"This isn't about attention": Anti-death penalty activist marries Oklahoma death row inmate
CBSN
McAlester Okla. — Anti-death penalty advocate Lea Rodger says she's keenly aware of the realities facing her and Richard Glossip, who she married this week inside the Oklahoma State Penitentiary -- where he sits on death row.
Glossip, 59, already has narrowly escaped execution three times and could be the next man Oklahoma puts to death now that the state has lifted a nearly seven-year moratorium on executions put in place due to mishaps in his case and others.
Rodger, 32, a paralegal who has spent more than a decade advocating for an end to capital punishment, says that's one of the reasons she didn't want to waste time marrying her new husband.
Ashley White received her earliest combat action badge from the United States Army soon after the first lieutenant arrived in Afghanistan. The silver military award, recognizing soldiers who've been personally engaged by an attacker during conflict, was considered an achievement in and of itself as well as an affirming rite of passage for the newly deployed. White had earned it for using her own body to shield a group of civilian women and children from gunfire that broke out in the midst of her third mission in Kandahar province. All of them survived. She never mentioned the badge to anyone in her battalion.
The knock at the door came at nighttime on Mother's Day 2008 in Oregon, where Jessica Ellis' parents lived. It was around 9:20 p.m. and his wife, Linda, was already in bed; her father Steve Ellis told CBS News, that he thought someone let their animals out — but two soldiers in Class A uniforms were standing at the door.