A Different Kind Of Graduation

McALESTER, Okla. (AP) _ It was a different kind of graduation. No caps. No gowns. No fathers' smiles or mothers' tears. No hugs or words of congratulations from friends and family. <br/><br/>Instead,

Sunday, June 25th 2006, 5:58 pm

By: News On 6

McALESTER, Okla. (AP) _ It was a different kind of graduation. No caps. No gowns. No fathers' smiles or mothers' tears. No hugs or words of congratulations from friends and family.

Instead, there were drab pants, T-shirts, heavy bars, shackles and chains.

But that doesn't lessen the accomplishment, according to the eight men who received special diplomas recently on Oklahoma's death row.

``The opportunity to better myself, regardless of the circumstances, that was the key,'' said 37-year-old Corey Hamilton.

``That's one thing I've learned. When you get a chance to better yourself, you need to take it and do your best.''

Hamilton and the other seven inmates who received diplomas for completing the New Life Behavior Ministries' ``Attitudes & Behaviors'' course all did well, according to the man who taught them.

``No one scored under a 90 on any part of the course,'' said Vernon Gray, president of the Ministry of HOPE.

When Oklahoma State Penitentiary Chaplain Gaetano Franzese first approached him about teaching the course to death row inmates, Gray said, ``I wasn't certain about it. But then, this is a program that you can use wherever you are, behind bars or not.''

It wasn't Gray's first trip behind the walls, though. He's been ministering to inmates for more than a dozen years, ever since an inmate visiting his church signed a couple of people up to minister at the prison. Gray went along to help and soon found himself doing the ministry as the older couple's health failed.

``The first few times were kind of scary,'' Gray said. ``But I saw the results. Now I'm going to climb these stairs (at the prison) until I can't go on any longer.''

And prison ministries do bring results, Franzese said, even if they aren't geared specifically toward Biblical teaching.

``We're wanting to get the inmates to do something positive instead of negative,'' he said. ``They are here because they did negative things already.

``You can take wherever you are and build the basis for becoming something better.''

The Ministry of HOPE uses ``The Bible as a basis, but we're teaching principles, not doctrine,'' Gray said.

``What we learned in here, we can share with our friends and family outside,'' said Jesse James Cummings, Jr., 50.

``It makes a difference,'' said Billy Alverson, who's spent almost nine of his 31 years on death row.

The Behaviors & Attitudes course deals with virtues and with vices, helping people to understand both and learn how to overcome some of their vices.

For instance, such virtues as faith, hope, love, temperance, courage, wisdom and justice can help people overcome vices like greed, gluttony, envy, pride, anger and lust.

``It's one thing to know something, to know the words, it's another to really understand it,'' Alverson said.

The course ``put a lot of things in perspective,'' said 43-year-old Richard Smith. ``You can hear things all your life and never understand them, but this helped me to understand some of those words.''

``I've always heard 'do this, do that, do this, this and this,''' said James DeRosa, 28. ``It's nice to know how to apply all these things that everyone expects us to do.

``It's hard to abide by a standard when you don't know what that standard means.''

Failure to abide by the standards is what gets Gray's students to the point where they become his pupils.

The eight recent graduates, for example, all were convicted of murder and all are awaiting execution pending the outcome of appeals and other legal maneuvers.

Hamilton received four death sentences for the killing of four employees of Lee's Famous Recipe Chicken in Tulsa during a robbery. Smith was convicted of killing a Canadian County man during a robbery in 1986, and DeRosa was sentenced to death for the 2001 killings of a Poteau couple, also during a robbery.

Emmanuel Littlejohn, 34, was convicted of killing an Oklahoma City convenience store owner in 1992 and Alverson was convicted of killing a Tulsa convenience store clerk during a 1995 robbery. Yancy Douglas was convicted of a 1995 gang related killing in Oklahoma City. Michael Delozier, 29, was convicted of killing two campers in McCurtain County in 1995 and Cummings was convicted of killing his niece and ordering the death of his sister in 1991.

``They didn't get here for being good guys,'' Francese said. ``But that doesn't mean they can't be better than they were.''

Twenty death row inmates applied for the Attitudes & Behavior Course, but due to security reasons, only 10 could get in. Eight graduated.

``This is all done by the ministries, by volunteers,'' Francese said. ``It doesn't cost the state anything.''

Inmates would meet briefly in one cell on H Unit each Thursday, where they would go over their lessons from the previous week and receive lessons for the next.

``If we'd known some of this before we got in trouble, maybe we wouldn't be here now,'' said DeRosa.

The vices Gray taught about get many people in trouble, not just those on death row.

Of about 24,000 people in the corrections system in Oklahoma, the controlling, or main, offense for more than a quarter of them is some kind of theft, whether that theft involves burglary, fraud, embezzlement or robbery. Another 34 percent have a drug- or alcohol-related offense as their controlling crime.

``That directly relates to gluttony and often, envy, pride and jealousy,'' Gray said. ``All of the vices tie together, but so do all of the virtues.''

Do behavior courses in prison work?

``Anytime we can have these guys thinking positive it's a good thing,'' Francese said. ``They've had many years of negative.''