Baltimore Community Fellowships
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Baltimore, Maryland
2005
Bonnita Spikes has made it her life's work to stop capital punishment in Maryland and across the country. Using her skills as a former union organizer, Spikes is spending her fellowship bringing people together to discuss the death penalty and rally against it. It is a remarkable mission for a woman whose own life was wrecked by violence—the 1994 murder of her husband Michael, a crime for which nobody has ever been charged.
As an OSI Fellow, Spikes has made several speeches and is helping launch community groups opposed to the death penalty. Capital punishment, she believes, is immoral, disproportionately hits African Americans and could lead to the execution of an innocent person.
As part of her work, Spikes frequently visits the men facing the death penalty in Maryland. "I tell them, 'I don't care if you did it or not, I'm here because you're a human being and you don't deserve to die,'" Spikes says. "If it were my son, I would surely want someone to care."
Read a Daily Record article about Spikes's work (subscription required): www.mddailyrecord.com/pub/5_589_law/coverstory/179366-1.html.
