David Kacynski

CatholicAnchor.org

David Kaczynski, brother of Theodore Kaczynski — the so-called Unabomber — will be in Anchorage in March to speak out against the death penalty and to discuss strategies for addressing the root causes of violence. His presentation is being hosted by Alaskans Against the Death Penalty.

David Kaczynski is scheduled to speak at the Sydney Lawrence Auditorium on March 6 at 6 p.m. The presentation is free and donations are welcome.

While capital punishment is illegal in the state, Alaskans Against the Death Penalty aim to “educate the community and policy makers about the facts and myths of the death penalty” and to “keep Alaska free from the death penalty.”

In 1996, David Kaczynski and his wife Linda Patrik approached the FBI with suspicions that David’s brother Theodore might be involved in a series of bombings that caused three deaths and numerous injuries over a 17-year period.

The couple was compelled to turn Theodore in after reading the now famous “Unabomber’s Manifesto” in the pages of the Washington Post. In the fall of 1995, the couple investigated and compared the ideas in the Manifesto to letters that David Kaczynski had received from his brother over many years.

Theodore Kaczynski was arrested in 1996 and only avoided the death penalty after his family waged a two-year campaign to convince the U.S. Justice Department that his diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia had led to his crimes.

Since that time, David Kaczynski has led a successful campaign to end the death penalty in New York and now works to promote community initiatives that address root causes of violence. He also has partnered with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in their efforts to end the use of the death penalty in the United States.

Late last year, Pope Benedict XVI encouraged countries around the world to end the death penalty.

Speaking Nov. 30 to a group of pilgrims gathered in Rome for an international conference on the controversial topic, the pope said he hopes that their deliberations “will encourage the political and legislative initiatives being promoted in a growing number of countries to eliminate the death penalty.”

The Catechism of the Catholic Church says that the traditional teaching of the church “does not exclude” recourse to the death penalty when it is “the only practicable way to defend the lives of human beings effectively against the aggressor.” It adds, however, that today such cases are “very rare, if not practically non-existent.”

Recent figures suggest that around a third of the world’s countries use the death penalty as part of their legal code. In the United States, there are currently 34 states where the death penalty is legal.

To learn more about David Kaczynski’s upcoming talk, email Contact@AADP.info, call (907) 350-8394 or click here.