What would prompt someone to spend a beautiful summer day in July diving into and swimming the chilly, choppy, dangerous waters between “The Rock” – the former maximum-security prison on Alcatraz Island – and the foot of the San Francisco Bay Bridge?

For Lynn Greer, 41, it’s the prospect of generating money for Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (VADP), a statewide citizens’ organization dedicated to ending capital punishment in that state. Greer, a member of VADP’s Board of Directors, plans to fundraise, and focus public attention on the issue of innocent people being wrongfully convicted and executed, by participating in the July 18, 2010 Alcatraz Challenge Aquathlon & Alcatraz Challenge Swim.

The annual Alcatraz Challenge Aquathlon & Alcatraz Challenge Swim, sponsored by Tri-California Events, Inc., is a USA Triathlon-sanctioned swimming and running competition. Greer chose the event as the vehicle for her fundraising and public education effort.

Greer’s goal is to raise contributions in recognition of each of the 138 prisoners exonerated from death row since 1973 due to their innocence. Beginning at 8 a.m. Pacific Time on July 18, Greer will navigate the extremely strong ocean current around Alcatraz and swim 1.5 miles to the East Beach of Crissy Field in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area’s Presidio Park.

Undaunted by the rough, freezing waters, Greer looks forward to the challenge. “The last time I participated in this event 10 years ago, I completed the entire triathlon in less than four hours,” she says. “It is not for novices. This time, I am just focusing on the swim.” She trains by swimming five to seven miles a week in the Washington, D.C. area.

Greer may be swimming against physical tides, but the “tide” of public and criminal justice opinion is gradually turning against capital punishment, especially with respect to wrongful convictions and executions.  In a recent Rasmussen Reports opinion poll, 73 percent said they are concerned about innocent people executed by mistake, with 40 percent saying they are “very concerned.”

Moreover, in 2009, the American Law Institute (ALI), the leading independent scholarly institute providing support for legal theories that undergird state criminal justice systems, removed the death penalty from its Model Penal Code. Among other things, the ALI cited the minimal safeguards against mistaken convictions and executions.

Greer notes that of the 35 states that still have the death penalty on their books, Virginia is second only to Texas in the number of executions carried out between 1976 and 2009 (Texas 460; Virginia 107).  Moreover, she says, California, site of the athletic challenge, has a death row population of 690, but executions in the state are currently on hold due to legal challenges regarding its three-drug lethal injection execution protocol.

“Virginia and the other states implementing the death penalty should end it,” asserts Greer. “It is a fatally flawed public policy which puts innocent people at risk for wrongful conviction and execution.  By swimming in the Alcatraz Challenge, I expect to increase public awareness regarding the innocence issue.”

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 For more information about Lynn Greer’s swim against the death penalty, visit her web page at http://www.firstgiving.com/lynn_greer.