"A Tribute to a Prison Warden's Influence on Capital Punishment Abolition," is Diann Rust-Tierney's Huffington Post remembrance. She's Executive Director of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.
Donald Cabana, a former Mississippi prison warden who presided over executions, was not the usual ally for me and the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. But Donald Cabana loathed the death penalty. As I mark his passing and celebrate his life, he died this month at 67, I think about the vantage point from which he formed his opinions about capital punishment.Cabana worked in prisons and corrections for more than 25 years in Massachusetts, Florida, Missouri and Mississippi. He was a seasoned traveler in places that many have opinions about but relatively few have firsthand knowledge of or experience with. He punished, counseled and cared for the people and the families that most people forget or wish never existed. He also supervised, cared for and counseled the people who must work in the most hopeless and saddest of places, our nation's prisons and death chambers.
And that was the first point that he often made so eloquently. As a longtime corrections official, he was a man committed to holding people accountable for their actions, but he recognized the human folly of believing that we could ever pay back the harm caused by executing a murderer.
Earlier coverage of Don Cabana's legacy begins at the link.
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