GRAND ISLAND-Two people with ties to Beatrice have become strong opponents to Nebraska’s death penalty for different reasons.

Thomas Winslow and Miriam Thimm Kelle spoke to a half dozen people at Trinity Methodist Church in Grand Island Thursday night about their experiences with and their efforts against the death penalty.

Three men have been executed in Nebraska since 1994 - all three in the electric chair. Before 1994, Nebraska’s last execution was Charles Starkweather in 1959.

Recently, Nebraska switched its method of execution from electric chair to lethal injection after the former was deemed “cruel and unusual.”

Nebraskans Against the Death Penalty spokesperson Jill Francke said she can go out and fight against the death penalty every day, but she doesn’t carry the same power Winslow and Kelle hold.

“I don’t have to come at it from a point of extreme pain and emotion to tell it,” Francke told half a dozen Grand Island citizens in attendance.

Winslow, who served almost two decades in prison before being exonerated this year for the rape and murder of Beatrice resident Helen Wilson in 1985, said he pled guilty to the murder only after being threatened with the death penalty.

His position against the death penalty stems from two causes. The first, is the death penalty being used as leverage to coerce a confession.

“I don’t want them to be able to use that as a scare tactic for a plea deal,” said Winslow, who added he took a guilty plea to avoid Nebraska’s electric chair.

“We chose to save our lives as opposed to losing our lives for a crime we didn’t commit,” Winslow said. “We didn’t feel like we had an option in 1989, so we chose to take plea agreements to save our lives.”

Had Winslow received a death sentence, he and other Beatrice 6 exonorees would have exhausted their appeals on May 23, 1997 - more than a decade before they were finally released from prison.

Winslow also said he feels that taking another life does no good.

“I don’t think anyone deserves to lose their life,” Winslow said of the death penalty.

Life in prison, he said, can in some ways be worse.

Someone with multiple life sentences has “nothing to lose” inside and violence and rape occurs quite often.

“I would say life in prison would actually be harder,” Winslow said. “You’re going to have to interact with people who are not going to be your best friend, not be your confidant.”

“I would say in 19 years I saw some of the most traumatic things I will ever see in my life,” he added. “There are things that will haunt me forever.”

Winslow said he wouldn’t wish the death penalty upon Bruce Allen Smith, who through DNA evidence, was discovered to be the true killer of Helen Wilson.

“I would want to see him brought to justice,” Winslow said. “Not through the death penalty but though a life sentence without parole to give the family the closure they deserve.”

Smith died of AIDS in 1992.

Kelle, whose younger brother was brutally tortured and murdered as a member of a survivalist cult in Rulo, said she pleads with state senators every year to banish the death penalty, even though Michael Ryan, the man responsible for her brother’s death, currently sits on death row.

“The most heinous of crimes in Nebraska was my brother’s death,” Kelle concluded after explaining the brutal ways her brother was tortured in the weeks and months leading up to his death.

“I still think that life without parole is much better for the family,” said Kelle, who previously worked as a nurse in Beatrice.  “You don’t have to relive all this.”

Kelle said she began talking about her brother’s murder to work past her anger and grief.

Each year, Kelle said she works to convince lawmakers to abolish the death penalty in Nebraska.

“If I don’t say this is wrong, that we can’t do this in my case, then we can’t do it in any other case either,” Kelle finished.