Autumn Lecture: 10 October, Ely Cathedral - World Day Against the Death Penalty

Amnesty International Ely City Group 2013 Lecture

Ely Cathedral’s South Transept  on Thursday 10^th October at 7.30 p.m.

On Thursday 10^th October Amnesty International Ely City Group will hold its fourth annual lecture at Ely Cathedral.

This date is designated World Day against the Death Penalty, and the lecturers this year will be Peter Pringle and Sunny Jacobs.  Both were victims of wrongful convictions, facing death for crimes they did not commit. Their experiences are moving and shocking, but ultimately this is a life-enhancing love story.

In 1976, Sunny was placed on death row in Florida, USA, for the murder of two police officers. She served 17 years. Peter was sentenced to death in Ireland in 1980 for the murder of two officers of the Irish police force, the Garda Síochána. He served 15 years. Both were eventually exonerated and released.

They met in 1998 in Ireland when Sunny, campaigning against the death penalty, gave a talk at an Amnesty International event in Galway. They married in New York in 2011, and amongst the wedding guests were actors Brooke Shields, Marlo Thomas and Amy Irving, all of whom played Sunny in The Exonerated, a play about death row prisoners who were later proved innocent.

Now the couple live a simple life in the countryside in the west of Ireland. As Sunny says: “I wouldn't say my experience haunts me, but it's always there. Everyone gets challenged in life and you can either spend the rest of your life looking backwards, or you can make a decision to keep going. That's the choice I made."

Sunny and Peter will talk in Ely Cathedral’s South Transept at 7.30 p.m. about their experiences on death row, and the personal journeys they have made, separately and together, since they were released.

All are welcome. There is no entrance fee, although there will be a collection. There will be an opportunity to ask questions of Sunny and Peter and to purchase signed copies of the books they have written on their remarkable experiences.

For more details on Sunny and Peter’s extraordinary story see the recent Guardian article: http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/jun/22/former-death-row-couple?INTCMP=SRCH