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NC Coalition for Alternatives to the Death Penalty

Committed to ending the death penalty and creating a new vision of justice

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Andre Smith

Learn more: People Most Proximate: Our Creativity

Daniel “Peace” Smith was dancing in a Raleigh nightclub when he accidentally spilled another man’s beer. Thirty minutes later, that man stabbed Peace to death in the club’s bathroom. Peace’s parents were notified of their son’s death in the early hours of a Friday morning. Before noon, his father, Andre says he had forgiven the man who murdered his son.

Andre is a practicing Buddhist, and was already teaching meditation and anger management to incarcerated men at Nash Correctional when he lost his son. Losing Peace, he said, makes him even more dedicated to his practice and his teaching.

Some people are still living their loss after seven years, twenty years—they still can’t let it go. What can you do? There is nothing I can do or say. People hear my story of forgiveness, but they don’t see how they could get there or even if they should get there. I thought my daughter would be angry at me for forgiving her brother’s killer but, after a time, she told her mom, I’m not mad at Dad. I am just angry at myself because I can’t get there. You do question yourself and ask, What is wrong with me? Is it because I do not love my son? It is not an easy path.

I lost my son. And not wanting the guy who killed my son to suffer, this is contentment for me. I feel content. I’m not trying to get my son back, I know that’s never going to happen. I’m not trying to seek revenge. I am content. And so therefore I am able to experience some happiness as a result of that.

Andre looks at a pencil drawing of his son, a gift from an artist he mentored while the artist was in Nash Correctional.

Also, we’re all looking for closure, if this has ever happened to us. I don’t think you find closure in this person’s death. That’s not closure. Closure is when I feel happy, and when I’m not suffering. And the only way that I know of that I can feel happy and not suffer is to wish this guy no harm. And if possible, to serve him in some way. To help him to be able to never to do this again. To help him to be able to see, God, what I did was wrong. That’s what I want to do. That is what’s gonna make me happy. That is what’s going to make society happy. Because this person will never go out and kill again. Because this person understands what that is now. And this person has a new set of tools now that he can use, that he can apply to make sure that he never does that again. 

And that is what we should ultimately want. We erroneously think that if we take this guy’s life, then I have closure, and society has closure. But it doesn’t stop the killing. Yeah, that guy won’t kill again because he’s dead, right? But there will be someone else.

If I can teach Wallace Bass, the man who killed my son, if I can teach him how to deal with his anger. How to do differently, how to become a better human being, then he will pass it on to someone else. And this is how we will begin to see a world without this kind of stuff.

It’s a slow process. But it is a process. And it is moving forward. And it does make a difference. Just taking someone’s life, it doesn’t make a difference, it doesn’t move us forward.

Daniel “Peace” Smith

Filed Under: People Most Proximate, Stories

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Capital punishment makes no economic sense. In a Capital punishment makes no economic sense.

In a review of cases from 2005 and 2006, the last two years in which there were executions in North Carolina, researchers found that eliminating the death penalty could have saved the state close to $22 million during that 2-year period alone.
19 years ago, North Carolina executed Samuel Flipp 19 years ago, North Carolina executed Samuel Flippen. He was the last person to be executed by the state. 

19 years without executions. Let's make it forever.

#NoMoreDeathRow #EndTheDeathPenalty #19YearsWithout
Florida has executed Michael Bell. This is the 26t Florida has executed Michael Bell. This is the 26th execution in the US in 2025, the highest number of executions in any year since 2015. And it’s only July. 

Michael Bell was the 8th person executed in Florida this year, tying the state’s annual murder record within the modern death penalty era. Governor DeSantis has signed yet another death warrant. Florida plans to execute Edward Zakrzewski on July 31. We are in uncharted territory. 

Yet public support for capital punishment is at an all-time low. We are facing a brutal final showdown with the death penalty, and it’s going to take every single one of us to end it. 

Rest in peace, Mike. We mourn your execution, and we remember your life. 

#MichaelBell #NoMoreDeathRow #EndTheDeathPenalty
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