Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About The skanner. (Portland, Or.) 1975-2014 | View Entire Issue (Feb. 12, 2014)
News heart continued from page 1 a short time to live. “My dad was a family man,” Shannon says. “My dad would take me everywhere, I remember it like yesterday. “I remember my dad braiding my hair, I remember him taking me to the grocery store; my dad talked to me all the time, he shared stories with me. “I watched him cook, I watched him clean up — he was a neat fanatic, our house always stayed clean.” Shannon is the middle sister of four kids – her sisters are ‘People need to be reminded not of how he died, but of what he did when died’ Tamisha and Malicka and her brother is Bobby Jr., born after his father’s death. She recalls the books her father read – Strawberry Short- cake was tops – and that when he taught her how to ride a bike, that first bike was a pink Strawberry Shortcake design. Shannon was just seven years old when he was shot. “When my dad came home every day I just I looked for him,” she says. “Not a day went by that I didn’t wait at that door to see him come in. “And I remember him telling me that every day is not going to be a good day.” Currently, Shannon is studying at PCC to become a crim- inal youth probation officer, and she is active with student government; she plans to transfer to Portland State Univer- sity for a psychology degree. She volunteers as director of the outreach ministries for Greater Solid Rock Church of God in Christ, where she works with the homeless. Shannon – herself the mother of a 15-year-old and a 17- year-old — says her life was turned upside down when her aunt plugged film of the heart transplant into her DVD just two weeks ago. “I got to see them bringing my dad’s heart, with the ice- box, into the hospital — I actually got to sit there and see the whole procedure and the doctors talking about it. “That’s when it really dawned on me that this was my dad who did this,” she says. The idea of an event was her aunt’s way of bringing Shannon into an active role in Donate Life Northwest, Shannon says. “’People need to be reminded not of how he died, but of what he did when died, so let’s put this together,’ and when she said that I said yes, Auntie.’” Shannon says that her grandmother, Martha Van Arsdale, was asked by doctors whether she would agree to donate her son’s heart to a complete stranger — even as she was told that her son was brain-dead. “The doctor asked if she would donate the organ; she had to think about it. She said she didn’t want to, but that she had to talk to her heavenly father.” Van Arsdale told the doctors that she could not donate her son’s heart to a stranger – that she had to know the recipi- ent’s name, which was strictly against the rules at the time. “The doctor told her they could make that happen, and Grandma said that, before she could even get up, her heav- enly father spoke and said, ‘Go ahead give them the heart.’” Van Arsdale she passed away three years ago. The heart recipient and his wife have also since passed Bobby’s daughter shannon Olive and his widow, Anita ward. away, but Shannon smiles as she shares a few funny stories about them that have been passed down in her family. “My grandmother asked Wesley’s wife if she minded that her husband had the heart of a Black man,” Shannon says. “Wesley’s wife said no – and that the new heart changed his personality; he started to love jazz music and clean the house, and now he liked to cook.” For more information on Donate Life Northwest go to www.donatelifenw.org. Capital continued from page 1 abolition bills the past several years, said that the moratorium provides a “profound shift” on the momentum for possible future permanent bans. “He has opened a legitimate conversation that gives the Legislature the ability to not only bring legislation forward in the coming years, but to step up and engage the public in that conversation,” he said. There have been 78 inmates, all men, put to death in Washington state since 1904. Nine men currently await execution at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla. The state Supreme Court just last month rejected a petition for release from death row inmate Jonathan Lee Gentry, sen- Nine men currently await execution at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla tenced for the murder of a 12-year-old girl in 1988. Gentry could have been the first execution in the state since September 2010, when Cal Coburn Brown died by lethal injection for the 1991 murder of a Seattle-area woman. A federal stay had recently been lifted in Gentry’s case, and a remaining state stay on his execution was expected to be lifted this month. Senate Republican Leader Mark Schoesler of Ritzville said he thought Inslee’s move was “out of touch.” He noted that lawmakers have previously rejected opportunities to pass such meas- ures over the years, “because the public and Legislature support keeping that tool.” felony disenfranchisement on modern com- munities of color remains both disproportionate and unacceptable.” In Iowa, action by the governor caused the state to move from automatic restoration of rights following completion of a criminal tution to their victim, court costs, and fines,” said Jimmy Centers, a spokesman for Iowa Republican Gov. Terry Branstad. Centers said the governor has no plans to change the current process and that too often, victims are forgotten. Inslee’s action follows a recent decision by the state Department of Corrections, which is changing its protocol to allow wit- nesses to executions to see the entire process, including the insertion of intra- venous catheters during a lethal injection. The new witness protocol, in its final stages of approval, includes the use of tele- vision monitors to show the inmate entering the death chamber and being strapped down, as well as the insertion of the IVs, which had both previously been blocked from public view. Read the rest of this story online at www.theskanner.com Vote continued from page 1 a career in law enforcement — prison over- crowding, overly harsh mandatory drug sentences and school disciplinary policies that he says push kids into street crime. Congress used to be the place that high- lighted Holder’s problems, including a plan to try terrorists in New York City and the failed Justice Department investigation of gun smuggling in Arizona that ended in the death of a border patrol agent. Now Holder is talking about partnering up with conservative lawmakers like Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who shares concerns such as mandatory minimum prison sen- tences that can put away low-level drug offenders for decades. On Tuesday, Holder took note of the fact that Paul was to be a participant in the criminal justice sympo- sium later in the morning. On a topic with racial overtones, Holder said 2.2 million black citizens, or nearly one in 13 African-American adults, are banned from voting because of these laws, and he said the ratio climbs to one in five in Flori- da, Kentucky and Virginia. “Although well over a century has passed since post-Reconstruction states used these measures to strip African-Americans of their most fundamental rights, the impact of Holder said 2.2 million black citizens, or nearly one in 13 African-American adults, are banned from voting because of these laws sentence to an arduous process requiring direct intervention by the governor in every individual case, he said. “It’s no surprise that, two years after this change — of the 8,000 people who had completed their sentences during that gov- ernor’s tenure — voting rights had been restored to fewer than 12,” the attorney gen- eral added. Reaction to the remarks was swift. In Iowa, “the governor believes that when an individual commits a felony, it is fair they earn their rights back by paying resti- If Holder has been on an aggressive streak, it’s by design. A year ago, he ordered up a review to find areas in the Justice Department’s mission that needed change. The first results became public last August, when Holder instructed federal prosecutors to stop charging many nonvio- lent drug defendants with offenses that carry mandatory minimum sentences. He said long mandatory terms have flooded the nation’s prisons with low-level drug offend- ers and diverted money away from crime fighting. A month ago, Holder joined Education Secretary Arne Duncan in pressing the nation’s schools to abandon disciplinary policies that send students to court instead of the principal’s office. The two Cabinet officials said “we have found cases where African-American students were disci- plined more harshly and more frequently because of their race than similarly situated white students.” Then over the weekend, Holder applied a landmark Supreme Court opinion to the Justice Department, declaring same-sex spouses cannot be compelled to testify against each other, should be eligible to file for bankruptcy jointly and are entitled to the same rights and privileges as federal prison inmates in opposite-sex marriages. His call for restoring voting rights for ex- prisoners are part of what the attorney general calls his “Smart On Crime” pro- gram. Read the rest of this story online at www.theskanner.com February 12, 2014 The Portland and Seattle Skanner Page 3
