“It was just a little 2-inch article in the newspaper, about a mother with an innocent son on death row who was coming to town to give a talk. Another sister and I decided to go.”

A person from the Illinois Coalition Against the Death Penalty had arranged for Jo Ann Patterson to speak at the New Dimensions Christian Center.

“There were only 15 people there,” says Sister JoAnn. “I was so touched by her story, and learned he was tortured so badly. I knew in my heart we had to do something. I really feel we need to educate our community, and to find what we can do to change the system.”

As pastoral associate at Our Lady of Lourdes in Decatur, Sister JoAnn is very much pro-life. “As Catholics, being pro-life means in the beginning of life and in the end of life. We do not have the right to take another person’s life. I don’t have the right, and the state does not have the right in my name to kill another person,” she said.

But not everyone she encountered agreed with her stance. “I experienced four encounters with men who told me I was going in the wrong direction, that we cannot get rid of the death penalty. They told me I should be working for anti-abortion. There are a lot of people working to end abortion. I felt called to end the death penalty.”

That was in August of 2001. “People then were not talking about how to get rid of the death penalty,” she says. At Our Lady of Lourdes, the topic being discussed by the social justice committee at that time was racism.

That November Sister JoAnn received a call from the Illinois Coalition Against the Death Penalty in Chicago, asking her if she would be willing to gather some people together in Decatur to educate people on the legal system and the death penalty.

“It was like God was speaking to me. I knew in my heart that I must say ‘yes.’ But I didn’t know how I would do it. I trusted God’s spirit,” she says.

She contacted John Dunn, who had represented the Decatur area in the Illinois House for 20 years. During that time he voted against the death penalty, and had voted against it again when it was brought back in 1987.

“He referred me to Rev. Jim Montgomery, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Decatur, and he referred me to Barbara Redford, a member of First Presbyterian, and Sue Simcox from Decatur Central Christian Church.” Both were active in social justice committees at their respective churches, and in January 2002 the group met at Central Christian Church, and formed Macon County Citizens Opposing Capital Punishment. Sister JoAnn agreed to be its president.

“We put together different events, started a fund to bring in speakers.” Bud Walsh, who lost a daughter in the Oklahoma City bombing, was the first speaker they brought in.

“We wrote letters to Catholics and to people in other denominations.” Gradually their mailing list grew to 200 names. “Out of those, about 30 have been really active, planning and meeting once a month for a long time.” In the last two years they began meeting every other month.

“I wrote the governor, and even called him,” said Sister JoAnn. “We wrote our representative, lobbied him usually twice a year. We met with other legislators to let them know why we were against the death penalty.

“With the legislators, it was more of a professional discussion with a reason on both sides. We got to the point of pointing out it would save money if we took them (people sentenced to death) off death row. Our approach was to keep calling, to get as many people calling from throughout the state.

When Gov. Patrick Quinn signed legislation March 9 ending the death penalty in Illinois and commuted the sentences of every inmate who had been sentenced to death to life in prison, Sister JoAnn was happy to learn the news.

“But it is not over,” she said. “We’re only the 16th state to abolish it. There is a lot of work still to be done,” she says.