My husband and I are submitting an initiative petition to the Secretary of State for approval to form for the proposed Constitutional amendment, which would prohibit a Governor from being able to commute a death penalty. I feel when all appeals have been met, and no new evidence has been brought forward, there is absolutely no reason to detain or commute a death penalty.

Victims should have the right to testify in person before the jury, as the defendant is in the courtroom for the entire trial, and also have the right to take the stand in his own defense.

However, the Victims' Rights Amendment has to be enforced. We need to make the judges and attorneys aware of these rights. There has to be a way to ensure the victims' rights are carried out in all of our communities.

We have approximately 60 members of the Lewis & Clark Chapter of POMC. Some are new in grief; for others of us, it has been a few years. However, we all have times when we need to feel the need to lean on each other.

I believe we need to have much stronger laws for victims' rights. We must find ways to enforce the Victims' Rights Amendment, and to make sure all judges and attorneys-both prosecutors and defense lawyers-are aware and uphold the amendment to assure that the victims have the same rights as the defendant.

After all, we are the ones who will spend the rest of our life living without our loved one, and will have to find a place in our heart and soul to go on with life, and to help others who suffer the greatest tragedy in life, which is the murder of our loved one. Thank you, very much.

Senator ASHCROFT. Thank you, Ms. Angelbeck.

I understand we also have a chapter leader of the St. Louis Chapter of the Parents of Murdered Children with us this morning, Ms. Mata Weber.

Ms. Weber, I would be very pleased for you to add anything that you would like to add to the record by virtue of remarks.

Please direct your voice to the microphone. We need for you to speak up.

STATEMENT OF MATA WEBER

MS. WEBER. Thank you, very much, Senator, for being here, and for allowing us to be here and speak to you.

My name is Mata Weber, and I am a parent of a murdered child. My daughter, Karen, was 21 years old. She was murdered April 27, 1982, in Madison County. She was kidnaped from her place of business, driven 15 miles to the Livingston Reservoir where she was very cruelly murdered.

She left two children; they were two and three at the time, and how do you tell a child that their mother is never coming back? It's been the worst thing that has ever happened to me in my entire life. And if you talk to anyone who has had a loved one murdered, they will tell that also. You can have a death in the family, you can have a divorce, you can have illness. Nothing is as bad as having your child or your loved one murdered.

We were fortunate, if I can use that word, to say that we came in contact with very sensitive and kind police, District Attorney, support people from the Victims Service in Madison County. Í

ended up with people's home telephone numbers. If I needed to call the prosecutor with a question, he was always there.

I don't know that the murder of my daughter made a difference with them or not, but they were very good to me. We went to trial right away. Supposedly, this man's attorney didn't believe he was guilty. We went to trial-Karen was murdered in April; we went to trial in September.

The jury found him guilty of first-degree murder, gave him 50 years, and when I walked out of the courtroom, I said to the prosecutor well, maybe now I can get on with my life. He said, oh, no, you're going to hear from this guy soon. I said what do you mean? His first appeal will be about 3 years from now.

Well, it was almost 3 years to the day. He won an appeal for a brand new trial. So we had to go through the same thing over again. It took a whole year because he was trying to say that the evidence that convicted him the first time, there was an error in it. So he sent the blood work to California, looking for some changes, something wrong with it.

At the end of the year, the judge said we've delayed long enough, we're going to go to trial. So his attorney approaches and asks for a plea bargain. Well, in 1982, we had no victims' rights, so most of us didn't know anything about what was going on in the justice system.

You could not tell the jury where this man had been for 3 years. You could not tell the jury that this is the second trial for the same offense for this man. Many things were not going to be allowed in the second time. So I agreed to a plea bargain: For 25 years, this man would stand in front of me and tell me that he murdered my daughter.

But in the state of Illinois at that particular time, 25 years didn't mean 25 years. You got 1 day off for every day you served in prison. So, in June 1994, this man walked out of prison, free and clear on a murder charge.

It's been the most horrible thing that has ever happened to me my entire life. I joined Parents of Murdered Children in 1985, one of the original people. I am now the chapter leader. We probably have spoken to somewhere between 500 and 1,000 people in all this period of time, listened to their stories.

People come to the meetings, sometimes just once. People come off and on, and some people are there every single month. They need some support; they need to know that every time they walk in that room, you know how they feel, you know what's going on. All of you people in this room can tell Carol and I and the families the Lawrence family, that you understand, and you know what we're going through, but you don't. You have to have a child or a loved one murdered to know what we're going through.

I'm here today for this Constitutional Amendment. We have to work harder on it. I'm not sure of the time, but I think it has been worked on now for 5 years. How much longer is this going to take to get us victims' rights on the Federal level? We don't want anything elaborate, we just want plain simple rights.

It's true right now, in the state of Missouri and Illinois, if a prisoner is paroled, they will contact you. But that's only if you contact the Department of Corrections first. How about if they send the

prisoner back and forth through the prison system? Nobody lets you know about that. You're not allowed to know if they've been transferred. We'd like to have that right, too. If they're going to release him, then they will let us know that. If they're going to commute his sentence, we don't have a right to know that, and we want to know.

All of us here are victims. Remember our faces, and try to work harder to get this amendment passed. Thank you, very much.

Senator ASHCROFT. Ms. Weber, I am sorry. I think I mispronounced your name.

MS. WEBER. That's OK.

Senator ASHCROFT. It is Mata, and I did not mean to do that, and I do not know why I would have said that. I apologize. Thank you for being willing to come and help us this morning.

Our next witnesses are Buck and Anita Lawrence. The Lawrences are parents of Willie Lawrence, and live in Big Fork, MT. Buck is the son of Lloyd and Frankie Lawrence. I deeply appreciate their willingness to share their tragic story, and I call upon Anita to go first and Buck to go second.

And after that, I will call upon other members of the Lawrence family. Please pull that microphone close to you so that we can record what you are saying.

STATEMENT OF ANITA LAWRENCE

Ms. LAWRENCE. I'm glad I have the opportunity to testify here today to keep another family from going through what we've just had to go through.

My name is Anita Lawrence. I'm the mother of Willie Lawrence. Willie was killed on May 15, 1988. He was killed because, the killer's words, "He would have recognized me."

Willie was 19 and was paralyzed from the waist down from a car accident. Willie loved life, and when he was in the hospital, the nurses recommended that we further some kind of education for him to help other people because of his good outlook that he had and his good attitude about being paralyzed.

And he loved his grandparents, and on a particular occasion, he had went down to West Fork with his grandparents, and they just happened to be at the wrong place, I guess.

Senator ASHCROFT. Just take your time.

Ms. LAWRENCE. He left a note on the refrigerator that he was with his grandparents, and I have never seen him after that day, that morning I left home. He had spent the night down at West Fork with his grandparents, and Retha went down the next day at 2:20 on Sunday afternoon, and she found them. All had been murdered.

So she called Buck, and Buck looked around and told me and Linda that it was the worst nightmare that we could ever possibly think happened.

Then we went-after they arrested Mease, he went to trial. We attended every day. And one day, they asked us to step out because the guy that done the autopsy was going to do the testimony, and they told us that it was so bad that we didn't need to hear how he looked.

They never showed the photographs publicly; only Retha and the jury ever seen the photographs. The jury took a week, and they made the decision, and they give him the death penalty. We were happy with the verdict from the jury.

We expected the system to work for us. When it come time to put Darrell to death, then that would close the book. We could put it on the shelf and try to get on with our lives.

But as you know, that didn't happen, because Mr. Carnahan opened it back up for us when he commuted Darrell. And we found out on January 28. We were visiting friends, and we sat down to watch the evening news with our friends. They always watch Jeopardy. So we watched Jeopardy, and then we watched the evening

news.

And then when the news come on, the first thing on the news was Mease walking through in his orange suit with a smile on his face. And then, they showed a picture of my mother-in-law and father-in-law and my son on their four-wheelers at the scene. We had never seen this picture. I had never seen Willie's body. I had never seen Willie in that condition, and it was a nightmare.

I had nightmares for a week afterwards. I would actually get up and have to go to the bathroom and throw up. I had to see a doctor, and take tranquilizers just to get me through it. I'd walk the floor. My emotions was just-I don't know how to explain it.

The other mothers here know how I felt. I think that if the Governor would have just took the time to look at the pictures and heard our side; if he had just talked to us, I think it would have made a difference on how the case would have come out.

If he would have just called us and gave us a warning to let us know what was going-what would be showed on TV, maybe we wouldn't have had to watch the news to find out-to see those.

At least if he would have called, I could have spoke in Willie's behalf. I feel that the Governor ignored the victims' side of this. It's like he don't care about us. He don't care about us as a family and what we've had to go through.

All we are asking is that the next family at least be given the chance to be heard from. That the decision of the Governor may not be changed; at least, we would be able to say that we tried to have justice done, rather than having to say we were left completely out of the process.

We had a promise from the judicial system that we thought was going to work with us that Darrell Mease was going to get the death penalty, and it's hard to live now with the fact that he's not. Thanks for letting me be here.

Senator ASHCROFT. Well, I thank you for working so hard to get through that, and while none of us can fully understand, we are at least aware in some measure of how difficult this is for you. Mr. Lawrence.

STATEMENT OF BUCK LAWRENCE

Mr. LAWRENCE BUCK. Thank you, Senator, for allowing us to be in this hearing on the issues of victims' rights to be notified.

My name is Buck Lawrence, and my son Willie was murdered on May 1988. At the same time, my father and mother were also murdered. The guilty received a sentence of death from the jury that

heard the case. That sentence was upheld in every court hearing during the past 10 years. Then, with no forewarning to us, the killer's death sentence was commuted by the Governor of Missouri.

I sat through the trial. The testimony showed that early in the morning of May 15, 1988, Darrell Mease constructed a blind, and cut tree branches and placed them in a semi-circle near a large tree about 15 feet from a road leading from the Lawrence cabin to where the road forded a small creek. Mease hid in the blind for several hours.

About noon, my son and my parents approached Mease's position, riding four-wheel, all terrain vehicles. Willie was driving fast and was the first to pass Mease's position. Because Willie was paralyzed due to a 1986 car accident, his feet were tied to the handlebars by the shoe laces to keep them on the vehicle.

Some distance behind him and driving slower, were my parents Lloyd and Frankie. Both were riding on one vehicle. As my father came even with Mease's location, Mease shot him, then my mother, then my father again, using a shotgun loaded alternately with buckshot and slugs. Their vehicle went forward slowly and came to a stop in the creek.

At that point, Mease came out of the woods. By that time, my son Willie had turned around and was returning toward the scene. It was then that Mease shot Willie using a 12-gauge shotgun still alternately loaded with double-aught buckshots.

Mease then shot my mother, father, and son in the head at pointblank range. Mease took my father's wallet, a watch, and two rings. My father's money, $600, was removed from the wallet, and the wallet was hidden under a log.

Mease later confessed to all the killings, and stated he killed Willie because Willie would have recognized me, and I had to do him, too. Mease was given a death sentence by the jury, and that sentence was commuted by the Governor.

At this hearing today, I will tell you how I came to know about commutation, and how that hurt myself and my family. As Anita stated earlier, we were visiting some friends at their home in Montana on January 28, 1999. We all sat down to watch the evening news. Then, to our amazement, the news anchor announced that the death sentence of Mease had been commuted at the request of the Governor.

Then the news program showed photographs of the scene of the murder. We had never seen these photographs before. I was in shock. I really feared at the same time for my wife. She's in very bad health. I looked over at her, and it was just like when we had initially been told.

We just couldn't hardly think at all. We wondered how could this happen to us? I could only think why we would have not been notified of something like this. I couldn't believe the system had failed like that.

It was, like I said, bad as when we first learned of the news of the killings. It brought back so many emotions as when we were just told. I wish the Governor would have called. He wouldn't have wanted to do a commutation after he talked to us. I could have told him how many lives was destroyed, and that he was going to do this all over again if he did this.