War and Remembrance

Sunderland did as he was asked -- it was the sort of request someone would make of a friend -- and deposited the money in the couple's jail accounts so that they could purchase such items as toothpaste and stamps. Davis would use some of those stamps as he continued to talk and write to Sunderland over the next decade.

Unlike the Rodriguez brothers, Davis seemed truly remorseful, and Sunderland testified to that at his death-penalty hearing. The only other person called to the stand by the defense was a prison guard, who said Davis had been a repentant and model prisoner. No family members, no friends, spoke for him, and the jury wasted little time in sentencing him to death.

Davis had asked Sunderland to call his mother when the verdict came in.

"Was it life?" she asked.

"It was death," he answered.

"Oh, no!" she screamed. "I can't handle any more."

If he'd ever wavered on the efficacy of the death penalty, the sound of that mother's wail stiffened his resolve. Not only would the state be executing a human being, but it would be making others suffer, too.

There but for the grace of God go I. Sunderland always wondered what might have happened if he'd been raised in a home like the one in which the Rodriguez brothers grew up. He knew that plenty of people who grew up in abusive households or were exposed to drugs and alcohol never killed anyone. But it was also true that such things did affect others. You had only to look at Frank Rodriguez to see his father. Or to speak to Gary Davis and realize that the demons that drove him to murder Virginia May came from a bottle as well as his mind.

Sunderland, who'd been named to the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty's board of directors in 1986, became a familiar face at the State Capitol and in the newspapers. Some of his notoriety was by default: Other founders of the Colorado Coalition had moved on, leaving him pretty much a one-man show. He wrote the coalition's newsletter, organized meetings and rallies, wrote letters challenging newspaper columnists. And he continued to serve in the jails as a chaplain.

But it was for his death-penalty work that he was both admired and reviled.

When he saw a television report that a few hundred "pro-death" students at Sam Houston University in Huntsville, Texas, home of that state's execution chamber, had cheered and danced to celebrate an execution, he wrote a letter to the school's newspaper chastising the students. They responded by burning him in effigy.

Sunderland placed an ad in the Denver Post congratulating then-New Mexico governor Toney Anaya for commuting the death sentences of five inmates after he'd met with coalition members, including Sunderland. The priest received dozens of angry telephone calls about that ad, with one caller accusing him of being Satan. Sunderland's file cabinets filled with angry, threatening correspondence.

But Sunderland also had his fans. He was a favorite with defense lawyers, particularly those in the Colorado Public Defender's Office who handled the bulk of death-penalty work. Many of them were the product of Catholic schools, and he became their priest -- marrying them and baptizing their babies.

They shared a common cause, but there was a difference. Sunderland knew that these lawyers also suffered when they looked at crime-scene photographs or listened to a victim's relative describe her loss in court. But at least they could explain what they did objectively: It was their job to keep the prosecution honest and to protect a defendant's rights -- whether they liked their client or not. People might not appreciate what they did, might even castigate them, but most still recognized that even killers were entitled to a defense.

Sunderland's role was more difficult to explain: It was his job to be their friend, their link with God. And it was his job to pay the emotional consequences for doing so. One time a victim's mother called and asked to meet with him. She was angry that he'd testified on behalf of her son's killer and wanted to show Sunderland a scrapbook filled with photographs of her boy as a child, an adolescent and a young man. She wanted him to compare her son's life with that of the killer, a horrible man who'd murdered several people.

There wasn't much Sunderland could do or say. He sympathized with the mother's pain and suffering. What had been done to her son was evil; he'd never tried to argue that it was anything else. But the death penalty wouldn't bring her son back; it couldn't heal her grief. While it might exact a measure of revenge, the result would be to bring everyone who supported the sentence down to the level of the killer.

But these weren't things she wanted to hear, and he didn't feel it was his place to argue with her. Instead, he listened in silence while she turned the pages of the scrapbook, then thanked her for taking the time to come to see him. That night, he kissed his crucifix and went to sleep with her tears still heavy on his mind.