The Palmetto Journey of Hope is a collaboration between SCADP and Journey of Hope...From Violence to Healing. It is a speaking series empowering the voices of murder victim family members towards the abolition of the death penalty. Together with other anti-death penalty voices (former death row residents, death row family members, department of corrections employees, capital defense lawyers, and law enforcement), the Journey of Hope has sparked legislative change across the country.

About the Speakers:

Terri Steinberg currently lives in Fairfax, VA with her husband and is the mother of four wonderful children, and the grandmother to 2 precious little boys. She has worked in the Labor and Delivery department at the local hospital for the past 30 years. She was raised Catholic, graduated from Bishop O’Connell in Arlington and sent her 4 children to Catholic elementary school. As a community and school volunteer, she was your average ‘mom,’ coaching cheerleading and driving a minivan. She was taught to respect life and believed that meant all life. She had never given the death penalty much thought because it did not make any sense to kill another human being. And like most, she also did nothing about it. That was then.

In July 2002, Terri’s oldest child, Justin Wolfe, was wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death for a crime he did not commit. Justin had just turned 20, and was the youngest person on Virginia’s death row. She was shocked and devastated, but determined to fix this horrible mistake. Since then, Terri has worked with Journey of Hope founder Bill Pelke and with murder victims family members, speaking widely and often about the healing power of forgiveness and the devastation for families and destruction of community that comes from the US death penalty system. It is through sharing her story that Terri is able to give purpose to the pain her family suffers by the cross they carry in the fight for their son and brother.

Jimmy MacPhee, a returning citizen from a forty-five year prison journey, is an ordained non-denominational minister and has co-authored three prison writing books: Letters to Our Sons; Didn't See It Coming; and Frankie San, a Burning and a Shining Light for Christ. Embracing life with God-inspired passion, he continues to write and speak to bring hope to those he meets and to minister to "the least of these" who remain incarcerated. Today, as an ordained minister, Jimmy serves God as Executive Director of On the Rock Ministries, Providing Funding for Inmate College Bible correspondence courses. Their vision is to change violent prison culture to one of peace and purpose found in biblical teaching and the redemptive power of Jesus Christ.