Joe Cannata used to be a small-business man. He and his wife, Kaye, ran a dry cleaner on South Pearl Street for 31 years. He concerned himself with the matters of the business district, trees, lighting, all that went into making people feel welcome and comfortable. People called him the Mayor of Pearl Street.
Cannata sold the business a few years back and now rents space in an insurance office off East Evans Avenue and Washington Street. Five years ago, the Cannatas founded the nonprofit Voices of Victims. Joe helps victims and their families negotiate the criminal justice system, particularly after sentencing. Next Saturday at 11 a.m., he will be among those marking the National Day of Remembrance for Murder Victims at the Denver City and County Building.
Cannata’s own voice is sonorous. He speaks with deliberation, so slowly that, at times, he sounds exhausted or mournful. His manner is calming, and, in his work, calm is helpful.
Voices of Victims occupies a few rooms. The smallest is dominated by a desk piled with the records of inmates whose parole hearings he will attend with their victims.
A more spacious room down the hall holds pictures on its walls and a pedestal topped by a bouquet and a sign that reads “Justice isn’t served until crime victims are.”
Cannata stands before one photo. “See this little baby? He was murdered by his mother’s boyfriend in 1988. I used to go to every parole hearing with her.” Next photo: “Here’s little Adam. He was killed near Colfax, remember? The boarder was shooting at his father.”
We move to another photo. A lovely young woman with a Mona Lisa smile. His daughter, Lynn.
Patricia Lynn Cannata was killed July 2, 1987. She was 20 and pregnant with her second child. Her boyfriend was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 24 years.
It was not Lynn’s murder that started Cannata down the path he has since taken. It was what followed. The minimum sentence, the appeals court ruling reversing the conviction and ordering a new trial, the Supreme Court ruling upholding the conviction, the realization that his daughter’s killer would be up for parole before half his sentence was served, the way victims’ families often were left to flounder after sentencing.
Since then, he has become a volunteer victim advocate for the Department of Corrections. He has been a driving force behind legislation related to sentencing, parole and community corrections.
“I just want to keep changing things so that the system doesn’t retraumatize the families of victims as many times as it does,” he says. “I still believe that if someone is sentenced to 24 years, they should serve 24 years.”
But Cannata also will say that punishment without opportunity for rehabilitation is not justice, either. “(Most) inmates are going to walk out of prison someday, and we need to get them prepared with education, with job-skills programs, so that when they do walk out, they don’t walk back in.”
Twenty-three years have passed since Lynn’s death. One does not “get over” loss like that, and I picture Cannata meeting week after week with grieving, often angry, families. How do you keep from reliving your own trauma? I ask. “I don’t,” he says.
Most of the families Cannata works with do not know his story. It’s not about me, he’ll say. Kaye Cannata puts it this way: “We do this for Lynn. You do relive the trauma. That hole is always in your life. You learn this is normal and you go on, but there is no getting away from it.”
And so Cannata chooses to turn and face it.
“This is work that feeds your heart at the same time it breaks your heart,” Nancy Lewis, executive director of the Colorado Organization for Victim Assistance, tells me. “Joe’s pain has gone into righting wrongs for other people.”
What I hear from others is: “Joe will stay the course when other people give up.” “Joe is the Rock of Gibraltar.” “The greatest gift victim advocates give, what Joe gives, to a victim and to a family is to help them through the path of healing. You are never the same. You can’t go back and be what you were, so Joe helps the victim understand what the new world looks like.”
Sometimes an act of courage and an act of compassion cannot be distinguished. Each requires selflessness. Neither is easy. Neither guarantees one will emerge unscathed.
Not long ago, the Denver district attorney’s office awarded Cannata its “Civil Courage Award.” It recognizes those “who stand up for their principles and against injustice at personal risk for the good of community and society.” Cannata says he simply saw a need and decided to do something about it. He had a daughter named Lynn, and she is always with him. It’s wrong to see every person he helps as a manifestation of his courage, he says. Instead, it is a manifestation of his love.
Tina Griego writes Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Reach her at 303-954-2699 or tgriego@denverpost.com.
