many, many people who is incredibly angry, along with everything else, it satisfies those feelings. I think that it’s not good for the families because I think “closure” is a false promise. As I said before, it’s always a part of you. There is such a thing as judicial closure, like when a trial is over and people have been sentenced and so forth. To a great degree, though, you don’t get that in the death penalty until the person’s executed. I think it is so far down the line that it’s a cruel thing to hold out in front of people. If you’re going to get any closure from it at all, and most victims do not believe they have, it’s so long in coming as to be not very helpful.Also, I think all this death penalty stuff puts the focus on the offender and not the victim. That’s unfair. People know the names of criminals but they don’t know the names of their victims. It’s something that happens because of the way it’s covered by the media. It also extends that horrible grief to another family—the family of the perpetrator. So, you have another grieving family. Some of us, we hurt so much, we don’t think about the fact that this is another grieving family we’re going to add to the mix. Finally, I know the death penalty is very expensive. To keep that criminal justice machinery operating, not just the appellate process, but all of it, the trials and so forth, it’s a lot of money. That money could be used for direct services to victims, to pay for counseling or even expensive funerals. These days, even the cheapest funeral is pretty expensive. I just think we could do better things with our money.
What did you learn that clarified your views about justice—restorative vs. retributive? Can you explain what they are?
I used to not know whether I thought the death penalty was good or bad. It was pretty much an emotional response. I took a class when I went back to college where they were going to discuss the death penalty. In it, I read Hugo Adam Bedau’s book, Death Penalty in America, because I really was tired of being out there with an emotional response, just vacillating. So, I read that book to cement my thinking and it did, once and for all. By the time I finished that book, there was no way I could ever support the death penalty ever again.
I discovered restorative justice because I realized one of the things I had come to be uncomfortable with in that victims’ group was that it seemed like everything we wanted to do was return violence for violence. That, to me, is the retributive format. And I can understand why some people think that’s warranted but it’s still spreading more violence. When I read about restorative justice and saw that it was a non-violent alternative to addressing criminal acts, I really wanted to know all I could about it. It involved victims, offenders, and the community getting together to see who’s been harmed, what we need to do to address those harms and whose responsibility it is. So the bottom line for me is it addresses harm without doing more harm. That is not what we do in our criminal justice system today. It is an honest effort to address harm. I know it is. I know the men and women who work in it have an honest to gosh calling to do their duty but the way we do it causes so much harm. In some areas, it becomes a game. In the trial system, it’s about wins and losses, not about truth or right and wrong. It becomes about punishment, not about teaching anybody the right thing or teaching them a better way. It’s not about restoring or rehabilitating families, communities or relationships. It’s just about getting even.
Have you met with the boys who involved in your daughter’s murder?
I’ve only met one of them, not the other one. It was deemed not appropriate for us to sit down and have a mediated conversation with him. I learned that Gary Brown, one of the boys that killed my daughter and the one I met, had a horrible, horrible childhood. He had been a victim of abuse all his life from the time he was a very young up until the time he killed my daughter. He had never committed a violent crime until then. He had just hurt himself with drugs, running away and suicide attempts—8 or 10 times by the time he was 15. As we discussed, it doesn’t make it ok that he killed my daughter, but I understand the nature of his life and his pain, and what he did and did not learn from what should have been the responsible adults in his life. Instead, they were abusive adults and uncaring. That makes a big difference. I do think, based on what he’s like now compared to when he was trying to be a tough kid, it’s possible for people to change. He got 54 years. He had to serve at least a third of it before he could come up for parole the first time. From what I understand, he will be getting out next year. I think that he served the appropriate amount of time, with good behavior. He will have served 24 years. That’s more than half his life. It’s a long time. People who haven’t spent very much time in prison don’t understand the nature of what that means. It’s an oppressive, dehumanizing environment, for the most part.
You testified on behalf of the Juvenile Justice Accountability and Improvement Act of 2009 (H.R. 2289). Can you tell us a little about it and why yousupport it?
It’s meant to come back in and take a look at juveniles with “life without parole” sentences, to see if they still need to stay in jail and determines whether they are worthy of any kind of parole. They would come in after 15 years and then every 3 years after that to make this determination. That’s what a lot of people have a problem with, going back every 3 years. The people who object to it don’t want the families to have to have to be subjected to it over and over. I understand that, but some of the people we’re talking about came in when they were 13 or 14. As a citizen and as a Christian, I have a huge problem with locking children up for the rest of their lives.
You were appointed to the Texas State Council for Interstate Adult Offender Supervision. Given your views, how do you find working for the state of Texas in this capacity?
I’m not shy about my views but I don’t go out of my way to be abrasive with anybody. There’re some pretty neat people who work for the state on this Council. I think there are some remarkable men and women that work in criminal justice and they are just doing the best they can with a difficult system. They’re handed what they’re handed every year by the legislature—many of whom don’t really know what they’re doing, quite frankly. They bow to the political pressure. You know, if anyone perceives you as being soft on crime, you probably won’t get re-elected in Texas and many other jurisdictions as well. And what’s sad is that it’s not about being soft on crime, it’s about being smart.
How do you feel doing this work in Texas? What has been most rewarding?
It’s a tough job. Mostly, I speak out against the death penalty as a crime victim. That gives me a little more credibility. I go into prisons with a program called Bridges of Life. We bring the face of a victim in and try to do that work with men who are incarcerated. I think it’s important that they take that kind of responsibility, that they have that kind of accountability rather than just seeing their crime as committed against the state of Texas. They need to see crime as being against people.
For 8 1/2 years, I taught upper level college level courses in prison. I miss that. I had some fabulous students. Unbelievable. Stupid, in terms of how they committed crimes and got caught but smart enough to do well in school. Even very smart people try to take short cuts, right? Very, very rewarding to teach in prison. It really was the most helpful thing I did as the mother of a crime victim. I was extremely fortunate to have people in my life that helped me go down some different paths. I’m just grateful it happened that way it did.
Past Close Up Articles
Dr. Robert Sanborn, President, Children at Risk, Houston, TX
Odilia Romero, Binational Women’s Issues Coordinator FIOB (Frente Indígena de Organizaciones Binacionales)
Walt Staton, olunteer, No More Deaths, Tucson, Arizona
Raman Vaid, Former President of the Federation of Indian Students of Australia (FISA)
Ray Ybarra, Activist and Lawyer, PUEBLO, Center for Legal and Human Rights
Astrid Bant, Anthropologist, Advisor to the Latin America Division, Oxfam Novib, The Netherlands
Jessica Devi Chandrashekar, Media Coordinator
Canadian Humanitarian Appeal for Relief of Tamils (Canadian Hart)
Harmit Atwal, Editor, Institute of Race Relations
Avy Skolnik, Network Coordinator, National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs
Senem Doganoglu, Attorney for Pembe Hayat (Pink Life)
Leonardo Crippa, Staff Attorney, Indian Law Resource Center
Jim Harrington, Director, Texas Civil Rights Project
Prof. Brian Levin, Director, Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism
Juliana Rotich, Program Director, Ushahidi.com
Christina Iturralde, LatinoJustice PRLDEF
Anene Ejikeme Assistant Professor, Trinity University
Alexander Verkhovsky, Director, SOVA Center for Information and Analysis (Moscow)
Innokenty Grekov, Human Rights First
Paul St. Clair, Executive Director, Roma Community Centre
Rev. Allan Ramirez, Latino Advocate
Dr. Agapito López, M.D.
Bill Habern, defense attorney
Anya Cordell, activist
Rais Bhuiyan, survivor
Allison Moore, Volunteer
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