society and a great country and yet so many things are and have been fundamentally wrong the criminal justice system is one that we're focusing on today and it is broken  many people have commented on how bad and how wrecked the system of criminal justice is i've never been able to stay quiet however on matters of injustice so when i met victorious or who asked me to write a song about her sister who was wrongly convicted and sent to death row i was thrilled and that's pretty much why i wanted to get the word out about what happened to this sister carolyn dalton and why she should be free and victoria who has just returned from her journey for freedom we'll tell you all about it right sincere and that you have found god i hope that he forgives you the meticulously groom silver haired man in a perfectly creased shimmering black robe peered over the top of his glasses and turned who said just an inch to his left as he spoke directly at the defendant his melodramatic words followed the pronouncement that he was up holding the sentence to kill my sister the reality of what that entailed was only just settling in i had watched a complete farce from beginning to end come to its conclusion and i realized i would never be safe my family was not safe the system did not work there were no checks and balances in place to ensure justice was served for all this could happen to anyone anyone without enough money to fight back how do innocent people end up on death row the subject is normally so far removed from the average person's life concerns and interests its in significance affords a little attention through my personal experience of living with the capital case brought against my sister carrie lindahl to and it will be revealed that our justice system does not always work as a matter of fact it is riddled with mistakes and personal agendas that is how a case like this can lead to death row a case with no body no weapon no blood no crime scene as a matter of fact the alleged murder victim had not even been declared deceased during the trial as the judge pointed out to his jury ladies and gentlemen he said in the last question mr dusek who was the prosecutor asked he mentioned that melanie may in this case is deceased that's a fact for you to decide it's inappropriate for him to put that in question whether or not miss me is in fact deceased or not because that's something for you to decide and that's a quote from the judge during the trial while my sister was being prosecuted for the death penalty directly from the judge so i am victoria thorpe sister of carrie lindahl ten and i'm still trying to gather myself sorry she was sentenced to be executed in may hundred ninety five we were assured the appeals would go quickly within three years it would be overturned and she would be free it was a fluke it shouldn't have happened since she was arrested hundred two i have been involved in her case they hearings investigations and the trial and as of yet seventeen years seventeen and a half years later after she was convicted she is still on death row and still waiting for appeals but we grew up together we played together we shared hopes and fears with each other we fought sometimes we hard here we were sisters but we're very very close very bonded and we still are and she's the closest most closest kindred spirit that i have most gentle wonderful person i love very much i knew nothing of the system back then and many of you probably don't know a lot about it and especially at this level not many of us have to have a reason to look into it there are about three thousand two hundred people living on death row don't only stigmatize the defendant but the family is part of the shame in the fear and the judgment the harshness from not just the court system but the citizens around this journey for freedom came about rather quickly the journey started with a visit to my sister and death row in california to armed guards bring her out in shackles shaved chained to her waist her legs chained together they release her and lock us both in a room together so that no one else will be harmed we always start with a huge hug that's all they let us have in with a hook we laugh a lot  cry we have wonderful memories and we talk about the future and she is so thrilled that i believe in her and haven't left her i did for a period of time just trying to survive but she is so thrilled that everyone out here so many people are listening and trying and so are the other ladies on the road with her i am wearing pretty much what i did for seventeen and a half days i wore shorts a lot because in california it's very hot i even had one person say do we still have the death penalty california has seven hundred men on death row and two hundred twenty when this journey was to bring attention to humanize this situation like  dr dr seuss's story horton hears a who came to me and different light than it used to as a child if you will hear the calls of all those who have been convicted of capital crimes as you listen to this story this time will sound a little different since my sister's case and being on her side in loving her and knowing exactly where i'm wrong i have learned through my investigations that there are many many folks in the system that have been taken advantage of and are losing their lives in one way or another and so now i am a voice like horton going around trying to say these are real people they have real heart souls and we can't just be hurting them and throwing them away there's got to be another way so that's how we got into this from that speck on that clover their voices were heard they rang out clear and clean and the elephant smiled do you see what i mean they proved they are persons no matter how small and the whole world was saved by the smallest of all and i feel that that little dust speck these people they don't have voices from most of the country to hear especially those on death row they're just really really tucked away and mocked away so i wanted to share as i did in my book my sister that's why she's she's here bring the human side as horton was trying to share with the king groups and the monkeys who were just training and angry and thinking there's one way to deal with this get rid of it and so i did this on foot presenting my sister's journey trying to survive on death row where you are treated as though you are not alive or she is actually locked up in a cage and my book is called cages but not just for her for my own personal cages and for those as i share the story of her trial and her life and what happened there personal issues whether it's ambition or drug addiction or a cruel childhood there's many things that hold us back and when we are called to a direction we're not comfortable with as i am here when you must step out horton stepped out i feel a lot like orton many times and that's just came to me a few months ago i don't know why he came to mind but if you try you can make a difference and that's one of the reasons i walked and why i am here today is to ask for each voice each person has the little who and who will made a difference every little bit that you participate in caring about your brother and your fellow human being will make a difference and i would love to get some more help in this particular area my sister is wrongfully convicted but i have met many people in the system who have done the crimes that they are convicted and they are still people they are still human beings worthy of love and another thing that mark furman actually says in his book and his words he says even a scumbag was his word deserves to be treated fairly and justly not framed and not tortured he's a person too and a person who actually was brave enough to look into the death penalty in depth and change his mind publically and passionately for what he believes in my sister's case no evidence whatsoever drug addicts involved hearsay testimony and then finally a codefendant succumbed to pressure and testified against her to get a plea deal and this often happens in cases plea deals it was six and a half years later after the alleged murder they waited my sister waited nearly three years in jail before they tried her it took two years to get this codefendant to turn on her there's a lot of issues that are behind these things why do this case there was a reason for the police the law enforcement in san diego to deter attention from their own issues there was a serial murder going on that they were implicated in and one of the first quotes from prosecutor was he's hoping that this will lead them to another direction and away from in the police that was never solved there was insufficient evidence dropped against the police one police officer was fired a couple others were demoted or shifted around in the no went away so that is a very complicated case with a lot of corruption and in the book it i use the trial transcripts so i don't tell you my opinion or what i thought i quote exactly from the trial what happened so you can see for yourself how a trial goes and also include my sister's life in my life our childhood our growing up together our differences are different directions she went off one way became addicted i went off another way i became aware addicted to substances i became addicted to my faith and close minded so we lead a different lives but kind of the same so what we're trying to do is get those death penalty system changed to because it's too big for us to conquer and get my court and all those brothers ganging up even though he's so big and like he has the truth can't do it alone we need to change the system and we need more voices to do that so everyone here can be part of that in washington state we are trying to replace the death penalty with life without parole so that we will stop the killing my sister's case she happens to be innocent i was in on the hearings trial the investigations been investigating for years  but because of her i've learned as marc perman did we have no right to judge and kill others and torture them along the way and take their lives i use my sister's case as a great example to try to attract attention to all the things that can go wrong almost everything went wrong in her case in may of one nine hundred ninety two is when she was arrested with two other co defendants and so since then we have been going through this living this so that's about twenty years and seventeen and a half of those years are in death row we part of the journey was to symbolically walk carry my sister's burden with me but also to share it with as many people as i could whether it was people i met as i'm walking or to let people know ahead of time where i was and talk to groups of people started out ninety two degrees in fresno was a great start to though because the center for nonviolence welcomed me and the news crew local channel forty seven came out to talk with me about it and with them and it was a great sendoff and the ladies were carrie lives in the cage on death row in california there's twenty of them and one of them had a little t v that they saw the news  were all very excited she called me when she could couple days later and everyone was so thrilled that somebody out there knew they were there it was very touching you never know where you're going to find an answer or a lead to help free your loved one and then i have also gathered other loved ones along the way who live on death row as much as i try to not right now because it is a big job just to concentrate on one case and i do hope to continue working once my sister is free and her case is reversed she's exonerated i think the answer is that we need to care about each other which obviously i'm sure all you folks think about people that remember it but those that are incarcerated are separated and forgotten and thrown away and judged  a also mentioned demonizing big stigmatizing calling them monsters evil a person's a person and very often they are hurt or injured those who hurt others and lash out and we do and should keep ourselves safe but we should not commit the same kind of atrocities that we say are wrong to those who have been found guilty of creating violence violence begets violence we have many many voices that are trying to be heard but like in the story your voice is important this is what i'm hoping today that everyone will learn a little something and be moved to continue to learn and to be a little bit active at least if not very active in our society and in changing it to peace and love and promotion u resources for good and not evil our researchers are being used up to prosecute and to cage people and then to finally kill them but their lives are being stolen along the way justice blackmun said in one thousand nine hundred four that we've tinkered long enough with the system and yet we're still doing it justice stevens has changed his mind and now or at least speaks against the death penalty judge trot law professors  various retired law enforcement not just mark furhman but scott turow is a writer who is an ex prosecutor and he helped illinois change their system so that the death penalty is no longer it and acted because he was part of the commission that reviewed how the system works and really how it doesn't and each one of these people also got to know someone personally so the facts and the emotions come together and also there's judge fletcher in california well he's not a kid he's on the ninth circuit he wrote one hundred one page dissent to say he's against what the circuit decided on a kevin cooper case not just my sister's case they he said they know that the sheriff's have planted evidence in his case and the prosecutor the d n a and they also destroyed evidence and yet he is not getting an appeal this is just another example of their not being heard there's something wrong along the way and i had a nother quote from mark herman one of things he learns was that in the death penalty more things go wrong than any other level of the system because of the motivation and the pressure for careers and the money that's involved it's cetera there's more misconduct and there's more the mistakes are a higher risk when you're taking somebodies life or you're locking them away for ten twenty years and then finding out you made the mistake you can't give that back to them mr ferman said every murder is heinous atrocious and cruel by executing the innocent we have committed an act that is just as heinous atrocious and cruel ourselves and we have we know we have killed innocent people in the united states in my career is a detective both as a police officer and as an author i have always followed the evidence wherever it led my investigation of the death penalty in oklahoma county has brought me to this conclusion death penalty cases are not investigated or prosecuted at a level that can guarantee justice or even that the accused is actually guilty i no longer believe in the death penalty i no longer have faith that is it is administered fairly  justly i fear that innocent people have been executed and that's why i am calling for the abolition of the death penalty not only in oklahoma but in every state so i wanted you to know that it's not without hope there are ways to change this first we need to acknowledge it accept it and go forward to make some corrections one big correction in the system would be th prosecutors would be held accountable right now they have full immunity so even if they choose to purposefully have someone perjure themselves remove evidence etc if it's purposeful it's if it's a legal they are immune so just simply changing that and saying accountability just like you me doctors everybody if you do something illegal it should be looked at but there is no level of being able to address that for prosecutorial misconduct so that's something we can change its hands on it will stop many of the problems with wrongful convictions in the future we can lessen that and then there's the snitching issue and that's a big thing in my sister's case also besides the prosecution we have very many brady violations that means there was information kept away from the defense that would show  that my sister was not a murderer that there wasn't even a murder actually but once you're in the system it's really really hard to reverse it and as a society we need to help and care for each other more and separate those who don't play nice is an easy way to say it but do it gently caring and it also will cost us less money and less taxes to do this the right way the caring way and it will pay for all of society to help each other become loving people and if those can come back in society some cannot so i would ask that we would all please look into this and in washington state we have safe and just alternatives keep everyone safe keep us safe from violent criminals keep the violent criminals safe understand them with life without the possibility of parole and that will also save you money it costs a lot more for us to have death penalty cases and death penalty appeals and then find out we did something wrong also and it was a waste of time we need to take away that career building carit it's used as look how tough on crime i am and i kept you safe i've got a murder we're going to kill and you'll never be threatened again it's just not the truth in the facts so please i'd like to ask you all to reach in your heart and think about if your sister if your loved one was in the situation what would you do everybody out there is somebody else son or daughter or sister or loved one in some way please understand and open your hearts and choose forgiveness and compassion instead  but i do want to point this out folks this movement and tonight's of that was not covered by corporate media at all right but i do want to give a big shout out to any of you who are watching me right now let's just acknowledge you're watching it on people's media wherever it is that you're watching me right now some unpaid volunteer took the time to record it thank you some unpaid volunteer took the time to upload this to create the infrastructure for you to watch it so we support eagles media media we know that the ecology that we depend upon for life itself is in the balance so let's do our work joyously but let's also be serious about  signalling cowboys were instrumental in assisting many europeans to recover from a devastating war hello i'm brant carlson and welcome to brother voices our january two thousand and nine program featured an interview with peggy rife miller who has combined much information stories and photographs about these heroes of the past are over seven thousand men and boys over sixteen who accompanied livestock to europe and china to help in the rebuilding process after the war we are very fortunate to have one of those sea going cowboys with us today here's paul libby of portland oregon paul is eighty seven years old and was a seagoing cowboy many years ago when he was twenty four years old and a company and livestock to poland a year following world war two the church of the brother and recruited these men and boys the age limit was sixteen you had to be sixteen to make the journey many of these boys and men had never been out of their own state but they knew how to take care of livestock whole story actually started many years earlier when his parents were medical missionaries to china his father was a doctor and ran a hospital and woohoo china paul it's wonderful to have you with us on brother and voices  paul had a notable history and a wonderful beginning his parents were medical missionaries in china and his father ran a hospital and china who china has that war on one of the mother returned to the united states briefly to have paul and he was born when she came back for jim also they have your older brother younger brother older brother so pa mother came back to the united states to have his brother lost certain things in the los angeles to give birth to him and then she came back again in one nine hundred twenty two to give birth to paul in los angeles but paul's younger sister was born in china in one thousand and twenty four and soon after that the family moved back to the united states paul's father was a doctor and also hospital administr and soon after that paul went to willamette university where he met his wife in one nine hundred forty and then in the middle of world war two he was drafted paul had a very deep conviction that going to war was not what he should do as a christian and he became a conscientious objector to the war and he did alternate service for three years in three different places first station in wall port oregon he planted trees after the film a burn and then a year later he was transferred to chicago was at the next place combers columbus ohio  worse where he worked in a mental hospital and he also went part time to ohio state university while he was in columbus and then on his third year of community service he was transferred to chicago where he worked at the catholic aleck's in brothers hospital and then after the war he learned about the united nations and church of the brother in program to send farm stock to europe because so many of the animals on the farms in europe had been killed by the bombing and starvation and just killed for food and as a result of that he was one of the first people to join the sea going cowboys that was given birth to by dan west and the united nations committee on relief and and he went with a group of fellows to poland on one of the victory ships the victory ship was called pass christian victory ship and you were in the and we're going to show you some pictures because we've been looking through some of his photo albums to give all kinds of information and he has pictures and postcards going back to china and to his working and planting trees and while port and then being in chicago at the election hospital just wonderful pictures also has many pictures of the ship and the trip to poland in one nine hundred forty six and it the cows to the local farms of the polish people who got counseling and then after a month in poland you came back on the same ship and got seasick and you got seasick lots of destruction and and the ruins of the buildings which was all you because that must have been quite a sight to see and probably disturbed you a lot to see how much devastation there feed their families with the people and poland the farmers happy to get the count yes very words what are the things that really bothered me i don't know whether this goes over this sort of but remember but it's very difficult to describe but i do remember some children and some parents farms and they came out  could speak some eight hundred some of good speak english if i remember correctly you did you have a funny you had a full time job how many cowboys were with you taking care of the seven hundred well there's a picture in there of all group of the whole room yeah well i heifers had been bred so that the timing was right they would actually give birth to their calves in europe that's right but the ship was delayed so the calves were born on the ship and they didn't make it they tough when did your day begin on the ship and did you sleep with the cows or did you have your own room but well we had all the groups in the back of the ship and that's why our got so sick moment you will find many brother and others in christian service for peace in b d s and what is b d s we now have a message from brother and volunteer services what what happened that you were a conscientious objector how did that come about this but beyond that and every time he read in the evil he said no do you know for the church of a brother and conscience conscientious objection is a very common thing we supported very strongly retirement fund said they had to follow the government and he i don't know all about that but it showed me a lot of guts so  written well that's because you had your integrity yeah because he he knew what i was so from all ports you went to columbus ohio  for a while but from a limb she stayed in oregon to graduate then she joined us economy and then how did you hear about this the seagoing tomboy project to send cattle to poland i think i was i do want to give you a chance to read the statement of faith that you have because i know it's very important and it's very deep meaningful to you would you mind sharing that with ok if i care if you start here and then you go to hear the and