Vengeance is Mom's

News: Meet Dianne Clements, the soccer mom who has done as much as anyone to ensure that Texas' killing chamber remains the nation's busiest.

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Clements was once just another Houston soccer mom, working an office job and raising two teens—Krista and Zachary—with her husband, Woody. “It was a very typical suburban life,” she says. “Our routine was work, school, baseball.” That routine was blown apart one afternoon in August 1991. Zachary, 13 at the time, was playing with a couple of neighbors’ kids about his age, when one of the boys grabbed his stepfather’s shotgun and pulled the trigger. The blast tore a hole through Zachary’s chest, killing him on the spot.

The police called it a tragic accident, not a crime, and let the matter drop. But Clements couldn’t see it that way. “It was impossible for me to accept that my child had been killed in such a fashion and there was no response, no outrage other than my family’s,” she says. For months, she hounded the district attorney’s office, demanding action. A court finally gave the shooter a year’s probation.

That experience impelled her, and another woman who also felt the system wasn’t doing enough to punish lawbreakers, to found Justice for All. With the moral force of bereft family members and Clements’ tireless energy behind it, JFA evolved into a 4,000-member outfit. Though it remains an all-volunteer organization, it has the ear of many Texas prosecutors and politicians and has helped push through a range of laws that make life harder for criminals. State correctional officials hold the group in such respect that they renamed a prison after JFA’s other founder. Clements even got an admiring mention in George W. Bush’s autobiography, A Charge to Keep.

more: http://www.motherjones.com/news/outfront/2006/03/vengeance_moms.html

They described her as if she were a sullen student defying a teacher, facing sideways in her chair, affecting an air of disinterest. As the workshop began, she ate ice from a cup, crunching loudly enough to be heard by all 40 or so in the room.

The woman was Dianne Clements, president of the Houston-based victims' rights group Justice For All. She soon began interrupting the speakers. According to some attendees, these exchanges followed:

Cushing asked Clements to hold her questions until after the presentation. She refused, demanding answers.

"I want you to tell us," Clements angrily insisted, "what are you? Are you an abolitionist group or a victim support group?"

"We're both," replied Bishop.

That answer was unacceptable to Clements. She repeated her line of questioning, then stunned listeners when she told Cushing and Bishop, "You're really a bunch of abolitionists who just happened to have family members killed."

By all indications, there seems to be just one side to the death penalty issue for Clements: You're either for it, or against her.

A compelling read: http://www.houstonpress.com/Issues/2002-10-03/news/feature.html