CALIFORNIA (USA): A VICTIM’S SON CHANGES HIS MIND ABOUT DEATH PENALTY

May 18, 2015: Clifford O'Sullivan was just six when he appeared in a California court at the trial of his mother's killer, Mark Scott Thornton. He gave a stirring sentencing testimony during which he asked for the 'bad man' to be killed.
Thornton has spent the past 20 years sitting on death row. O'Sullivan says he has now changed his mind and he doesn't want Thornton to die. Kellie O'Sullivan, Clifford's mom, was kidnapped in Malibu and murdered on September 14, 1993 as she drove to collect her son from daycare. Mark Scott Thornton, who was wanted at the time on a juvenile-probation arrest warrant, abducted Kellie and drove her to a remote area off Mulholland Highway, where he shot her once in the chest and twice in the back.
On March 21, 1995 a jury convicted Thornton of 1st-degree murder. Now 26, O'Sullivan - who works in a Nashville emergency room - has changed his mind and no longer believes that the death penalty is the right punishment for Thornton. O'Sullivan's change of heart comes partly from his own experience of just how damaging the death penalty system is to victims' families. 'You don't heal,' said O'Sullivan, who as a 15-year-old was caught with cocaine and arrested for assault.
At 20, Scott Thornton become the youngest inmate on death row when he was sentenced to die in 1995. He was admitted to San Quentin State Prison, where California houses its male death row inmates, but since 2006 the state hasn't executed a single prisoner. With California unlikely to ever execute Thornton, O'Sullivan has said that he - and many other victims - are not given closure. 'The process goes on,' O'Sullivan said, 'delayed for years in a way that is torturous.' With his strong belief that the capital punishment system doesn't do what it is supposed to, O'Sullivan decided to write to his mother's killer asking if he could visit him.
Last September - some 22 years after his mother's death - O'Sullivan flew to California to meet with Thornton and the 2 men spoke for 5 hours. 'It was the greatest gift he could have given me,' O'Sullivan said. When O'Sullivan told Thornton that he no longer thought he should be killed he was surprised at the killer's response. Rather than talk about his own future, Thornton wanted instead to make peace over what he had done all those years ago. 'Let us focus on making sure that the next 20 years are not a reflection of the past 20 years,' he said. 'Let's find meaning in this, for your sake, for mine and for your mother's.' It was not the response O'Sullivan expected, but he maintains that he does not want Thornton to die. 'If they put him up for a date I would stop it, just like I started it,' said O'Sullivan. (Source: Daily Mail, The Tennessean, 18 May 2015)