The Death Penalty in the OSCE Area–Background Paper 2021 those who have suffered the loss of a loved one through murder are multitudes, with wildly diverging ideas of what the death penalty does or can mean. I am among that kinship of tragedy. My story, and that of many I know, disrupts the too-easy image of a victim’s family member who finds “closure” in state-sanctioned death. Our souls steer us away from brutal vengeance. On 7 April 1990, in a quiet town in the North Shore area of Chicago, Illinois, an intruder broke into the home of my sister Nancy Bishop Langert and her husband Richard and shot them to death. Nancy was 25 years old; Richard was 29. To compound the tragedy, Nancy was pregnant with what would have been their first child, my first little niece or nephew and my parents’ first grandchild. The killer was David Biro, a 17-year-old who lived only a few blocks away from Nancy and Richard. He shot Richard once, execution style, in the back of his head. He shot Nancy in her side and abdomen, even though they had told him she was pregnant. The autopsy report detailing the path the bullets had taken in her body, destroying the child within her, was so excruciating that I wailed in agony when I read it. Nancy was the beloved youngest of three daughters in my family. She was a sunny, sweet, spirited person who wanted more than anything to be a mother. She and Richard were a young couple with no enemies and everything to live for, on the brink of achieving their dream of having a child and owning a home of their own. A jury found Biro guilty after only two hours of deliberation. The court sentenced him to the mandatory sentence imposed at the time on juveniles in the State of Illinois who had committed multiple homicides: life in prison without the possibility of parole. Although other places had a death penalty for juveniles at that time, Illinois did not.7 When my family and I walked out of the courthouse after the sentencing, the press was waiting to ask how we felt. The first question a reporter asked me was this: “Aren’t you disappointed your sister’s killer couldn’t get the death penalty?” My answer was this, then and now: “No.” I will never find joy or hope in the death of another. I am glad his life was spared, not because of who he is but because of who Nancy was. She was a good and generous person who loved life, who loved people, who 7 The United States Supreme Court has since struck down the death penalty for people who were children at the time of their crimes. 8