f retaliation. Justice is never advanced in the taking of a human life. Morality is never upheld by a legalized murder."54 Kerry Kennedy Cuomo, daughter of the slain Senator Robert Kennedy, has written: "I was eight years old when my father was murdered. It is almost impossible to describe the pain of losing a parent to a senseless murder.…But even as a child one thing was clear to me: I didn't want the killer, in turn, to be killed. I remember lying in bed and praying, 'Please, God. Please don't take his life too.' I saw nothing that could be accomplished in the loss of one life being answered with the loss of another. And I knew, far too vividly, the anguish that would spread through another family – another set of parents, children, brothers, and sisters thrown into grief."55 Across the nation, many who have survived the murder of a loved one have joined Murder Victims' Families for Reconciliation (headquartered in Virginia), in the effort to replace anger and hate toward the criminal with a restorative approach to both the offender and the bereaved survivors....
