TAMPA, Fla. (Tampa Bay Now) – On Thursday, Florida will be executed for the first time in about three years.
One organization is traveling all over the state to try and stop it.
“Being on death row is like living in hell,” said Derrick Jamison.
Born in Tampa, Derrick Jamison spent two decades on death row.
“I knew exactly what time they would put me to death, can you imagine?” said Jason.
Jamison says he was wrongly convicted of murder in Ohio and was acquitted and released from prison in 2005.
“You’re sentenced to death and there’s nothing you can do about it. It’s a horrible feeling,” said Jamison.
“My father’s favorite hymn was ‘Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me, but I say let it begin with us all,'” said Suezann Bosler.
Suezann Bosler saw a man kill her father and try to kill her several years ago.
“The first question someone asked when they visited me was ‘Suezann, do you forgive him?’ and I had to think about that. I said yes, but after he left, I had to think, ‘Oh my god, do I really feel like forgiving him?'” Bosler said.
She did. Bosler then spent ten years of her life fighting the death penalty for the man who killed her father.
“It is not for us, as human beings, to say when someone is executed,” Bosler said.
Now both Jamison and Bosler are part of an organization called Death Penalty and are traveling across the state of Florida to save the life of 59-year-old Donald Dillbeck. Dillbeck was convicted of fatally stabbing a woman during a carjacking in 1990. His execution is scheduled for Thursday.
The death sentence was recommended by the eight-to-four jury, and organization leader Abraham Bonowitz says executions have more impact than the criminal.
“If we tell a mother that we’re going to kill your child, she hasn’t done anything wrong, and we’re asking people to think about that as well,” Bonowitz said.
Death Penalty Action held a meeting in Tampa on Monday asking the legislature to consider life in prison without parole instead of the death penalty. For the rest of the week, the group continues its efforts.
“Why kill people who kill people to show us Americans that killing people is wrong,” Bosler said.
