Ten years ago a group of people who refused to accept the majority opinion about one of the most inflammatory social justice issues around came together at the state Capitol to do something about it.

On the third Monday of April 1992, members of the Sacramento Area Coalition Against the Death Penalty (SACADP) held their first candlelight vigil to protest an execution at San Quentin State Prison.

A month later the group came together at the same place for the first of many noon hour vigils devoted to witnessing against the death penalty.

Georgiann Lyga, whose leadership inspired the formation of the coalition, said organizing vigils at the state Capitol seemed like an effective way to impact public opinion about the death penalty.

“People see our presence. We’re there every month as a reminder that we don’t approve of the death penalty, and we do it in a non-threatening way,” she said.

To mark 10 years of public advocacy against the death penalty, coalition members came together May 20 on the north steps of the Capitol. Speakers at the event included Sacramento attorney Paul Comiskey and members of Murder Victims Families for Reconciliation. Auxiliary Bishop Richard J. Garcia also delivered a prayer of thanksgiving.

Lyga’s opposition to the death penalty began as a personal crusade nearly 20 years ago. She was working at the time as coordinator of the social concerns commission for the Diocese of Sacramento.

“A man stormed into my office and demanded that I do something about the death penalty,” she said. “He felt no one was talking about (capital punishment) and he wasn’t going to leave until I agreed to do something against the death penalty.”

This event set in motion one of the Sacramento area’s most influential activists against capital punishment. On Oct. 17, 1989, Lyga was a 70-mile walker in the March Against State Killing from Sacramento to San Quentin. The marchers were stopped short of their goal in Vallejo by the Loma Prieta earthquake that rocked the San Francisco Bay Area.

Lyga hasn’t stopped marching since.

As lead organizer of SACADP’s vigil committee, she has coordinated members of 40 religious and human rights groups for monthly noon vigils. These vigils are devoted to talking informally with people outside the Capitol, distributing educational information, and collecting signatures related to proposed legislation against the death penalty.

Frances Kotos, a member of St. Philomene Parish in Sacramento, is a charter member of the vigil committee.

“I jumped at the chance to stand out there with my sign and be vocal,” she said.

In the early years the vigil committee, which varies in size from two to 30, faced considerable hostility, Kotos recalled.

“People wanted us to be hung up high and called us everything but a child of God,” she said. “When they came at us like that, I had to learn not to take it personally.”

Even so, Kotos said, she seldom missed a monthly vigil.

“Basically I don’t believe in killing,” she said. “The thought terrifies me that we might execute an innocent person.”

Another committee member, Presentation Sister Maria Fitzgerald, director of development at Loaves & Fishes in Sacramento, has long been involved in prison ministry in Sacramento and throughout the state. In 1991, she started a jail visitation program at Loaves & Fishes and corresponds with 20 inmates in California prisons. In 1995, Sister Fitzgerald joined SACADP when it became a chapter of Death Penalty Focus of California, a national anti-death penalty organization.

“I never liked the idea of people being locked up. Look at who are in jails—the poor and the mentally ill,” she said, pointing out that rehabilitation, not execution, is what is needed in the prison system.

Sister Fitzgerald said that vigil committee members see an increase in number of people expressing agreement with their position by giving a “thumbs up” or honking carhorns when they drive by the Capitol.

Gerrie Baskerville, co-director of Loaves & Fishes’ jail visitation program, was at the Capitol for the first candlelight vigil 10 years ago and has missed few since.

“The vigil committee was an opportunity for me to come together with a group of people who believed the same thing,” she said.

While acknowledging that the majority of Californians remain in favor of the death penalty—a recent Field poll shows 72 percent support it and 25 percent oppose it—she believes productive seeds have been sewn.

“I think in talking with people we give (abolishing the death penalty) a second thought. The tide is slowly changing,” Baskerville said.

Copyright © 2001 Diocese of Sacramento - All Rights Reserved

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