Bishop asks for 'new culture of life' as Montana execution approaches

Published: 2006-08-08

HELENA, Mont. (CNS) -- Days before one of Montana's four death-row inmates was to be executed, Helena Bishop George L. Thomas asked the state's citizens and the governor to "take the road less traveled" and dismantle the death penalty. In an opinion piece published Aug. 6 in the Helena Independent Record daily newspaper, Bishop Thomas said that although the facts surrounding the crime for which David Thomas Dawson was sentenced to death engender little public sympathy for him Christians are obliged to look at the situation through a different lens. Dawson, 48, was scheduled to be executed by lethal injection Aug. 11, after he gave up on appeals and attempted to fire the two attorneys who have been trying to stop his execution. He was convicted in 1987 of three counts of murder and four counts of aggravated kidnapping. He murdered David and Monica Rodstein and their 11-year-old son, Andrew, after kidnapping the family from a Billings motel during a robbery. The couple's daughter, Amy, then age 15, was later found alive by police.

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