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ASHLAND THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY

DISCOVERING FORGIVENESS IN EXECUTING JUSTICE THROUGH

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO

THE FACULTY OF ASHLAND THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY

IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF

DOCTOR OF MINISTRY

BY ALAN W. JOHNSON

ASHLAND, OHIO

MARCH 25, 2020

Dedication

To Tim and Gary who taught me the meaning of injustice

Epigraph

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them

the other cheek also.”

Jesus in Matthew 5:38-39

APPROVAL PAGE

Accepted by the faculty and the final demonstration examining committee of Ashland Theological Seminary, Ashland, Ohio, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Ministry degree.

______Academic Advisor Date

______Director of the Doctor of Ministry Program Date

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this project is to discover how forgiveness contributes to the feeling of resolution among murder victim families and inmates convicted of murder in the state of Ohio. A survey of family members of murder victims and men on Death Row found both groups understand the value of forgiveness to overcome the pain of loss and agony of bitterness.

The survey also found that two in three respondents would consider meeting with the murderer or victims, and seven in ten said they believed they could forgive the killer without forgetting the victims.

CONTENTS

LIST OF TABLES…………………………………………………………...... vii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS………………………………………….…………….…..viii

Chapter

1. INTRODUCTION AND PROJECT OVERVIEW.…………...... 1

2. BIBLICAL, THEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL FOUNDATIONS...... 28

3. REVIEW OF LITERATURE………………………………………………61

4. DESIGN, PROCEDURE, AND ASSESSMENT………………………..98

5. REPORTING THE RESULTS..…..……………………………………. 107

6. SUMMARY AND REFLECTIONS………………………….…………...121

Appendix

1. PROPOSAL……………………………………………………...... 140

2. ASSESSMENT TOOL AND COVER LETTER…………………………..165

REFERENCES…………………………………………………………………..…..171

LIST OF TABLES

Table Page

1. Table 1. Goal Number Seven – Forgiveness and Healing.…….108

2. Table 2. Goal Number Four – Forgiveness and Loss………....109

3. Table 3. Goal Number One – Attitudes about Murder....…...…111

4. Table 4. Goal Number Six – Murder and Resolution……..……..112

5. Table 5. Goal Number Five – Capital Punishment Attitude……..114

6. Table 6. Goal Number Two – Capital Punishment Support……..116

7. Table 7. Goal Number Three – Revenge as a Factor..…………..117

8. Table 8. Qualitative Results….………….…………………………..119

vii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First and foremost, I am grateful to God.

I am also grateful to my family, including my daughter, Kara, my son,

Connor, and granddaughter, Amelia, who put up with the loss of so much of my time to studying, and to my mother and late father, Berniece and Lloyd Johnson, who put me on the Christian path at an early age.

I am grateful to professors at Asbury Theological Seminary and Ashland

Theological Seminary who taught me how to study after my long “sabbatical.” I especially thank Dr. Matthew Bevere for helping me cross the finish line with this dissertation.

I am grateful to my former employer, The Columbus Dispatch, for the flexibility to study while I was working fulltime, and to my fellow employees who supported me along the way.

Last but far from least, I am grateful to two long-time friends whose help has been invaluable: Andrea Carson, my field adviser, and Pat Huston-Holm, my editor.

viii

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION AND PROJECT OVERVIEW

“If we believe that if murder is wrong and not admissible in our society, then it has to be wrong for everyone, not just individuals but governments as well.”

Sister Helen Prejean

“From this day forward, I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death. . . . I feel morally and intellectually obligated simply to concede that the death penalty experiment has failed.”

Former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun

These quotes, one from the religious perspective, the other from the secular justice system, succinctly summarize my view on capital punishment after studying it for three years as a doctoral candidate and reporting on it for 20 years as a journalist. I believe that all human life is sacred, created Imago Dei, made in the image of God, and that only God has the ultimate right to decide when a life should end. I engaged in this project, Discovering Forgiveness in

Executing Justice Through Capital Punishment, to test the theological soundness of my opposition to capital punishment and to see if the great power of forgiveness can help heal this most grievous of wounds.

contribute to the feeling of resolution among murder victim families and inmates convicted of murder in the state of Ohio?

Overview

The purpose of this project focused on how forgiveness impacts people directly affected by murder in Ohio. To do this, I looked at two related groups: families of murder victims and men on Death Row who have a capital punishment sentence. The participants were surveyed with the same questionnaire, with victim families using either an online assessment or via the same questions asked by telephone. The Death Row inmates in the custody of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction were surveyed only on paper with the cooperation of the state agency. In both cases, participation was voluntary and the results were anonymous without any identifying names or case information. This was done to respect the privacy of the individuals surveyed and to ensure the integrity of the research.

My goal was first to evaluate if forgiveness is a factor in how people in the two target groups cope with grief and guilt in their lives after a murder is committed. In the larger view, I sought to determine how forgiveness can be cultivated though the heart of Jesus to help heal wounds and improve lives.

Foundations

The pillars of my project come from personal involvement with capital punishment over a period of two decades, buttressed by foundations of biblical, theological and historical research. Each of these four areas contribute to a solid understanding of the subject of the death penalty and forgiveness.

Personal Foundation

For nearly half of my 44 years as professional newspaper journalist, I researched and wrote about capital punishment in Ohio and the United States.

For the last fifteen years of that period, I was on my Christian walk, including nine years as a seminary student. In those roles, I observed the incalculable, agonizing impact of the crime of murder on victim families, the offenders, the prison staff, and the public at large. Moreover, it became apparent that God was there, sorrowful but active, as man’s instrumentality of justice ground relentlessly forward. I became a part of the process, pulled into the “machinery of death,” as the late Justice Blackmun said. I knew the mechanics of the lethal injection procedure as well as many prison employees.

I learned though my research that capital punishment has existed as long as the crime of murder; taking the life of another human being resulted in a sentence of death for more than two millennia. While the number of executions declined dramatically in recent years in the U.S., it remains the law of the land in

28 states, including Ohio, where 56 men have been lethally injected since 1999

(Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction 2019).

I wanted to know how, or if, forgiveness plays a role in the lives of a family dealing with sorrow, bitterness and anger over the loss of a loved one.

Proponents of capital punishment argue that executing the killer brings justice and closure to the situation, but does it really? Does the death of another person, an eye for an eye, remove any of the sorrow over the loss of a loved one? I found evidence that is not the case in most situations.

At the same time, my goal was to find how the person convicted of murder and sentenced to die for their crime dealt with the guilt and regret for their actions, assuming they feel guilt and sorrow. Can they find forgiveness for the horrible act they did while they live in solitary confinement for what can be fifteen or twenty years prior to an execution? We know that Jesus forgives all sins, but forgiveness does not come easily in such horrific circumstances. I found there was more bitterness, anger and guilt than desire for forgiveness expressed by the inmates surveyed.

My personal experience with capital punishment began months before the

Feb. 19, 1999, execution of Wilford Berry, a mentally ill Cleveland man who became known as “the volunteer” because he voluntarily waived several layers of legal appeals that would have prolonged his life behind bars by years. As a state government reporter for The Columbus Dispatch newspaper from 1989 to 2017, my assignment included coverage of state prisons and, by default, writing about executions. The potential for an execution in Ohio was a significant news event in the 1990s. At the time, no one had been put to death in the state since 1963, a

36-year hiatus during which the capital punishment law was found unconstitutional by the federal courts before being reinstated in 1973, overturned again, and finally put in place again in 1981 in Ohio.

I have been a Christian my entire adult life, but drifted in my faith for many years beginning in my twenties. In 1999, I was ambivalent about capital punishment; I knew, from my research, the horror of what murderers had done and I was confident that the death penalty, while troubling, was appropriate

because it was then and still is now the law of the land in Ohio. Reading just a few pages of the Attorney General’s Capital Crimes Annual Report, which provides often shocking details of the crime and the legal status of every case on

Death Row, was a chilling experience, leading me to believe some people committed such heinous, even unforgivable crimes that society would be better off without them. Yet my conscience nagged me because I knew that with every execution, new victims were created, namely family members of the condemned inmate, who joined the ranks of others who lost a loved one. I also knew that any system created by humans is flawed and is thus subject to mistakes. I was troubled and conflicted.

It was not until I began attending Vineyard Columbus church about 2005 that I began having serious reservations about the death penalty and questioning my job reporting on executions. My conflict intensified once I began attending

Asbury Theological Seminary in 2009 and later transferred to Ashland

Theological Seminary to complete my master’s degree and begin the doctoral program. In the meantime, I continued reporting on and attending executions, witnessing twenty-one in person and covering more than two-dozen others from

1999 to 2017.

I eventually became convinced that killing is wrong through a season of prayer, soul searching, reading and studying the Bible, especially the New

Testament. I continued doing my job as a reporter, witnessing and writing about executions, but I was troubled that I did not find being a first-hand witness to

death more disturbing than I did. I did not want watching men die to become an accepted part of my job.

I approached my pastor at Vineyard Columbus, Rich Nathan, and we discussed and prayed about my role in the death penalty process and my theological studies. Pastor Nathan concluded, and I agreed, that God wanted me to be in the execution chamber as his witness to the ugliness of death. Neither of us discerned God’s exact purpose for my presence there, but nevertheless I took some comfort in having joined with my pastor in prayer about it and that my reporting was not borne of a desire only to report on important news but had a higher purpose down the road.

My most disturbing experience witnessing executions was the lethal injection of Dennis McGuire on Jan. 16, 2014. McGuire was put to death for the

February 1989 brutal slaying of Joy Stewart of West Alexandria, Ohio, who was pregnant at the time of her death.

About five minutes after a two-drug combination began flowing into his veins, McGuire began gasping and choking, his stomach heaving up and down with the force of his exertion. He clenched his fists repeatedly, and tried to lift up from the table, but restraints on his chest, arms and legs kept him in place. His grown son and daughter, Dennis and Amber, who were witnesses, looked on in horror, the hoodies of their sweatshirts pulled up over their heads. Family members of Joy Stewart, who also observed from a tiny room just a few feet away, watched in stunned silence.

I was a veteran witness of executions by this time, but I had never seen this before. My anxiety grew by the minute, sitting just yards away from the dying man. I knew it was too late for officials to call off the execution, but I desperately wanted it to stop. “Please die. Just die,” I thought at the time. McGuire was pronounced dead at 10:53 a.m., twenty-four agonizing minutes after his execution began. McGuire’s execution and my silent wish for his death haunt me to this day.

Biblical Foundation

The biblical foundation of my project touches on the Old and New

Testaments. Of many relevant scriptural points, these are the touchstones:

Exodus 21:23-25 (NIV – all references hereafter are NIV unless otherwise noted) which says “life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise,” and Matthew 5:38, “You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.” These form the bookends of my biblical foundation.

They approach the subject of capital punishment very differently, but the

New Testament is informed by the Old Testament view of lex talionis, the concept that retaliation or revenge should be equivalent to the loss, (Sarna 1996,

185), as described in Exodus 21:23-25. This view of revenge and retribution is changed forever by the coming of Christ Jesus, essentially being abolished by

Jesus in favor of forgiveness.

The Old Testament contains very clear descriptions of the punishment for murder, including Genesis 9 where God speaks to Noah and his family after they emerge from the ark once the flood waters recede. “And from each human being, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of another human being. Whoever sheds human blood, by humans shall their blood be shed; for in the image of

God has God made mankind” (Gen. 9:5-6).

A conflict quickly arises in Exodus where God hands down the Ten

Commandments to the people of Israel. “You shall not murder” (Exod. 20:13), although the King James Version translates the commandment as “Thou shall not kill” (Exod 20:13 KJ). There is a significant difference between the two descriptions that will be discussed in this paper.

This project takes a close look at Mosaic Law and older set of laws known as the Code of Hammurabi in which the death penalty played a significant role in many offenses. Before the time of Moses and Mosaic Law, civilizations sprang up in the area of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers as cities developed and the transition began to a less nomadic lifestyle than experienced by the shepherds who previously roamed the land. This area of Mesopotamia was the center of the powerful kingdom of Babylon, ruled over by Hammurabi, the most famous

Babylonian king whose reign lasted roughly from 1810 BC to 1750 B.C. Although law codes have been found in existence pre-dating it, the Code of Hammurabi is the “longest, most comprehensive, best arranged, most sophisticated and best preserved of the cuneiform law collections” (Sarna 1996, 164).

The Code of Hammurabi is one of the first know references to lex talionis, where the death penalty, as a civilized tradition, had its beginnings. The Code included more than two dozen crimes for which the death penalty was proscribed, many of which by modern standards seem wildly out of proportion to the nature of the crime, including witchcraft, theft, perjury, selling lost property, kidnapping, detaining a fugitive slave, housebreaking, and highway robbery (Lind

2004, 41-43). Hebrew law took another step up the ladder of civilization by requiring a greater level of certainty for a conviction in a death penalty matter. In our modern criminal justice system, the standard for a conviction is “beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Three Old Testament Murders

There are at least three significant situations in the Old Testament where

God did not punish a murder by death. The first is Cain’s murder of his brother

Abel in Genesis 4, a foundational example because God himself forswears punishment by death for Abel, instead banishing him while protecting him from death by revenge which would have been expected in biblical times.

When Cain reacts with anger God’s rejection of his offering from his harvest, “Cain’s task is to do what is right, rather than give sin a chance to overtake him,” Joan Cook writes. Instead, Cain responds in anger, killing his brother and “violating the divine-human boundary by trying to exercise control over life and death” (Cook 2011).

While he holds Cain responsible for his brother’s murder, God follows the

“the law of retaliation that specifies that the punishment must fit the crime in both

kind and degree” (Cook 2011). He banishes Cain but does not kill him, opting instead for mercy and special protection from what would otherwise be revenge against him by other family members.

By any standard, ancient or modern, Cain deserved the death penalty because he killed his brother violently and with premeditation with no motive other than anger and jealousy. The incriminating phrase here is “Let’s go out to the field (Gen. 4:8), or the open country away from people “It suggests that the murder of Abel was premeditated” (Ellison 1979, 119).

To complicate his guilt, Cain lied to God when asked about his brother’s whereabouts. “Am I my brother’s keeper?” (Gen. 4:9). “Cain’s answer to God question shows that he had lost Adam’s consciousness of nakedness before

God. That Cain shows no remorse is seen in his suggestion that God was being unfair to him” (Ellison 1979, 119).

This can be seen as the highest example of radical forgiveness because by Cain clearly deserved the death penalty. His killed his brother violently and with premeditation with no motive other than anger and jealousy. Yet God did not require a life for a life, but sent Cain away with a threat against those who might seek revenge to harm or kill him.

The second significant murder involved Moses as spelled out in Exodus 2 where Moses sees “an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own people.

Looking this way and that and seeing no one, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand” (Exod. 2:11-12). When his deed was discovered by Pharaoh “he tried to kill Moses, but Moses fled from Pharaoh and went to live in Midian.”

God forgave Moses and forged him into one of the great leaders of Israel, using him to free the Hebrew slaves from bondage in Egypt and leading them to the Promised Land.

By acknowledging that Moses “looked this way and that,” the author of

Exodus may be saying Moses, who was educated as an Egyptian prince and likely was familiar with Hammurabi’s Code, knew that what he was doing was wrong and checked before acting to see if he could avoid detection, and thus punishment (Cole 1973, 59). As with Cain, we see Moses had premeditation – he thought about what he was doing before he did it.

Terrence E. Fretheim says Moses was apparently intent on killing the

Egyptian whom he saw beating a Hebrew slave. “Moses made sure he was not being observed, an action that establishes premeditation and the absence of impulsiveness (hiding the body shows a concern from secrecy)” (Fretheim 1991,

42).

James K. Bruckner differs with Fretheim, saying that the NIV translation leaves a “false impression” that the killing was premeditated compared to the wording of the original Hebrew. Bruckner said Moses may have seen the

Egyptian beating the Hebrew and “saw there was no one to intervene” and stepped in to stop the beating (Bruckner 2008, 31-32). “No moral law allows for the killing of a man who simply beats or strikes another. Our narrative in its context leaves open the possibility that Moses did not intend to kill, but that he was guilty of unintentional manslaughter in his zealousness for justice in a violent land” (Bruckner 2008, 32).

A third killing in the Old Testament involves premeditated murder, treachery, adultery and rape. This is a chapter from the life of King David that unfolds in 2 Samuel 11-12. David, while home from the war, became infatuated with Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, one of the officers in his army. Having observed Bathsheba bathing on a nearby rooftop, David inquired and learned she was the wife of Uriah the Hittite, one of his military commanders. David sent for Bathsheba and he slept with her (2 Sam. 11:3-4). When David learned that

Bathsheba was pregnant, he treacherously concocted a scheme to send Uriah off to battle, with specific instructions that he be placed in the front lines where he would be in the fiercest fighting and almost certainly killed (Morrison 2013).

After the murder plot, David rewarded Uriah before he departed for battle by entertaining him and giving him a gift, “a very cheap trick intended to increase the sense of gratitude to David” (Porter 1979, 381). The ploy also prevented

Uriah from coming home to find his wife pregnant with David’s child.

The king’s scandalous plot worked: Uriah is slain in battle, David shrugs it off saying “the sword devours one as well as another,” and he takes Bathsheba as his wife (2 Sam.: 11). David goes on to become one of the most famous kings in the long history of Israel and is an ancestor of Jesus Christ.

King David’s crimes cried out for punishment, possibly death, for the ruler of Israel. But God did not see fit to mete out the ultimate punishment on David, instead sending the prophet Nathan to expose his treachery and explain his punishment.

Scripture tells us that David sent for Bathsheba, had sex with her, and she became pregnant, any of which could have been considered capital crimes under

Mosaic Law. However, David compounds his sin by ordering Uriah sent to the front lines of the fiercest fighting with specific instructions that he be put in the line of fire and killed. When his plot is accomplished, David cavalierly shrugs off the death of his commander (his lover’s husband), saying “the sword devours one as well as another” (2 Sam.: 25).

David committed what today would be charged as a capital crime with aggravated circumstances, punishable by the death penalty even though he did not murder Uriah by his own hand. Once again, however, God chose not to impose the death penalty on David, using Nathan to expose his treachery and explain his punishment.

The story of David and Bathsheba makes the point that God did not see

“an eye for an eye” as the appropriate punishment in a case that, under the law and practice of the time, cried out for it. Nathan recalled “how God had given to

David all that had been Saul’s and much more, and yet David had sinned against

Him in murdering Uriah with the sword of the Ammonites and taking Uriah’s wife for his own” (Porter 1979, 382).

David, to his credit, “confessed his sin without any attempt at excuses”

(Porter 1979, 382). Nevertheless, he was punished in perpetuity for his sins, as his wives are taken and his household “will forever be beset by troubles. . . . The oracle also foreshadows the crisis and eventually destruction that await the

Davidic line in the future” (Morrison 2013).

In none of the three cases cited here does God impose the death penalty, but chose forgiveness. Likewise, the birth and ministry of Jesus irrevocably changed the landscape of the world in so many ways, including capital punishment. In the Beatitudes in the gospel of Matthew, Jesus emphasized he was not on earth to usurp the old laws of his people, specifically the Mosaic Law.

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished” (Matt. 5:17-18).

Jesus, by example, counters the concept of lex talionis, saying:

You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you. (Matt. 5:38-42)

It was a revolutionary departure from everything that came before in any civilization anywhere on earth. Jesus was setting new rules for the Kingdom of

God on earth, a kingdom that was on the horizon but had not yet arrived. In the

Kingdom of God, if someone was struck, they should not retaliate, but instead turn the other cheek, Jesus said. There would be no taking of a life for a life and no death penalty, no revenge by striking back at someone who strikes you, no stealing a shirt when someone steals yours. The scope of what Jesus said is stunning in its purity and certainly must have been startling to the ears of listeners steeped in ancient laws that focused on retaliation. Jesus was not

simply saying “It is time to change the old ways,” but heralding new ways of behaving not envisioned on earth since the fall in the Garden of Eden.

Theological Foundation

The prime theological themes in this project are sin, punishment and forgiveness. We know from reading scripture that taking a human life can be a sin, but the imperative moral and theological question here is about the appropriate punishment for murder, taking into account the teaching of Jesus.

Forgiveness is the over-arching theological theme as it applies both to those who commit the crime and those who suffer from the crime.

With the first murder of Abel by Cain, violence entered God’s creation. It is instructive that God did not decree death as the appropriate punishment for the first murder, instead banishing Cain. There could not have been a clearer cry for punishment by death, but God did not see it that way, choosing forgiveness.

Theologians have wrestled with the idea of murder and punishment for centuries.

One of the first to opine on the subject was St. Augustine of Hippo (354-

430 A.D.), an influential Christian theologian from northern Africa (now Nigeria).

While Augustine, like others, struggled with the idea of taking a human life as punishment for the taking of a life, he said there are “certain exceptions, as when

God authorizes killing by a general law . . . . Since the agent of authority is but a sword in the hand, and is not responsible for the killing, it is in no way contrary to the commandment, ‘Thou shalt not kill’” (McGivern 1997, 41).

St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), an Italian priest, theologian and philosopher, also was uncomfortable with the idea of a life for a life, but wrote on

several occasions that it was acceptable to maintain the security of the state.

Aquinas compared it to a situation in which a physician “quite properly and beneficially amputates a diseased organ if it threatens the corruption of the body”

(McGivern 1997, 116).

Theological questions about the death penalty frequently pivot on the idea of retributive versus restorative justice. Retributive justice is essentially revenge and punishment, while restorative justice focuses on restoring the victims as much as possible and rehabilitating the convicted criminal. The line between the two concepts becomes problematic when applied to capital punishment because it is black and white: either the killer is put to death or they are spared; there is no middle ground.

Some theologians focus on atonement, arguing that the guilty person must atone for their sins, in the case of murder by losing their life. One such theologian was Saint Anselm of Canterbury (1022-1109), an abbot, theologian and philosopher of the Catholic Church, and early advocate of the requirement of atonement. Anselm wrote:

I do not deny that God is merciful. . . .but we are speaking of that exceeding pity by which he makes man happy after this life. . . .Happiness ought not to be bestowed on anyone whose sins have not been wholly put away and that this remission ought not to take place, save by the payment of the debt incurred by sin, according to the extent of the sin. (Anselm, Cur Deus Homo, 79).

Forgiveness is my prime and over-arching theological theme. Calls to forgiveness and grace are throughout scripture and theological discourse, past and present.

Jesus instructed his disciples in how to pray to God, saying, “And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors” (Matt. 6: 11-12). In the

Apostles’ Creed, Christians express belief in “the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic

Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting (Apostles’ Creed, Loyola Press). Just before his death on the cross, Jesus pleaded with God, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34).

While central to Christianity, forgiveness is not easy, especially in the case of murder, and it certainly is not a one-time event, but must be repeated over and over, sometimes on a daily basis. In this paper, the nature of forgiveness with specific focus on the difficulty of forgiving someone who has taken the life of a loved one will be examined, as well as the struggle of seeking forgiveness when you have taken a life.

Historical Foundation

In the historical foundation we see how the attitude about capital punishment in the Roman Catholic Church had not changed substantially for hundreds of years by the time of the Council of Trent, an ecumenical gathering extending from 1545 to 1563. Much remained intact from the approaches espoused by Augustine and Aquinas. In fact, the Roman Catechism that resulted from Trent spelled out specific exceptions to the Fifth Commandment forbidding killing, at the same time urging forgiveness for those who sinned by killing

(Roman Catechism of the Council of Trent, 1566, Part III, 5, n. 4).

Killing by accident, in self-defense and in war were exempted from the prohibition against killing (Catholic Apologetics, Roman Catechism). Similarly, civil authorities “to whom is entrusted power of life and death, by the legal and judicious exercise of which they punish the guilty and protect the innocent” were also given permission to kill.

The just use of this power, far from involving the crime of murder, is an act of paramount obedience to this Commandment which prohibits murder. The end of the Commandment is the preservation and security of human life. Now the punishments inflicted by the civil authority, which is the legitimate avenger of crime, naturally tend to this end, since they give security to life by repressing outrage and violence. (Catholic Apologetics, Catechism)

The use of the death penalty carried over to the U.S. colonies as they were settled, largely, but not exclusively by Europeans. Nearly all the original colonies punished numerous crimes with executions, as “the dark side of religion played all too large a role,” writes James J. Megivern.

Religion was also a thread throughout much of the opposition to an eye for an eye punishment in early America. J. Newton M. Curtis, a New York congressman who had been a Union officer in the Civil War, delivered a speech to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1892 in which he argued that capital punishment was wrong practically and in the eyes of God. He said death penalty supporters “stuffed their ears with cobwebs of brutal prejudice, that the lessons taught by the Sermon on the Mount might not now enter their hearts” (Megivern

1997, 311).

While there were some shifts over the next centuries, seismic change in the Roman Catholic Church occurred with the Second Vatican Council, or

Vatican II, from 1962-1965. In brief, the council deliberations moved the church away from the past attitude viewing capital punishment as a means more or less of removing a diseased limb or organ. Pope John Paul XXIII set the stage for change with issuance of a papal encyclical, Pacem in Terris, on April 11, 1963

(Vatican.va, John XXIII).

The theological movement against capital punishment further gained strength in 1968 when the National Council of Churches of Christ came out against the death penalty, citing 10 reasons, including the “worth of human life,” doubt about the deterrent effect, and a need for rehabilitation rather than the ultimate punishment (Megivern 1997, 333-334).

Pope Francis crystalized recent thinking by the Roman Catholic Church in a 2016 video message to death penalty opponents. “It does not render justice to victims, but instead fosters vengeance. The commandment 'Thou shalt not kill' has absolute value and applies both to the innocent and to the guilty” (Catholic

News Agency 2016).

Contemporary Foundation

In the contemporary foundation, we examine three Ohio murder cases which where each represents a significant aspect of the death penalty discussion. We also look at supporters and opponents of capital punishment.

Many if not most modern opponents advocate abolishing capital punishment without exception. But a significant number of contemporary religious leaders, mostly conservative evangelicals, including R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of The

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, express strong support for capital

punishment and vigorous criticism for those who oppose it. “The death penalty was explicitly grounded in the fact that God made every individual human being in his own image, and thus an act of intentional murder is an assault upon human dignity and the very image of God,” Mohler said in CNN blog (Mohler 2014).

Capital punishment has contemporary believers, including pastors and theologians who firmly believe the “eye for an eye” of the Old Testament is irrefutable gospel truth, undiminished by time and the coming of Christ Jesus.

There are some evangelicals who hold the position of staunchly opposing abortion but supporting capital punishment because, in their opinion, the latter does not involving taking an “innocent life.” Some even favor death for convicted drug dealers.

The vast majority of modern literature on the subject, however, is outright abolitionist or opposed on the basis of religious, moral and fairness grounds.

Some simply argue executions do not serve as a deterrent to more killing and are not economically justifiable since studies consistently show the cost of pursuing a capital case to an execution exceeds the expense of keeping a killer in prison for life by two to three times. (Death Penalty Information Center 2016.)

Shane Claiborne, a founder of an inner-city Philadelphia faith community, takes on the subject head-on in his book, Executing Grace. The sub-title spells out his position unequivocally: How the Death Penalty Killed Jesus and Why It’s

Killing Us (2006). Claiborne equates modern executions with the crucifixion of

Jesus, concluding both were morally wrong and repugnant to God. “When it comes to the death penalty, we’ve put Jesus on the back burner, buried him in

the closet, mistaking the things he said for good advice but not applicable to the real world of politics” (Claiborne 2016, 77).

He further argues that the idea capital punishment is biblically based runs contrary not only to Jesus’s teachings, but also to the beliefs of the first 300 years of Christianity.

I have yet to learn of a single Christian leader in the first 300 years of Christianity who argued for capital punishment (or killing in general, for that matter) . . . . No Christian writing before Constantine in the fourth century argued that there is any circumstance under which a Christian may kill. (Claiborne 2016, 123)

Dale S. Recinella brings the admonition against killing into the modern era, commenting that Jesus did the work for us all and no atonement is necessary. “Biblical truth reveals that when Christians engage in executions, our own stated beliefs strip our pretenses of every biblical justification, exposing the motives of naked vengeance” (Recinella 2004, 80).

Perhaps the most visible opponent of capital punishment in the U.S. at this point is Sister Helen Prejean, of the Congregation of St. Joseph, who began a prison ministry in New Orleans in 1981. She later began ministering to Death

Row inmates, leading to her book, Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty (1994). Prejean’s activism has moved full-force, including social media where she is very active on Twitter. Through her experience in death cases, Prejean learned the difficult lesson of how to balance opposing death and encouraging forgiveness at the same time.

On Jan. 18, 2018, Prejean posted a Tweet minutes after the execution of

Anthony Shore in Texas, put to death for brutally murdering five

people. “Anthony’s crimes were horrific. Four young women and a girl lost their lives. We mourn their loss and recognize the pain their families have experienced. At the same time, we must oppose the government sponsored killing that took place tonight” (Prejean, Twitter post).

Millard Lind, a long-time death penalty opponent, author and Mennonite professor, writes passionately about how capital punishment violates the very essence of what Christ stood for – forgiveness. He writes that Jesus’s answer was not retribution or lex talionis but “forgiveness to infinity” (Lind 2004, 126).

Similarly, Christopher D. Marshall says that the idea of retributive punishment conceived in the Old Testament is “anachronistic” and was not intended to support harsh, often deadly sentences, but to limit them. He says the death and resurrection of Christ “renders redundant all other means of religious atonement and paves the way for the forgiveness and restoration of even the worst of offenders” (Marshall 2001, 240).

Context

The participants for this survey came from two groups: inmates on Death

Row in Ohio prisons and surviving family members of murder victims. Both groups were surveyed anonymously with the cooperation of Gary Mohr, who was the director of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction in 2017. All surveys to inmates were anonymous and voluntary and were distributed and collected by state employees. The inmates do not have access to computers so their surveys were completed on paper. For purposes of the survey, we

specifically did not want to know the identity of the respondents or specifics of their cases. There were 144 inmates on Death Row at the time of this project.

The original plan was to send the same voluntary, anonymous survey on paper to victim families though addresses maintained by the Victims Services

Office of the prisons agency. This was agreed to by Director Mohr. However, a last-minute decision by attorneys for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and

Correction abruptly stopped the planned distribution of surveys to victim families after 250 paper surveys and return envelopes had been delivered to the agency.

The attorneys argued that sending a survey with sensitive questions to victim families in death penalty cases could violate their right to privacy under state law, thereby exposing the state to liability.

In a compromise with the attorneys, an agreement was reached to withdraw the print survey and allow officials with the victim services office to contact victim families by telephone to offer them the opportunity respond to the questionnaire through SurveyMonkey, an online survey service. Alternatively, if victims did not have computer access, the agency offered to have their staff read the survey over the telephone to gather responses.

Project Goals

The purpose of this project was to discover if forgiveness contributes to the feeling of resolution among murder victim families and inmates convicted of murder in the state of Ohio. The research question was: Has the concept of forgiveness helped families of murder victims and those inmates on Death Row to find resolution and peace in their lives?

The project goals were:

1. To discover the extent to which participants’ have attitudes about

forgiveness for those affected by the crime.

2. To discover the extent of participants’ beliefs about capital punishment.

3. To discover the extent to which participants believe in “an eye for an

eye” punishment as a factor in favoring execution.

4. To discover the extent to which participants consider the concept of

forgiveness after the commission of the crime.

5. To discover the extent to which participants have a common attitude

about forgiveness related to the death penalty.

6. To discover the extent to which participants have a sense of resolution

in their lives in connection with the crime.

7. To discover the extent to which participants understand forgiveness

can facilitate emotional healing.

Design, Procedure and Assessment

The design was a survey assessment provided on paper and online to people directly affected by homicide in Ohio. Demographic questions were included to establish sortable parameters.

The focus was on the impact of murder on their lives and if they have engaged in any process of forgiveness though church, counseling or some other means. This yielded valuable insights about the role of forgiveness, or in some cases the absence of forgiveness, in the death penalty process, as well as a myriad of other results.

The assessment included questions based on the project goals and utilized both numeric and qualitative methods to measure survey results.

Personal Goals

A personal goal not directly related to the outcome of this project was to see the end of the death penalty. That seemed highly unlikely three years ago at the start of my work, but could now, thankfully, be within reach. Ohio Gov. Mike

DeWine and House Speaker Larry Householder, both Republicans who have generally supported capital punishment, began questioning the efficacy of the death penalty at the end of 2019. They reasoned that pursuing capital punishment in murder cases might not be worth the trouble given the difficulty in obtaining lethal injection drugs (Staver, The Columbus Dispatch, Dec.19, 2019).

I am struck and humbled by the self-sacrificing majesty of Jesus, his teaching about restorative justice and not retributive punishment. I see no clear path to argue that Jesus, the messiah and embodiment of love, kindness and forgiveness, would approve of the legal, state-sanctioned murder of a human being. It simply defies His divine nature to think otherwise.

My personal goals were as follows:

1. To reaffirm my commitment to forgiveness to those who offend me.

2. To be a better witness about God’s grace from the lessons I have earned

from reporting on capital punishment.

3. To better understand the heart of Jesus about loving others and to better

reflect that in my own life.

Definition of Terms

Capital Punishment – The legal process by which a person is sentenced to death for having committed a murder.

Death Penalty – The provision of federal and state law providing for an execution by any of several means, varying from state to state, for people convicted of murder under specified circumstances.

Lethal injection – The execution process used in Ohio and most other states during which a drug or combination of drugs is administered intravenously to an inmate, typically causing death in a matter of minutes (Ohio Department of

Rehabilitation and Correction, Execution Protocol).

Lex Talionis – A Latin term meaning the punishment should be in direct proportion to the nature and severity of the crime, as in “an eye for an eye”

(Hanks 2002, 68).

Plan of the Paper

This paper looks at the history and theology of the death penalty and includes the following chapters examining personal, biblical, historical and theological foundations (Chapter Two); a look at three cases studies of Ohio executions and a review of contemporary literature (Chapter Three); a detailed look at the method, design and procedures used in this project (Chapter Four); the results of the survey, including commentary from victim families and inmates

(Chapter Five), and reflections on the findings as applied to ministry and secular institutions (Chapter Six).

CHAPTER TWO

BIBLICAL, THEOLOGICAL, AND HISTORICAL FOUNDATONS

The concept of “an eye for an eye” was well known 2,000 years ago when

Jesus said, “You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’

But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also” (Matt. 5:38).

Listeners at the Sermon on the Mount would no doubt have been familiar with the old saying, taken from Exodus and reinforced in Leviticus 24:20, and

Deuteronomy 19:16-21. It had been handed down for generations as common wisdom: If you steal my sheep, I steal your sheep; if you burn my crop, I burn yours; if you take the life of my son, I take the life of your son. It was an endless cycle of revenge that had been incorporated into Roman law, written in 450 B.C. as the Twelve Tables (Avalon Project, Yale Law School), and prior to that in the

Code of Hammurabi.

Punitive revenge is still widely used in the 21st century, in both secular and religious contexts, as the rationale for taking the life of someone who has taken the life of another. In 2019, it is heard from prosecutors in courtrooms, clergy in the pulpit, politicians in legislative chambers, and people in the public square, all making the case for capital punishment.

Taking a life means you forfeit your life but “an eye for an eye” no longer applies to most other crimes. We do not, for example, beat someone who assaults another person, but instead put them in prison. Nor do we put to death all persons found guilty of murder. Some are given much shorter sentences or

sent to prison for life without the possibility of parole. A significant number of people sentenced to be executed are later found innocent and released. Further, not everyone who kills dies; specifically in Ohio, where inmates sentenced to life in prison without parole, the vast majority for aggravated homicide, reached 703 in 2020, an increase of 150 percent from 2010 (Cleveland.com, March 22, 2020).

The plain truth Jesus spoke in the Sermon on the Mount, to turn away from the old “life for a life” practice, remains valid today. What is commonly judged to be equitable revenge is simply not just compensation, but seems to run counter to Christian teaching, is unfair, and unnecessary. This dissertation research on capital punishment and forgiveness explores these points.

The biblical foundation of this project touches on both the Old and New

Testament, as a continuum in the evolution and practice of revenge, moving to a new practice of forgiveness. Among the scriptural points are two touchstones:

Exodus 21:23-25, which says “life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise,” and

Matthew 5:38, “You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.

But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.” These form the scriptural bookends of this project.

Biblical Foundation

The Old Testament analysis begins with the Mosaic Law, but it is appropriate to briefly look at an older set of laws known as the Code of

Hammurabi, in which the death penalty played a significant role in a wide variety

of offenses. It is the earliest, most fully developed set of laws and punishments in the ancient Near East (Lind 2004, 41)

Before the time of Moses and Mosaic Law, civilizations sprang up in the area of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers as cities developed and the transition began to a less nomadic lifestyle than experienced by the shepherds who previously roamed the land (Sarna 1996, 164). This area of Mesopotamia was the center of the powerful kingdom of Babylon, ruled over by Hammurabi, the most famous Babylonian king whose reign lasted roughly from 1810 BC to 1750

B.C.

The Code of Hammurabi is the first known reference to lex talionis (Lind

2004, 42) where the death penalty, as a legal tradition, had its beginnings (Linn

2004, 41). But the Code of Hammurabi included more than two dozen crimes for which the death penalty was proscribed, many of which by modern standards seem wildly out of proportion to the nature of the crime, including witchcraft, theft, perjury, selling lost property, kidnapping, detaining a fugitive slave, housebreaking and highway robbery (Johns 1903, 8-11).

The best known version of the Code, contained 282 laws and was inscribed on an eight-foot stele, a stone slab, located in what was the ancient city of Susa (now in Iran). It was created about 1700 B.C. and discovered in 1901.

Lind says a chief difference between the Code of Hammurabi and Mosaic Law is that the code was written by a man, in this case, the king, while the Mosaic Law was handed by Yahweh to Moses and later compiled into the Torah (Lind 2004,

49).

“Hammurabi’s Code gave mankind the gift of self-government,” rabbinic scholar David S. Farkas writes. “This code taught man that God alone was no longer the source of the law. Rather, the law was to come from man, using the human faculties endowed within him” (Farkas 2011).

The concept of “full restitution for damage” was a centerpiece of both the

Code of Hammurabi and Mosaic Law. But some scholars suggest the restitution was not intended to literally be an eye for an eye, or a life for a life. Money payments were often required for compensation for injuries to body parts “which compares to modern insurance practice,” Lind writes. “The point of the (talionic) formula here and throughout the Near East is not likely revenge but punishment that does not exceed the crime- limitation of retribution” (Lind 2004, 43).

Terence E. Fretheim says the life for a life concept runs counter to the reality “that all life belongs to God. The divine intention in creation is that no life be taken. Life is thus not for human beings to do with as they will; they are not

God. It is up to God to determine what shall be done with life. . . . Human beings are never to kill on their own authority; they are only agents of God” (Fretheim

1991, 233).

In the final analysis, the Code of Hammurabi, as practiced by the

Babylonians, had a longer history than Mosaic Law, but differed in one major way in it was handed down by an earthly leader, while the Mosaic Law came directly from God (Lind 2004, 50).

Blood Feud and the Lex Talionis

It is important to examine the practice of the “blood feud” which was a brutal practice in the ancient world where families and clans were the central units of ancient life and the protection and preservation of these precious units were crucial to their survival.

Gerardo C. Sachs says a blood feud is acknowledged and accepted in

Jewish law “in spite of the fact the avenger is a ‘murderer’ in the literal definition of the Sixth Commandment” [thou shall not kill] (Sachs 2008). The Torah refers to the practice as goel ha’dam, or blood redeemer, Sachs says. The Torah does attempt to control the blood feud, however, by establishing “cities of refuge” where the killer can be safe while the courts are deciding his or her fate (Sachs

2008).

While not referred to directly, the idea of a blood feud arose when Cain murdered his brother Abel. Cain complained bitterly about God’s punishment to exile him; without his family’s protection, Cain apparently feared, anyone would be able to murder him. “Today you are driving me from the land, and I will be hidden from your presence; I will be a restless wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me” (Gen. 4:14-15). Cain’s concern was a real one. As we know, however, God protected Cain, despite his heinous crime, and specifically forbade him to be killed in revenge for Abel’s murder. He did punish him, however, placing him under a curse and ensuring he could never again raise crops from the ground he tainted with his brother’s blood (Gen. 4:11-12).

Hebrew laws were largely established to rein in the possibility of a raging blood feud by substituting for the concept of an eye-of-eye. While that sounds counter-intuitive, it is actually quite logical because it provided an overall method of making the punishment proportional to the offense, thereby reducing the potential for retaliatory violence to spiral out of control (Sider 2012, 46).

“Life for a life is not to be taken in the literal sense, but in the sense of proper and full compensation,” J.K. Mikliszanski said. “Notwithstanding the wording, the expression cannot literally be the lex talionis. Hence there is no reason to believe that ‘eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand,’ etc., uttered in the same connection, are to be understood as implying real retaliation”

(Mikliszanski 1947, 295).

Hebrew law allowed for executions, specifically by stoning, burning, decapitation, and strangulation, as spelled out in the Sanhedrin (Sefaria Library,

Misnah Sanhedrin 6.3 – 7.3). It also took a further step up the ladder of civilization by requiring a far greater level of certainty for a conviction in a death penalty matter. In our modern criminal justice system, the standard for a conviction is “beyond a reasonable doubt,” something that varies widely depending on the attorneys and judge involved and a dozen other contributory factors.

There were additional restrictions, including that there be two confirming witnesses, confessions by the accused killer were disallowed, and pre- premeditated intent had to be established by a verbal warning to the would-be

killer that they were about to commit a crime punishable by death (Belousek

2009, 379).

Making a case under Hebrew law to mete out the death penalty was extremely difficult if not impossible in practice. The idea of a highly restricted death penalty in Jewish law did not end in biblical times, but continues in the second decade of the 21st century.

To Kill or To Murder?

A key to understanding how the Bible treats taking a life is found in a closer examination of specific Hebrew words used in Exodus 20:13, “You shall not murder,” the Sixth Commandment. While the commandment for centuries was translated from the Hebrew as “You shall not kill,” a movement among translators in the 20th century changed the translation to “You shall not murder,” which is how it is widely viewed today (Bailey 2014, 1).

Some biblical scholars say “murder” most accurately reflects the true meaning of the original Hebrew word, rāṣaḥ, which is used in the commandment, as opposed to hārag, Hebrew for “kill.” J.W. Marshall, in The IVP Dictionary of the Old Testament: Pentateuch (2002), says the use of the word rāṣaḥ is unusual here because it has broader meanings than hārag.

Normally rāṣaḥ refers to “murder,” the willful, premeditated killing of an individual, often as an act of blood vengeance. This would suggest that this commandment intended to limit acts of revenge to protect the life of innocent community members. However, rāṣaḥ can also refer to unintentional homicide, as in the laws of asylum (cf. Deut 4:41-42). This usage means that intentionality can no longer be the dividing line by which one keeps or breaks this command. (Marshall 2002)

The commandment was not simply a legal standard, but a rule that

“values life and relationships, leaving decisions to end life in the hands of God”

(Marshall 2002).

John Howard Yoder says the word rsh [a variation of rāṣaḥ] “may be used for unintentional homicide. . . . It may be used in the same sentence for crime and punishment. . . . Even accidental killing is rsh, and is forbidden, but the offender is not to be killed in return” (Yoder 1980, 395).

The change in the interpretation of a pivotal word in the Sixth

Commandment occurred from roughly 1962 to 1989 in most major translations of the Bible, primarily based on the rationale that rtsh in Exodus 20:13, specifically referred to murder, Wilma Ann Bailey writes. A different word, harog, was used in other places to describe killing not limited to murder, advocates for the change posit.

Bailey disagrees with the idea of changing the translation of “kill” to

“murder,” arguing that the Hebrew rtsh does not mean murder everywhere it is found in the Old Testament. She says it appears thirteen times, only three of which can be translated as murder with certainty. Other times, the text clearly refers to acts other than murder, are ambiguous or unclear (Bailey 2004, 19).

She adds, “Second, it is inappropriate to harmonize Scripture rather than letting the various theological traditions in the Bible speak for themselves. . . . Last, the

Ten Commandments are meant to be general and not to refer to one particular, rarely committed crime” (Bailey 2004, 24). For some interpreters, “a ‘you shall not

murder’ translation fits their theological or political commitments better than a

“you shall not kill translation’” (Bailey 2004, 20).

Despite the decision by translators to switch to “murder” instead of “kill,” the difference between two Hebrews words is at best unclear, according to

Dictionary of the Old Testament: Pentateuch (2002). “Murder and manslaughter cannot be distinguished by the particular Hebrew word used, requiring further examination of a passage’s context. Murder’s distinguishing feature is the perpetrator’s intention. . . . Practically, the community made the determination between murder and manslaughter “(O’Mathuna 2002).

Murder as a crime against a person is expanded by the Sixth

Commandment to render it a crime against family, society, and God. “Murder is an affront to God in whose image the victim was created. Murderers paid the highest penalty by forfeiting their lives. While people sentenced to death for some crimes could ransom their lives by substituting an appropriate payment, no ransom was acceptable for the life of those convicted of murder” (Morrison 2013)

Two Key Scriptures

The cornerstone scriptures of this paper are found in the Old Testament,

Exodus 21:23-25, which says, “But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise,” and its counterpoint in the New Testament,

Matthew 5:38: “You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’

But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.” Their location in scripture and in historical

terms are far apart, but these scriptures exemplify a continuum of Christian thought on sin and forgiveness.

The “eye for an eye” justice referred to in Exodus is widely, but inappropriately, construed to apply strictly to revenge for murder and serious injury, according to several scholars who argue it was a more general system for balancing crime with just punishment and, in some cases, compensation.

Some have looked upon biblical justice with disdain, assuming that this law was applied literally. However, the case immediately following the law in Exodus 21 does not apply it literally, and no biblical narratives describe its literal application. The Talmud views it as requiring appropriate monetary compensation for injuries (b. B. Qam. 83b-84a). The immediate context is the declaration that bodily injuries should be compensated for, not avenged (Ex 21:19). As such, the lex talionis would restrain those seeking vengeance upon others and ensure that the punishment fit the crime. (O’Mathuna 2002)

It is significant the lex talionis was “applied as a single standard for all people, whether stranger or native” in ancient Israel. “Unlike other cultures, the rich in Israel were not to have one standard of justice and the poor or less fortunate another” (O’Mathuna 2002)

Craig Keener observes that the talionic principle was part of the

“widespread ancient Near Eastern law of retaliation. In Israel and other cultures, this principle was enforced by a court and refers to legalized vengeance; personal vengeance was never accepted in the law of Moses, except as a concession for a relative’s murder” (Keener 2014).

The interpretation of the talionic principle, both in scripture and in the millennia since ancient times, has been widely distorted, Nahum M. Sarna writes.

The phrase ‘eye for an eye’ at once evokes in the popular mind notions of primitive vengeance. Worse, it is portrayed as epitomizing the dominant

principle of law in the Hebrew Bible, and this misinterpretation is exacerbated by projecting it into the realm of theology, with prejudicial effect.” (Sarna 1986, 182-83)

Conversely, Sarna continues, lex talionis replaced personal vengeance, as handled by individuals, families and clans, with “public criminal law with its imposition of punishment by the state authority” (Sarna 1986, 185).

The coming of Jesus changed things in remarkable ways, as exemplified by the Sermon on Mount in Matthew 5:38-39. Within that sermon, Jesus spoke of a great many things, including a reversal of the life-for-a-life principle of lex talionis. It was a momentous change, from law to practice, from rules to righteousness.

“The point of jus talionis was not to condone personal revenge or petty payback (as in slapping back, or returning insult for insult) but to compensate fairly,” writes Craig A. Evans, a biblical scholar at Houston Baptist University.

“That revenge and retaliation are in mind is seen in the commands: ‘Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also’ (v. 39). This has nothing to do with just compensation for loss or damage. Jesus commands his disciples not only to forego revenge but even to forego just compensation.” (Evans 2012)

In the Sermon on the Mount, “Jesus’ teaching moves even further away from the spirit of Old Testament law,” R.T. France says. “Jesus does not comment on the appropriateness of such judicial rules. His concern is only with the appropriateness to personal ethics” (France 2007, 217).

France goes on to say that the lex talionis formula was replaced by “an ethical approach which simply sets aside legal considerations and goes far

beyond anything the law, as law, did or could promote, the ‘righteousness of the kingdom of heaven,’” (France 2007, 218).

Three Old Testament Murders

There are at least three significant cases in the Old Testament where murder was not punished by death. The first is Cain’s murder of his brother Abel in Genesis 4 when he is in a jealous rage because Cain’s offering was not the best he could provide and was insufficient before the Lord. Not only is this the first murder in the Bible, but it is a case study of the crime and punishment, in the wake of the sins of Adam and Eve.

This is foundational example because God forswears punishment by death for Cain, instead banishing him from the kingdom, at the same time marking him and protecting him from death by revenge. By any standard, ancient or modern, Cain deserved the death penalty because he killed his brother violently and with premeditation with no motive other than anger and jealousy.

The incriminating phrase here is “Let’s go out to the field (Gen. 4:8), or the open country away from people “It suggests that the murder of Abel was premeditated”

(Ellison 1979, 119).

God. That Cain shows no remorse is seen in his suggestion that God was being unfair to him” (Ellison 1979, 119).

Yet God did not require a life for a life, instead sending Cain away to the land of Nod with a mark on him warning of those who might seek revenge to harm or kill him. By the mark, God offered punishment with grace, not death.

“One thing is clear: it not only accuses him as a criminal but also protects him. If vengeance is exacted, retribution would be sevenfold. In other words, seven members of his family would pay with their lives,” (Bergant 2013).

In a larger sense, Cain’s murder of his brother is the second act (Adam and Eve’s fall from grace being the first) revealing the “sin and rebellion of God’s creatures. Furthermore, these episodes narrate the rapid moral decline of humankind as time moves on. While sin spreads and increases, God reveals himself to be long-suffering and patient with his creation” (Longman 1994, 57).

Cain’s banishment, instead of death for murdering his brother, shows

God’s use of lex talionis, Joan E. Cook writes.

The law of retaliation that specifies that the punishment must fit the crime in both kind and degree: it must relate to the wrong that has been done, and must equal and not exceed the amount of wrong that was done. Cain will no longer be able to subsist as a farmer because he has violated the very soil that he works. As with Adam and Eve, God punishes Cain, but does not abandon him, instead marking him for special protection. (Cook 2011)

The second murder involved Moses as spelled out in Exodus 2 where

Moses sees “an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own people. “Looking this way and that and seeing no one, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand”

(Exo. 2:11-12). When his deed was discovered by Pharaoh “he tried to kill

Moses, but Moses fled from Pharaoh and went to live in Midian.”

By acknowledging that Moses “looked this way and that,” the author of

Exodus seems to be saying Moses, who was educated as an Egyptian prince and almost certainly knew Hammurabi’s Code, understood that what he was doing was wrong and checked before acting to see if he could avoid detection, and thus punishment (Cole 1973, 59). As with Cain, we see Moses appears to have had premeditation – he thought about what he was doing before he did it.

Fretheim says Moses was apparently intent on killing the Egyptian whom he saw beating a Hebrew slave. “Moses made sure he was not being observed, an action that establishes premeditation and the absence of impulsiveness

(hiding the body shows a concern from secrecy)” (Fretheim 1991, 42).

Other biblical scholars agree that what Moses did was impulsive and wrong, but not necessarily that it was intentional homicide. James K. Bruckner comments that the NIV translation leaves a “false impression” that the killing was premeditated compared to the wording of the original Hebrew. Bruckner said

Moses may have seen the Egyptian beating the Hebrew and “saw there was no one to intervene” and stepped in to stop the beating (Bruckner 2008, 31-32).

“No moral law allows for the killing of a man who simply beats or strikes another. Our narrative in its context leaves open the possibility that Moses did not intend to kill, but that he was guilty of unintentional manslaughter in his zealousness for justice in a violent land” (Bruckner 2008, 32).

William Johnstone takes a similar view of Moses’ action, saying, “Given the use of extreme violence against the Egyptians, above all by God, in the

continuation of the narrative, Exodus endorses the use of force under appropriate circumstances” (Johnstone 2014).

John I. Durham does not attempt to justify the action Moses took, but says the language in the original Hebrew indicates Moses probably came to the rescue of his oppressed countryman with several blows, none intended to be fatal. “The point is that there is in the text no suggestion that Moses meant to kill the Egyptian, any more than that the Egyptian or the Hebrew man was attempting to kill his adversary” (Durham 1987, 19).

R. Alan Cole describes Moses’ motivation for stopping the beating of the fellow Hebrew. “Moses is one who shares God’s heart. God, too, has seen what the Egyptians are doing to the Israelites and he will come to deliver. It was not

Moses’ impulse to save Israel that was wrong, but the action that he took” (Cole

1973, 59).

Moses’ murder of the Egyptian overseer did not go unnoticed by others, however, including Pharaoh and God. Moshe Soller observes that in Psalm 90, described as a Prayer for Moses, there is this verse:

Thou has set our iniquities before Thee, our secret sins in the light of Thy countenance (v. 8). This may refer to the killing of the Egyptian. Later in the same Psalm we read: The days of our years are threescore years and ten. Or even by reason of strength fourscore years (v. 10). I interpret this as the reason Moses had to wait until he was 80 years old (fourscore years) before he could be sent to take the Israelites out of Egypt. On the thesis advanced here, Moses had to atone for the killing of the Egyptian for a full lifetime before he could, as it were, be born anew and return to his task of rescuing his nation from the hands of the Egyptians. (Soller 2016, 249)

God nevertheless forgave Moses and forged him into one of the great leaders of Israel, using him to free the Hebrews from bondage in Egypt and

leading them to the Promised Land, although Moses himself was not allowed to set foot in the new land.

A third killing in the Old Testament involved premeditated murder, treachery, adultery and rape when the story of King David unfolds in 2 Samuel with all the elements of high drama. David is a handsome, wealthy, powerful king and great warrior; Bathsheba is the beautiful wife of an officer in David’s army, and Uriah is the dutiful soldier who has no idea that his own commander is about to betray and have him murdered. Premeditated murder, treachery, adultery and rape could have been punishable by death under Mosaic Law. David committed what in modern terms of law would be a capital crime with aggravated circumstances, almost certainly resulting in a death sentence even though he did not murder Uriah by his own hand. It was essentially a contract killing by today’s standards.

It is the story of David’s poor choices that produce a pivotal point in his life and reign as king of Israel. While David’s sexual sin and his machinations to cover it up are not punished in the usual way, his life is beset with obstacles and violence thereafter at the hand of God.

Having observed Bathsheba bathing on a nearby rooftop, David inquired and learned she was the wife of Uriah the Hittite, one of his military commanders.

David sent for Bathsheba and he slept with her (2 Sam. 11:3-4). When David learned that Bathsheba was pregnant, he treacherously concocted a scheme to send Uriah off to battle, with specific instructions that he be placed in the front

lines where he would be in the fiercest fighting and almost certainly killed

(Morrison 2013).

After the murder plot was hatched, David rewarded Uriah before he departed for battle by entertaining him and giving him a gift, “a very cheap trick intended to increase the sense of gratitude to David” (Porter 1979, 381). The ploy also prevented Uriah from coming home to find his wife pregnant by another man.

The king’s scandalous plot worked: Uriah was slain in battle, David shrugged it off saying “the sword devours one as well as another,” and he takes

Bathsheba as his wife (2 Sam.: 11). David goes on to become one of the most famous kings in the long history of Israel and is an ancestor of Jesus Christ.

By any standard of the ancient or modern world, King David’s crimes cried out for punishment, possibly death, for the ruler of Israel. But God did not see fit to mete out the ultimate punishment on David, instead sending the prophet

Nathan to expose his treachery and explain his punishment.

The prophet Nathan uses a parable of a wealthy and a poor man, but it is clear the story was dictated by God to indict David for his crimes (Porter 1979,

382). Through Nathan, God decrees to David:

The sword will never depart from your house…Out of your own household I am going to bring calamity on you. Before your very eyes I will take your wives and give them to one who is close to you, and he will sleep with your wives in broad daylight. You did it in secret, but I will do this thing in broad daylight before all Israel. (2 Sam. 12:10-12)

The story of David and Bathsheba makes the point that God did not see

“an eye for an eye” as the appropriate punishment in a case that, under the law

and practice of the time, cried out for it. Nathan recalled “how God had given to

David all that had been Saul’s and much more, and yet David had sinned against

Him in murdering Uriah with the sword of the Ammonites and taking Uriah’s wife for his own” (Porter 1979, 382).

David, to his credit, “confessed his sin without any attempt at excuses”

Davidic line in the future” (Morrison 2013).

In none of the three illustrative cases does God impose the death penalty.

All this happens, of course, even before the birth of Jesus who forever changed the whole concept of punishment for sin. These examples serve to counter the argument that there is a black and white difference about the death penalty in the

Old Testament and the New Testament. Rather, it would appear to be an evolution leading to the birth and teachings of Jesus.

The Coming of Jesus

The arrival of Jesus Christ irrevocably changed the landscape of the world in so many ways, including the view of capital punishment. In the Beatitudes in the gospel of Matthew, Jesus emphasized he was not on earth to usurp the old laws of his people, specifically the Mosaic Law.

Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. (Matt. 5:17-18)

Jesus, by example, counters the concept of lex talionis.

It was a truly revolutionary departure from everything that came before in any civilization anywhere on earth. Jesus was setting bold new rules for the

Kingdom of God on earth, a kingdom that was on the horizon but had not yet arrived. In the Kingdom of God, if someone was struck, they should not retaliate, but instead turn the other cheek, Jesus said. There would be no taking of a life for a life and no death penalty, no revenge by striking back at someone who strikes you, no stealing a shirt when someone steals yours. The scope of what

Jesus said is stunning in its purity and certainly must have been startling to the ears of listeners steeped in ancient laws that focused on retaliation.

Jesus was not simply saying “It is time to change the old ways,” but heralding new ways of behaving not envisioned on earth since the fall in the

Garden of Eden.

The Bible travels a long but ultimately clear path in the evolution of capital punishment from the early days of Israel though birth of Jesus Christ and his establishment of a New Order. The world which Jesus opened the door to does not include eye-for-an-eye retribution but instead never-ending forgiveness. As

R.T. France writes, “Jesus’ aim is to a ‘greater righteousness,’ a different understanding of how we should live as the people of God, an alternative set of values” (France 2007, 218).

Theological Foundation

The prime theological themes in this project involve justice and forgiveness. We know from reading scripture that taking a human life is a sin, but the imperative moral and theological question here is about the appropriate response or punishment for murder, taking into account the teaching of Jesus.

Forgiveness is the over-arching theological theme as it applies both to those who commit the crime and those who suffer from the crime.

With the first murder of Abel by Cain, violence entered God’s creation. It is instructive that God did not decree death as the appropriate punishment for the first murder, instead banishing Cain. There could not have been a clearer cut cry for punishment by death, but God did not see it that way, choosing forgiveness.

Theologians have wrestled with the idea of murder and punishment for centuries. Lucius Lactantius (250 to 325 B.C.), an early Christian author and advisor to Constantine, opposed killing both in war and capital punishment.

“Therefore with regard to this precept of God, there ought to be no exception at all but that it is always unlawful to put to death a person whom God willed to be a sacred creature” (Sider 2012, 167). The cumulative study of Christian writing prior to Constantine indicates “that Christians must not participate in capital punishment; it involves killing a person and Christians do not do that” (Sider

2012, 168)

Tertullian (160-225 A.D.), a Christian convert from North Africa, was one of the early writers on the subject (Sider 2012, 46). In his Apology, Tertullian wrote about the Old Law versus the New Law. “For the practice of the old law

was to avenge itself by the vengeance of the sword, and to pluck out ‘eye for eye,’ and to inflict retaliatory revenge for injury. But the new law’s practice was to point to clemency, and to convert to tranquility the pristine ferocity of swords and lances” (Sider 2012, 46).

Clement of Alexandria (150-211 A.D.) was among the first to speak of punishment for wrong-doing in a medical way, as in to return a person to health.

He extended the metaphor of a medical remedy to the death penalty, arguing that a person who “falls into incurable evil – when taken possession of, for example, by wrong or covetousness – it will be for his good if he is put to death”

(Megivern 1997, 23).

Another early church father who opined on the subject was St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430 A.D.), an influential Christian theologian from northern Africa.

While Augustine, like others, struggled with the idea of taking a human life as punishment for the taking of a life, he said there are “certain exceptions, as when

St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), an Italian priest, theologian and philosopher, also was uncomfortable with the idea of a life for a life, but wrote on several occasions that such a practice could be acceptable to maintain the security of the state. Aquinas, like Clement of Alexandria, compared it to a medical situation in which a physician “quite properly and beneficially amputates a diseased organ if it threatens the corruption of the body” (Megivern 1997, 116).

“Vengeance is not essentially evil and unlawful,” Aquinas wrote in Summa

Theologiae. He said if the avenger’s intent is to achieve “some good, to be obtained by means of the punishment of the person who has sinned . . . that just justice may be upheld and God honored, the vengeance may be law provided other due circumstances be observed” (Fesser, Bessette 2017, 41).

Theological questions about the death penalty frequently pivot on the idea of retributive versus restorative justice. Retributive justice is essentially revenge through punishment, while restorative justice focuses on restoring and rehabilitating the convicted criminal, as well as making the victim whole once again.

The line between the two concepts becomes problematic when applied to capital punishment because it is black and white: either the killer is put to death or spared. There is no middle ground, although the argument can be made that life without parole is an equitable punishment for murder that forswears the taking of a life as retribution. This alternative is discussed directly in the survey that is part of this project.

Some theologians focus on atonement, arguing that the guilty person must atone for their sins, in the case of murder by losing their life. An early advocate of atonement was Saint Anselm of Canterbury (1022-1109), an abbot, theologian and philosopher of the Catholic Church. Anselm wrote:

I do not deny that God is merciful. . . .But we are speaking of that exceeding pity by which he makes man happy after this life. . . .Happiness ought not to be bestowed on anyone whose sins have not been wholly put away and that this remission ought not to take place, save by the payment of the debt incurred by sin, according to the extent of the sin. (Anselm, Cur Deus Homo, 79).

The response is that Jesus Christ offered atonement for all, including those who take the life of another, by his death on the cross. “The argument can thus be made that the atoning death of Jesus removes the expiatory rationale for the death penalty,” writes Darrin W. Snyder Belousek. He cites 1 John 2:2: “He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.”

The view that the Catholic Church is consistently anti-capital punishment is by no means universal. In By Man Shall His Blood be Shed, A Catholic

Defense of Capital Punishment (2017), Edward Fesser and Joseph M. Bessette offer a spirited and detailed explanation of how scripture and ancient theologians justified use of the death penalty. They point out that the Papal States, an area in central Italy where the popes had authority, routinely conducted executions.

Between 1796 and 1865, Giovanni Battista Giovanni, the “official executioner,” conducted 516 executions. Giovanni, “a devout Catholic, carried out his work as a loyal servant of the Holy Father” for 69 years (Fesser, Bessette 2017, 9).

The linchpin of the view by many Catholic advocates of capital punishment comes in Paul’s letter to the Romans.

Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except that which God has established. Then do what is right and you will be commended. For the one in authority is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They are God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. (Rom. 13: 1-4)

The interpretation that Paul was referring to the Roman rulers in this

often-cited section is challenged by Mark D. Nanos in The Mystery of Romans,

The Jewish Context of Paul’s Letter (1996). Nanos argues that Paul was not referring to Roman authorities but to “the boundaries of Judaism and Jewish community of Rome,” thus “instructing them to subordinate themselves to the institutional requirements of the synagogue” (Nanos 1996, 289) and not the civil authorities as is commonly assumed.

Nanos also offers a word study on Paul’s use of “sword,” interpreted by some to represent the legitimate power of civil authorities to punish wrongdoers, even unto death. However, Nanos says the Greek word used by Paul here in

Romans is the same word describing a knife used for male circumcision in

Joshua 5:2 and a dagger in Judges 3:16 (Nanos 1996, 310). Neither word is the same as the Greek word used for a proper sword, Nanos says.

Returning to the larger Catholic perspective, the church has moved rather militantly toward the abolitionist view of the death penalty. The church is now strenuously, if not unanimously, against a life for a life. Pope Francis crystalized the current thinking by the church in a 2016 video message to death penalty opponents. “It does not render justice to victims, but instead fosters vengeance.

The commandment 'Thou shalt not kill' has absolute value and applies both to the innocent and to the guilty” (Catholic News Agency 2016).

The papal message added, “The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that the death penalty may be used ‘if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.’ However, it

adds, such cases today ‘are very rare, if not practically nonexistent’ (Catholic

News Agency 2016).

Speaking at the Sixth World Conference on the Death Penalty in 2016,

Pope Francis said capital punishment “is an offence to the inviolability of life and to the dignity of the human person . . . . It likewise contradicts God’s plan for individuals and society, and his merciful justice” (Catholic News Agency, 2016).

Calls for grace are throughout scripture and theological discourse, past and present.

Whether we look to the Lord’s Prayer or Jesus’s death on the cross or his resurrection or the great creeds of the church, we are never far from the theme of forgiveness-for if Christianity isn’t about forgiveness, it’s about nothing at all. (Zahnd 2013, 1)

While central to Christianity, forgiveness is not easy, especially in the case of murder, and it certainly is not a one-time event, but must be repeated over and over, sometimes on a daily basis. Later in this paper, we will look closely at the agonizing struggles to forgive, and conversely to seek forgiveness, in people who have taken lives and those who had the life of a family member or loved one taken from them.

Historical Foundation

Christianity, for much of its history, either supported capital punishment directly or went along with it by failing to speak or act against it. Famous thinkers, from Thomas More to Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., spoke on the idea expressed in the Latin phrase used in the law, qui tacet consentire videtur, which translated means “silence is deemed to be consent” (Open Jurist, fetched

7.12.19).

The church in general has had an ambivalence about the death penalty that, in many ways, seems curiously at odds with its value on human life created in the image of God, Imago Dei. By its silence, and often by its direct action, the church clearly endorsed the idea of eye-for-an-eye punishment via executions instead of forgiveness.

The Church and Executions

Executions were routine during medieval times, with the church (the

Roman Catholic Church at this time), at the center of it. Heresy was considered a viable reason to put someone to death, and the church pursued it with bloodthirsty vigor.

The death penalty had become a major instrument for maintaining religious uniformity; it had been officially embraced as appropriate and integrated into both theory and practice of church life. Voices of disapproval had fallen silent and the scaffold and the stake became more entrenched as unquestionably appropriate ‘standard features’ of a Christian culture, a normal part of the status quo. (Megivern 1997, 123)

As medieval times gave way to the Renaissance, the age of Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation followed. But this movement did not significantly account for reform in the widespread practice of executions. If anything, Luther supported it. “If a thief will not quit his stealing, let him be hanged on the public gallows. If a malicious scoundrel wants to harm everybody as he pleases, and wants to beat and stab at the provocation of a word, let justice be meted out to him at the place of execution” (Luther 1959, 595).

The attitude about capital punishment in the Roman Catholic Church had not changed substantially for hundreds of years by the time of the Council of

Trent, an ecumenical gathering extending from 1545 to 1563. Much remained

intact from the approaches espoused by Augustine and Aquinas. In fact, the

Roman Catechism that resulted from Trent spelled out specific exceptions to the

Fifth Commandment forbidding killing, at the same time urging forgiveness for those who sinned by killing (Roman Catechism of the Council of Trent, 1566,

Part III, 5, n. 4).

Killing by accident, in self-defense, and in war were exempted from the general prohibition against killing (Catholic Apologetics, Roman Catechism).

Similarly, civil authorities “to whom is entrusted power of life and death, by the legal and judicious exercise of which they punish the guilty and protect the innocent” were also given permission to kill.

Shifts began in the attitude and behavior of both the Catholic and

Protestant churches during the Enlightenment in the 17th and 18th centuries. A variety of people, inside and outside the church, began questioning use of violent death as punishment (Megivern 1997, 252), but little direct action came at the time concerning the idea of the sacredness of life and mercy from execution.

Capital Punishment Moves to the Colonies

The European comfort level with the death penalty carried over to the U.S. colonies as they were settled. Nearly all the original settlers punished numerous crimes with executions, as “the dark side of religion played all too large a role,”

Megivern writes. In many cases, capital punishment laws in the colonies “quoted from the scriptures complete with the chapter and verse cites” (Recinella 2004,

66).

But religion, too, was a thread throughout much of the opposition to an eye for an eye punishment in early America. J. Newton M. Curtis, a New York congressman who had been a Union officer in the Civil War, delivered a speech to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1892 in which he argued that capital punishment was wrong practically and in the eyes of God. He said death penalty supporters “stuffed their ears with cobwebs of brutal prejudice, that the lessons taught by the Sermon on the Mount might not now enter their hearts” (Megivern

1997, 311).

Looking at the church’s response to capital punishment in the United

States, there is an intertwined mixture of religion and culture that can be hard to separate. “Capital punishment in America is not just a legal or political reality,”

Recinella says, “It is also a religious phenomenon encompassing matters of belief, faith and morals. That is where one finds the most strident, and, in some cases, strengthening support for the American death penalty” (Recinella 2004,

5).

In essence, support for the death penalty, at least prior to the last few decades, came partially because of the church, not despite it.

The horrors of World War II triggered major soul-searching in religious circles, particularly among Christians, many of whom felt they had not done

enough to counter the spread of the Nazi war machine and the executions of millions of Jews, gypsies, the mentally ill and others.

While there were some shifts over time, seismic change in the Roman

Catholic Church occurred with the Second Vatican Council, or Vatican II, from

1962-1965. In brief, the council deliberations moved the church away from the past attitude of capital punishment as a means of removing a diseased limb or organ and toward the original idea of humankind as created to reflect the face of

God. Pope John Paul XXIII set the stage for change with issuance of a papal encyclical, Pacem in Terris, on April 11, 1963 (Vatican.va, John XXIII).

The overall theological movement against capital punishment further gained strength in 1968 when the National Council of Churches of Christ came out against the death penalty, citing 10 reasons, including the “worth of human life,” doubt about the deterrent effect and a need for rehabilitation rather than the ultimate punishment (Megivern 1997, 333-334).

Anthony Santoro writes that there are three major categories of what churches have actually done in relation to the death penalty. One response says all life is sacred and only God has the right to decide who lives and who dies.

The second group says that a person, by their actions, can forfeit their right to live, and is thus subject to capital punishment as a derivative right of government.

The third religious group says that the death penalty, while not strictly prohibited, is unnecessary and should not be used (Santoro 2013, 32-33). Religious views weigh heavily, “perhaps as important as race and gender in predicting how jurors will vote in a death penalty case” (Santoro 2013, 27-28).

The Catholic Church, in both word and action, is without doubt the leading religious voice opposing capital punishment. Pope Francis cemented that position on Aug. 2, 2018, when he officially announced a change to the

Catechism of the Catholic Church that outlawed the death penalty in any situation. The Catechism, which is the full body of church teaching, was changed to say the death penalty “is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person” (Crux 2018). The Catechism in effect since

1992 under the reign of Pope John Paul II, said an execution was permissible, assuming the accused killer was guilty, “if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.”(Crux 2018).

The church said Pope Francis himself directed the change, saying an executions “heavily wounds human dignity” and is “contrary to the Gospel, because a decision is voluntarily made to suppress a human life, which is always sacred in the eyes of the Creator and of whom, in the last analysis, only God can be the true judge and guarantor” (Crux 2018).

Beyond the Catholic Church, various denominations have taken strident stances against the ultimate punishment, while others have embraced it. One of the most hardline actors against executions have been Mennonite churches.

While small in number, the Mennonites have a long history of active support for non-violence in both war and capital punishment going back to Menno Simons

(1496-1561), the founder of the faith. This is illustrated by the church’s statement of beliefs.

Led by the Spirit, and beginning in the church, we witness to all people that violence is not the will of God. We witness against all forms of

violence, including war among nations, hostility among races and classes, abuse of children and women, violence between men and women, abortion, and capital punishment” (Mennonite Church USA 2019).

John Howard Yoder, a Mennonite theologian, considered “capital punishment one of those infringements on the divine will” (Yoder 2011, 35). “It should hardly need to be argued that the whole teaching and work of Christ leads

Christians to challenge the rightness of taking a life under any circumstances, even where secular justice might seem to permit killing,” Yoder wrote. “What God always wanted to do with evil and what he wants us today to do with it is to swallow it up and drown it in the bottomless sea of crucified love” (Yoder 2011,

43).

Much larger mainline religious groups took contrary positions taking a life, with the Southern Baptist Convention in 2000 supporting the “fair and equitable use of capital punishment by civil magistrates as a legitimate form of punishment for those guilty of murder or treasonous acts that result in death” (SBC

Resolutions 2000).

On the other side of the issue, the United Methodist Church in 2006 reaffirmed a 50-year position opposing the death penalty. “We believe the death penalty denies the power of Christ to redeem, restore and transform all human beings . . . . We believe all human life is sacred and created by God and therefore, we must see all human life as significant and valuable” (United

Methodist Church, April 23, 2006).

The Pew Research Center, a non-partisan think tank, has reported regularly on the actions of religious groups about the death penalty. The most

recent update in 2015 found that more religious groups oppose the death penalty than support it, but that the attitudes of members of various groups often differ from the official position staked out by church leaders. Among the church groups opposing executions, in addition to Catholics and United Methodists, were the

Episcopal Church, Presbyterian Church USA, the United Universalist

Association, and the United Church of Christ (Factank, July 23, 2015).

The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, Islam and the Southern Baptist

Convention supported it, Pew said. Several church organizations, including the

Assemblies of God, Hinduism, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and National Baptist Convention, had no formal position on the topic (Factank,

2015).

A Gallup Poll released in November 2019 showed, for the first time, that a majority of Americans favor life without parole as opposed to the death penalty by 60-36 percent (Gallup.com). However, when asked only about the death penalty, without an option, 56 percent of respondents said they favor it. Gallup said the new poll, taken Oct. 14-31, 2019, “marks a shift from the past two decades, when Americans were mostly divided in their views of the better punishment for murder. During the 1980s and 1990s, consistent majorities thought the death penalty was the better option for convicted murderers”

(Gallup.com).

The results were similar to a Pew Research Center survey taken in 2018 that showed, in general, support for the death penalty in the U.S. was at 54 percent with 39 percent opposed. That was a slight jump from 2016, but still far

lower than 1996 when nearly eight in ten Americans surveyed supported executions (Pew Center, June 8, 2018).

The church, as a whole, has taken a somewhat passive view of the death penalty, but that, too, is changing as church leaders fall in line with the general public in moving away from the old concept of taking a life for a life. Forgiveness is not yet the criteria for dealing with murder, but twenty-one states have abolished the death penalty. Significantly, there have been 166 cases since 1973 in which people who were convicted and sentenced to death were later exonerated by evidence of innocence (Death Penalty Information Center).

The death penalty has existed for more than two millennia and been the subject of much argument, prayer, meditation and legislation. As we have seen in this chapter on the history of capital punishment, the pendulum now has swung away from executions, but has not edged all the way to forgiveness.

In Chapter Three, three Ohio death penalty cases will be examined in detail along with a review of contemporary literature on the topic.

CHAPTER THREE

REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE

The curtain is opened a few minutes after 10 a.m. On one side of a glass wall is a man in his forties with close-cropped hair, strapped down to an elevated metal table, restrained with straps at his feet, legs, arms and chest. He wears a blue prison-issue shirt and blue pants with a red vertical stripe. The execution chamber’s low lighting is purplish and surreal. A large round clock on the wall ticks away the minutes.

On the other side of the glass, just a few feet away from the condemned man, are witnesses, men and women, lawyers and a spiritual adviser, who sit in metal folding chairs. The victim’s family is on one side of the eight-foot by nine- foot room, divided by an open door, with the inmate’s kin on the other. No one speaks.

After the condemned man makes a final statement into a microphone held in front of his face, a subtle signal is given from the prison warden inside the

Death Chamber. The first of a trio of chemicals begins flowing silently through tubes snaking out of a wall that are connected to veins in both the man’s arms.

The people in the chairs do not see much happening at first. They probably do not notice the flow of clear chemicals in the tubes. The man on the table wiggles his hands and feet, and mouths “I love you” to family members watching. He looks up at the ceiling. Inside his body, however, things are happening quickly.

A huge dose of midazolam, an acidic drug typically used in small doses for anesthesia, flows into the man’s veins and swiftly enters the lungs. It induces drowsiness but can also cause pulmonary edema, a painful condition in which the air exchange in the lungs is compromised, resulting in shortness of breath, coughing and wheezing, and visible signs as the chest muscles and diaphragm strain to pull air into the lungs (Dr. Edgar testimony, U.S. District Court). By now, the people in chairs are starting to notice things: coughing, choking, gasping, deep compressions of the chest and abdomen. The man’s hands clench and unclench. He tries to raise his head and upper body off the table. His Adam’s apple bobs up and down in his throat (Johnson, witness observation).

The observers look at each, silently questioning what is happening. They do not know what to expect when watching a man die. As the drug flow continues, the man is being asphyxiated and may feel sensations of “drowning, asphyxiation, terror, and panic” (Dr. Edgar District Court testimony). A bloody, frothy foam, invisible to witnesses, begins forming in his airways, further impeding breathing. Within minutes, a second clear drug, rocuronium bromide, a powerful paralytic, is injected in the tubes. Since the first drug has not fully done its intended job of anesthetizing the pain, the man begins to feel “a sensation akin to being buried alive as the paralytic takes effect and his breathing musculature is paralyzed.” He would feel “chemically buried alive” (Dr. Lubarsky,

District Court testimony) but is unable to cry out, react or respond.

If the man feels pain, no one can tell. Witnesses hear less gasping, coughing, and see less movement. He is already slipping away, but a third drug,

potassium chloride, is the killer. It is a salt used in making fertilizer, animal feeds and glass – and for executions. Two vials of the clear chemical are the last of six vials of the three drugs to be injected over a span of about six minutes. This last drug interrupts the electric impulses in the heart, causing beating to slow and eventually stop.

There is no movement on the execution table. The man’s chest and stomach have stopped rising and falling. His lips and fingers are purple. There are no breath sounds. The curtain is pulled again and a doctor comes out to check for signs of life but finds none. The curtain is opened; the time of death is announced.

Over a period of eighteen years, from February 1999 to July 2017, I was eyewitness to this scene twenty-one times during executions at the Southern

Ohio Correctional Facility near Lucasville, Ohio, as a journalist with The

Columbus Dispatch newspaper in Columbus, Ohio.

Some of the condemned men were interviewed, as were some members of their families and the families of their victims. That personal contract made watching their death even more difficult, but the focus was on responsibilities as a professional journalist, taking down the minute-by-minute details of a man being put to death. No recording or video devices of any kind are allowed.

With that responsibility came an unfortunate, but necessary feeling of detachment. Sometimes, it bothered me that watching men die did not bother me more. I eventually came to realize I was there as a witness for Christ.

In this chapter, focusing on contemporary literature on the death penalty, it seems appropriate to examine some personal experiences dealing with the society’s ultimate punishment. I will not attempt to substitute my experience or observations for those of experts; I fully recognize my limitations. However, through discussion and prayer with Senior Pastor Rich Nathan of Vineyard

Columbus, my home church, I concluded that it was no accident that I, as a student at a Christian seminary, also was called to witness executions. I firmly believe I need to share my witness. This dissertation is part of that witness.

My goal in this chapter is to thoughtfully discuss my personal experience in three cases, reflect on what I believe to be important themes that resonate throughout this project, and connect each case with review of appropriate contemporary sources commenting on related themes.

Most contemporary writers on capital punishment based their opposition on religious, moral, legal, racial or fairness grounds. “Jesus calls his followers, then, to strive for the triumph of God’s royal justice on earth, one that is prepared to endure wrong without retaliation, to practice costly forgiveness for the sake of reconciliation,” writes Christopher D. Marshall. “He prayed not for the justice of swift retribution on his abusers, but for their pardon, for the higher justice of God”

(Marshall 2001, 71-72).

In his book, Just Mercy, A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014) Bryan

Stevenson discusses his frustration with a criminal justice system in which justice is dispensed unequally based on race, social class, economics, mental health and geography. “I had been struggling my whole life with how and why people

are judged unfairly,” he writes. “The true measure of our character is how we treat the poor, the disfavored, the accused, the incarcerated, and the condemned” (Stevenson 2014, 13-15).

We are all implicated when we allow other people to be mistreated. An absence of compassion can corrupt the decency of a community, a state, a nation….The closer we get to mass incarceration and extreme levels of punishment, the more I believe it’s necessary to recognize that we all need mercy, we all need justice, and – perhaps – we all need some measure of unmerited grace. (Stephenson 2014, 18)

The late Terry Collins, a prison warden and later director of Ohio’s large prison system, watched 33 executions. During that time, Collin never publicly expressed his concerns about inequitable justice, high costs, and the impact on victim families, the prison staff, and the inmate family. But after retiring in 2010,

Collins was free to bare his soul about the death penalty. He joined Ohioans to

Stop Executions, testified to the General Assembly about abolishing the death penalty, wrote letters to the editor, and spoke at public forums. In one of those forums, in Wilmington, Ohio, on Feb 11, 2015, Collins said that while he worked for the state, he was obliged to carry out state law, including the death penalty.

But as a private citizen, he expressed grave reservations about the fairness of the system. He said receiving a death sentence “shouldn’t be based on what county you came from, your economic status, how much money you have, or your race. I don’t accept the explanation that we save the death penalty for the worst of the worst” (Collins 2015).

Collins said the criminal justice makes mistakes, noting that he personally walked three men out of prison who had been found not guilty after more than a decade of incarceration. A far better alternative to the death penalty, Collins said

at the forum, is life without the possibility of parole, a sentence that cannot be challenged except by the court or unless new evidence is found. “I believe Ohio should do away with the death sentence. It would have no harmful effect on this state to not have the death penalty” (Collins 2015).

There have been more than 165 men convicted for murder and sentenced to death who have been exonerated and free from prison, according to the Death

Penalty Information Center (https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/). Of those, nine were in

Ohio, including two cases, those of Timothy Howard and Gary James, which The

Columbus Dispatch covered extensively. Had capital punishment not been ruled to be unconstitutional on June 29, 1992, in Furman v. Georgia, Howard and

James, and other innocent men on Death Row would likely have been executed.

As it turned out, Howard and James were exonerated and freed from prison in

2003 after serving twenty-seven years behind bars for crimes they did not commit.

Some contemporary religious leaders, mostly conservative evangelicals, support the idea that the death penalty is acceptable for those guilty of the most heinous crimes. A minority of Roman Catholics adhere to the idea that putting a guilty person to death is just punishment under specific circumstances.

The authors of By Man Shall His Blood be Shed, A Catholic Defense of

Capital Punishment (2017), posit that “The advocate of capital punishment maintains that there is an equally crucial moral difference between killing an innocent person and killing a moral person. And the advocate of capital punishment does not hold in the first place that it is wrong to kill, period; he holds

that is wrong to kill an innocent person” (Fesser and Bessette 2017, 61).

However, the Catholic church leadership in general is vehemently opposed to executions and has intervened seeking mercy in cases in the U.S. and other countries.

R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of The Southern Baptist Theological

Seminary, in a blog for CNN (CNN Belief Blog 2014), expressed strong support for capital punishment and vigorous criticism for those who oppose it. “The death penalty was explicitly grounded in the fact that God made every individual human being in his own image, and thus an act of intentional murder is an assault upon human dignity and the very image of God,” Mohler said. “In the simplest form, the

Bible condemns murder and calls for the death of the murderer. The one who intentionally takes life by murder forfeits the right to his own life” (Mohler 2014).

Mohler said the criminal justice system:

(R)obbed the death penalty of its deterrent power by allowing death penalty cases to languish for years in the legal system. . . . It is a testament to moral insanity that they have successfully diverted attention from a murderer’s heinous crimes and instead put the death penalty on trial. (Mohler 2014)

Mohler concluded, “We must hope for a society that will support and demand the execution of justice in order to protect the very existence of that society. We must pray for a society that rightly tempers justice with mercy”

(Mohler 2014).

In a 2014 interview with Paul Massari of The Harvard Gazette, Francis X.

Clooney, professor of divinity and theology and director of the Center for the

Study of World Religions at Harvard University, noted that Mohler’s argument for

the death penalty, similar to other supporters, does not even mention Jesus.

Many death penalty supporters firmly believe in respect for life, while still advocating for capital punishment as a “necessary evil,” Clooney said (Massari

2014). He added, “Jesus would not have allowed the death penalty. Every word of the Bible then needs to be reread in light of the teachings of Jesus” (Massari

2014).

Christian author and theologian C.S. Lewis did not oppose the death penalty per se. As he writes in Mere Christianity, “If you had committed a murder, the right Christian thing to do would be to give yourself up to the police and be hanged. It is, therefore, in my opinion, perfectly right for a Christian judge to sentence a man to death or a Christian soldier to kill an enemy” (Lewis 1952,

118). He cites the difference between “to kill” and “to murder” as a reason which for opinion. “All killing is not murder any more than all sexual intercourse is adultery” (Lewis 1952, 119). Lewis does, however, strike a strong note about forgiveness in Mere Christianity, saying for Christians, forgiveness is not optional.

“Everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive”

(Lewis 1952, 115).

Reflections on Three Ohio Death Penalty Cases:

A Case Study Approach to the Literature

John W. Byrd Jr. (Feb. 19, 2002)

The last hours in the life of John William Byrd Jr. - and the lives he affected, both good and bad - were studies in contrast. Byrd, 38, was locked in a twelve-by-ten-foot prison cell in the Death House at the Southern Ohio

Correctional Facility near Lucasville, Ohio. He was seventeen steps away from a sturdy metal lethal injection table on which he would soon die. Early on the day of

Feb. 19, 2002, Byrd showered, shaved and watched TV news accounts of his impending execution. Then there was an emotional meeting with his mother, sister, uncle, two aunts and a former teen-age girlfriend (DRC Byrd Timeline,

Feb. 19, 2002).

For the final two hours before his execution, and after the brief cell-front visit, Byrd’s family was ushered to a cramped conference room in a nearby prison building. His mother, Mary Ray, sister, Kim Hamer, and other family members cried, cursed, prayed, drank coffee and chain-smoked cigarettes until the air was thick and gray. A tray of donuts and sweet rolls remained untouched in the middle of the table (Johnson 2002). Just after 10 a.m., Ray got the word from the prison chaplain that the execution was over. “They just did it,” she screamed in a raspy, wailing voice. “Oh, baby. My baby's at peace. God, no!''

(Johnson 2002).

About the same time, the family of Monte Tewksbury, the murder victim and a former Proctor & Gamble biologist, gathered about 100 miles away in an apartment in Mason, Ohio, northeast of Cincinnati. Tewksbury died on April 17,

1983, after being stabbed during a robbery at the King Kwik convenience store in

Cincinnati, where he moonlighted as a clerk. Tewksbury’s family and friends shared stories of the murdered father of three: his sense of humor, love for his family, occasional flares of temper, and habit of mowing the lawn in plaid shorts, a pink shirt, black socks, blue running shoes and a wicker hat (Craig 2002).

But their hope for a quick end to their pain once Byrd was executed was in vain. “I believe John Byrd would consider leaving an evil legacy,” Sharon

Tewksbury, the murder victim’s widow, said minutes after she got word Byrd was dead. “I won't relax for a while.” Aside from fears that Byrd's cronies might harm her family, Mrs. Tewksbury said she was reliving her husband’s death. “It's taking me back to thinking about Monte. It's painful. . . . I'm trying to convince myself that it's over and I don't have to do this anymore” (Craig 2002).

The constants in the two execution scenes are pain and sadness, of the victim’s family, and subsequently of the family of new victim of what the state says on the death certificate is homicide. By putting Byrd to death, the State of

Ohio created a new set of victims whose lives would be forever changed. It took eighteen years, ten months and two days for the Old Testament justice of “an eye-for-an-eye” to catch up with Byrd. When it was over, and Byrd was pronounced dead at 10:09 a.m. The will of the people, as administered by the courts, had been followed. The Ohio Public Defender insisted there were lingering doubts about whether Byrd was the one who jammed a six-inch knife in between Tewksbury’s ribs that night at the convenience store (Johnson 2001).

But Byrd’s appeals were rejected repeatedly, all the way up to the U.S Supreme

Court; the battle was over.

The death penalty provides little, if any, closure or relief to grieving families of murder victims, studies show and victim families say. If anything, it brings a measure of finality to the agonizing cycle of legal appeals, hearings, execution dates and news stories that rip open any healing that may have taken

place. But the pain of loss never goes away entirely, especially without forgiveness.

However, according to Collins and others that finality can be accomplished without another death through sentences of life without the possibility of parole in lieu of execution. Increasingly, that is the trend in Ohio and the U.S. in aggravated homicide cases. The Death Penalty Information Center, a non-profit clearinghouse for capital punishment issues, reports that the number of death sentences nationally dropped dramatically from 295 in 1998 to 43 in 2018. There were 68 executions in 1998 and twenty-five in 2018, the DPIC reported (Death

Penalty Information Center).

Some crime victim experts point to evidence about the impact of violence on murder-victim families, a subject addressed later in an Ohio case. Far less is written about the impact on the family of a convicted killer. Sociologist Susan F.

Sharp says there is a sense of “alienation and social isolation” for the family awaiting the execution of a family member. “The protracted deathwatch is marked by a cycle of hope and despair as the offender and family members proceed through the criminal justice process. . . . Indeed, the family members may experience ‘frozen sadness’ as a result of the repetitive cycle of hope and hopelessness” (Sharp 2005, 17-18).

Rachel King suggests empirical and observational evidence finds that executing a convicted killer provides little relief to the victim’s family. “People who have lost someone to murder attest to the fact that there is no ‘closure.’ The best that they can hope for is to turn their personal tragedy into positive action that

gives them the strength to go on living and sometimes even gives life new meaning” (King 2003, 7).

One victim-family member, Kristi Pemberton, the murdered man’s niece who witnessed Byrd’s execution, seemed to validate the idea that the death penalty does not provide finality when she said Byrd’s death did not give the family the closure they hoped for. She added, “but at least justice has been served,” (Candisky 2002).

Former Ohio Attorney General Betty D. Montgomery, who pushed legally for the Byrd’s execution, said in statement, “There can be no joy taken in the death of another human being - no matter how much the facts justify this final end” (Candisky 2002).

Reginald Wilkinson, former director of the Ohio Department of

Rehabilitation and Correction, said in an interview that he did not personally support the death penalty during time he witnessed and presided numerous executions as head of the prisons agency. Like Collins, another former prisons director, Wilkinson now acknowledges that he opposes capital punishment. “Up until I retired, I never admitted it publically,” Wilkinson said. “So, a change can be not just whether one is for or against it, but how you make your position known”

(Wilkinson 2015). He added that the death penalty does not make a significant difference in reducing crime rates and has just one justification as a deterrent.

“That condemned inmate will not murder anyone else. Period!” (Wilkinson 2015).

Shane Claiborne, the director of Red Letter Christians, said followers of

Christ should come alongside both the murder victim family and the family of the

perpetrator, a lesson Sister Helen Prejean said she painfully learned in the murder case and execution that led to her book, Dead Man Walking (1993).

“There is something powerful about the consistency of being against all killing, both legal and illegal, since any time a life is taken, that event creates new victims and new trauma” (Claiborne 2016, 27-28). While significant support is provided to the victim’s family, King and others say the criminal justice system does very little to support the condemned person’s family even though new victims are created with each execution.

Sister Prejean, who has become a leading opponent of the death penalty, candidly expressed her doubts about how she would feel if a loved one was murdered.

If someone I love should be killed, I know I would feel rage, loss, grief, helplessness, perhaps for the rest of my life. It would be arrogant to think I can predict how I would respond to such a disaster. But Jesus Christ, whose way of life I try to follow, refused to meet hate with hate and violence with violence. I pray for the strength to be like him. I cannot believe in a God who metes out hurt for hurt, pain for pain, torture for torture. Nor do I believe that God invests human representatives with such power to torture and kill. The paths of history are stained with the blood of those who have fallen victim to ‘God's Avengers.’ Kings and Popes and military generals and heads of state have killed, claiming God's authority and God's blessing. I do not believe in such a God. (Prejean 1993, 21)

An argument can be made that exercising the death penalty is a failure in that it accomplishes little except the obvious deterrent of taking away a single person’s God-given life. “In fact the best - and, indeed only - basis for capital punishment, is turning ourselves – explicitly – into what we claim to despite most; the cold-blooded killer” (Santoro 2013, 211).

Former Ohio General Jim Petro says that a substantial reason that many people in both the religious and secular worlds oppose capital punishment is the historical track record of convictions of people who are later exonerated of the crimes. The conclusion was particularly troubling to Petro who coauthored a book with his wife, Nancy, entitled False Justice (2010).

“We believe – and our research and logic suggest – that our system convicts innocent persons far more frequently than most imagine, and that most

Americans, if more fully informed, would consider this a national travesty” (Petro

2010, 130). Petro supported capital punishment during his term as the state’s chief law enforcement officer and oversaw nineteen executions. Nevertheless, since leaving office in 2007, Petro said he aware of troubling issues with how capital punishment is handled, including “instances of corruption; unlawful tactics; misplaced motivations; arrogance; and abuses of power by district attorneys, police detectives, forensic scientists, and others. Our eyes were opened to troubling evidence that law enforcement and judicial process can be inconsistent with fairness, decency, and due process” (Petro 2010, 130).

David Brewer (April 29, 2003)

Even before his wife, Sherry Renee, was brutally murdered by a college fraternity brother on March 21, 1985, Joe Byrne believed in capital punishment. “I always was very, very pro for it” (Byrne 2018, Interview). When Greene County

Prosecutor William Schenck asked Byrne his feelings about seeking the death penalty for David Brewer, Byrne did not hesitate. “I said I wanted him to be executed. I wanted him to die from the beginning” (Byrne 2018, Interview). Joe

Byrne and David Brewer had been friends and fraternity brothers at Georgetown

College, a Christian college in Georgetown, Ky. After both men married, they and their wives sometimes socialized (Brewer Clemency Report 2003, 4).

But inexplicably, something snapped with David Brewer that March day in

1985 when he met Sherry Byrne at a hotel north of Cincinnati. While police and court records are unclear about why the two met, they apparently had sexual intercourse; it is not certain if it was consensual or forced, or exactly what triggered Brewer’s violence. But he tied Sherry Byrne with speaker wire, forced her into the trunk of his car before proceeding to drive around Greene County for several hours. He ended up in a remote area in the country where he released her from the trunk. When she tried to escape, according to records, “He caught her and choked her, first with his hands and then with a necktie. He went back to his car and got a butcher knife. He stabbed Sherry several times, and then slashed her throat” (Brewer Clemency Report 2003, 5). Brewer initially left Sherry

Byrne’s body in rural roadside ditch, but later returned, picked up her body, and put it in a self-serve storage locker. He eventually confessed to the murder, was tried, convicted and sentenced to death, Ohio Supreme Court records show.

Joe Byrne decided he wanted to witness Brewer’s execution on April 29,

2003. By his own admission, he was a mess physically and emotionally that day.

Minutes before leaving for the Death House, located in an interior courtyard at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility near Lucasville, Byrne put on a pair of headphones attached to a portable compact disc player and listened to Thunder

Road by Bruce Springsteen, one of his wife’s favorite songs. As he listened,

Byrne sobbed (Johnson 2003).

Watching Brewer executed, Byrne recalled, “I really didn’t have any thoughts. I was hoping he would apologize. . . . It looked like he went to sleep.

He yawned at one point and just went to sleep” (Byrne 2018, Interview). Byrne said he “felt great” immediately after the execution, but the feeling quickly faded.

“After a few days, I was a mess. I started feeling really bad. I couldn’t understand why. I was crying and crying. Why am I feeling like this? I got what I wanted. I waited 18 years for this bastard to get what he deserved” (Johnson interview,

2018). Byrne’s difficulty in forgiving is both common and understandable.

“Forgiveness is not forgetting,” William A. Meninger writes. “The admonition to forgive and forget is often not possible. Indeed true forgiveness is just the opposite. It is mindfulness – an awareness of what has happened and of the true value in your life” (Meninger 1996, 30). Neither is forgiveness condoning the action, nor giving absolution, he adds. Instead, forgiveness means “we no longer want to take revenge on our offenders,” Meninger says. “To take an eye for an eye does not return our own loss” (Meninger 1996, 34).

There is extensive debate about whether the death penalty is punishment, justice, revenge or retribution. “This tension between retribution, atonement and vengeance - and the mechanisms that we invest with the authority to seek these in our names - and questions of the inherent value and dignity of the individual remain at the center of the religious debate over capital punishment in the United States” (Santoro 2013, 29). Quite often, a family

member of a murdered loved one understandably cannot cope with the horrible pain of loss they are feeling. Meninger said they are in peril of becoming “all victim. This becomes their self-identity. For them to forgive means to lose their identity. . . . Their specialness changes. Do we really want to be special by the way we bleed over ourselves and over others?” (Meninger 1996, 33).

A very different school of thought was espoused by the late U.S. Supreme

Court Justice Antonin Scalia. He said that in addition to the importance of justice under the law, there is a need to heed a public outcry for execution, that is,

“society’s need to use capital trials to purge its collective anger and moral outrage at violence crime” (Gey 1972). However, that position seems to fail as

“revenge and retribution clash, and public justice is forced to become less solemn” (Sarat 2001, 50).

Byrne’s ambiguous feelings about capital punishment did not change in 16 years since the execution of his wife’s killer. He joined Ohioans to Stop

Executions in 2015, speaking out against capital punishment at several forums.

But he soon backed away from public speaking and his overall opposition to the death penalty, and settled into deeper anger and bitterness. “I did not feel like I thought I would. I continued to feel very angry. I had let the death-penalty process consume me. I felt so sad. I couldn't stop crying,” he said. "I didn't understand, because I thought I had got everything I wanted” (Byrne 2017). His wife’s murder is on his mind nearly every day; he continues to be unable to forgive Brewer although he said he has tried repeatedly.

“I’m Catholic and the priest told me I had to forgive him. He told me to write a letter. I couldn’t do it. . . . I don’t know if I felt like I would be letting down

Sherry or not. I want to forgive Brewer. I really do” (Johnson interview 2018).

Byrne remains in a painful emotional limbo. “Why can’t I forgive? I’m stuck”

(Byrne 2018).

Forgiveness is not only possible but incredibly healing, as exemplified by the witness of Bill Pelke, an Indiana steel factory worker who had to deal with the tragic loss of his grandmother, Ruth Pelke, affectionately known to family members as Nana. The 78-year-old Sunday school teacher was murdered in her own home on May 14, 1985, by a group of teenage girls she had befriended

(Pelke 2019).

In a book he wrote about his response to his grandmother’s murder, Pelke described his first reaction when Paula Cooper, 16, one of the four assailants, received a death sentence.

At the time, I didn’t have a real strong feeling about the death penalty. In high school, we had debates about the death penalty, but I didn’t even remember which side of the issue I took. . . . I can’t say I particularly wanted Paula Cooper to die, but I was in favor of the prosecution seeking the death penalty for her. (Pelke 2003, 50)

After the trial, something happened that dramatically transformed Pelke’s attitude and his life as a whole. He went back to work, climbed to the top of the crane where he worked at a Bethlehem Steel plant in Gary, Indiana, and had what he later described as a “mountaintop experience” (Pelke 2009, 79). That day, high up in the crane, Pelke said his pictured his grandmother and realized, that as a Christian, she would not want Paula Cooper to be executed. He had a

vision of her crying at the idea of another family going through what her family had endured with her murder.

That night in the crane I learned the most important lesson of my life: I learned the healing power of forgiveness. When God answered my prayer for love and compassion, the forgiveness was automatic. I knew I no longer had to forgive Paula because the forgiveness had already miraculously happened. Forgiveness brought a tremendous healing. (Pelke 2003, 79)

Pelke not only forgave Paula Cooper, but he also personally campaigned to get her death sentence commuted, what he later called a “Journey of Hope –

From Violence to Healing,” that included multiple trips across the U.S., television appearances, and a 1987 visit to Rome to meet Vatican officials to persuade them to urge Pope John Paul II to advocate that Cooper’s death sentence be abandoned. His efforts were successful as Cooper’s death sentence was commuted in 1989; she was released from prison in 2013 (Pelke 2003, 141).

Pelke told his story at Vineyard Columbus on May 5, 2019, at the invitation of Pastor Nathan. The sermon was titled “Overcoming Through Forgiveness” in which Nathan stressed the importance of the word forgiveness, noting it appears

143 times in the Bible.

Jesus says that you need to forgive from the heart. It’s down in our hearts that we have all these fantasies of revenge. It’s down in our hearts that we still have all this anger, all this hurt. It’s down in our hearts that we keep recalling the hurt over and over again. It’s down in our hearts that we secretly rejoice when we hear bad news about this person who hurt us or when others criticize them. (Nathan sermon, 2019)

Pelke says in his book that he found out a great deal about himself, and his relationship with Jesus, through forgiveness.

(L)earning about forgiveness was to me the equivalent of finding the pearl of great price that Jesus talked about in one of His parables. . . . I was

totally convinced that Jesus was right. Forgiveness is the way to live. Seventy times seven. Since my mountaintop experience in the crane, I realized that forgiveness is a great way to live. Maybe that is why Jesus told us to live that way. (Pelke 82, 90)

Another major chapter in lessons on forgiveness emerged from South

Africa after apartheid was overthrown and majority rule was installed from 1991 to 1994. One of the leading figures in the movement to forgive rather than seek revenge for decades of white supremacy abuse was Bishop Desmond Tutu, a

South African cleric who was chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation

Commission. The commission was widely credited with an overall peaceful transfer of power to majority South Africans after decades of brutal apartheid rule by whites..

“There is nothing that cannot be forgiven and there is no one undeserving of forgiveness,” Tutu wrote in The Book of Forgiving, The Fourfold Path for

Healing Ourselves and Our World (2014). “I have often said in South Africa there would be no future without forgiveness. Our rage and our quest for revenge would have been our destruction. Forgiveness is the journey we take toward healing the broken parts. It is how we become whole again” (Tutu 2014, 3).

While some people find forgiveness difficult because they believe forgiving means forgetting their pain, Tutu said, “I can say unequivocally that forgiving does not mean forgetting the harm. It does not mean pretending the harm did not happen or the injury was not as bad as it really was” (Tutu 2014, 37). “Forgiving,” he said, “is the only thing that can transform the aching wounds and the searing pain of loss” (Tutu 2014, 139).

Joseph Murphy – (Commuted Sept. 11, 2011)

It is rare in Ohio, or any state for that matter, when a convicted murder is granted clemency from execution. It is even rarer when clemency is granted despite an air-tight legal case, incriminating evidence, and a confession from the killer. But that is what happened to Joseph Murphy. His story speaks to a situation where, in the minds of former Ohio Gov. John Kasich and the late Ohio

Supreme Court Chief Justice Thomas J. Moyer, the cry for mercy for a killer outweighed the need for an execution as punishment.

Moyer, a veteran, conservative judge who supported capital punishment, dissented in a 4-3 decision rejecting Murphy’s appeal in 1992. His strongly worded dissenting opinion said, in part, “In all of the death-penalty I have reviewed, I know of no other case in which the defendant, clearly guilty of the crime as the defendant is here, was as destined for disaster as was Joseph

Murphy as a direct result of the conditions to which he was exposed by his family” (State of Ohio v. Murphy 1992).

When all Murphy’s legal appeals were exhausted, and his execution date had been set, Gov. Kasich’s nearly unlimited clemency power was his last hope of avoiding execution. Kasich, who also supported capital punishment, agreed with Moyer, and commuted Murphy’s death sentence to life in prison. He said in his decision that he considered Murphy’s “brutally abusive upbringing and the relatively young age at which he committed this terrible crime…I pray for peace for all who have been impacted by this crime” (Governor’s Office 2011).

Murphy’s case is about grace for a man who as a child was abused, beaten, burned, starved, raped and once traded for a jug of moonshine.

There was never any real doubt Murphy was guilty of the ghastly crime; he confessed to slashing the throat of 72-year-old Ruth Predmore throat with a five- inch knife when she confronted him as he entered to rob her home on Feb. 1,

1987. He remembers wiping spurting blood out of his eyes from the deep gash that nearly severed Predmore’s neck from her body (Murphy Clemency Report,

2011). It was an unusually cruel act of violence from a developmentally disabled, uneducated, abused young man from a dirt-poor family.

Murphy was born March 22, 1965, in Braxton, West Virginia, the third of six children of Jerry and Stella Murphy. His first home was a small tar-paper shack without running water, plumbing or electricity, and holes in the floor where the kids said they could see the ground below. Neither of Murphy’s parents worked regularly; life was hard, food was scarce, punishment for the children was frequent and severe (Johnson 2011).

Murphy was borderline developmentally disabled, a condition that later proved to be a meal ticket for his parents when he began receiving disability benefits. Because her son was hyperactive, Stella Murphy sometimes tied him to a bed. Having decided that food increased his erratic behavior, she often denied him food. Murphy remembers going to the woods near his home to forage for food, sometimes eating the bark off trees (Johnson 2011).

Court records and Murphy’s clemency appeal detail his horrible childhood, including an incident in which he father traded his son, who was six years old at

the time, to a moonshine-maker in exchange for sex with the boy. Murphy said he began setting fires mainly because it would attract fire and police, temporarily diverting attention from him and whatever abuse or punishment he faced.

“I have accepted the fact I will be here the rest of my life,” Murphy said after being moved off Death Row and into a regular prison cell. “Whatever happens in here, it’s better than it was at home” (Johnson 2012).

Murphy’s case shines a bright light on several thoughts related to capital punishment and forgiveness. It shows that in rare occasions, the government recognizes there are circumstances which cry out for mercy instead of revenge despite the commission of a brutal heinous crime. Further, it shows that some family members of victims can forgive, if not forget, the loss of a loved one. Peg

Predmore-Kavanagh, the victim’s niece, spoke against Murphy’s execution, saying her aunt would not have wanted him to be put to death. She met with

Murphy during a face-to-face victim-offender session in July 2011 (Johnson

2011).

It seems that forgiveness, while incredibly difficult in the case of the murder of a loved one, may be the only lasting way to purge the poisonous anger and bitterness of mourning so great a loss. Radical forgiveness is impossible without the grace of God. Frail humanity, in our fallen world and troubled times, is simply incapable of making the quantum leap to forgive someone who deprives them forever of seeing a spouse on anniversaries, a child on birthdays, a daughter in a wedding, a son become a loving father.

One of greatest examples of overwhelming forgiveness in modern history occurred following the murder of five Amish children and the wounding of five others at schoolhouse near Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, on Oct. 2, 2006. The gunman, Charles Carl Roberts IV, used a shotgun to kill and injure the children, all girls, age six to thirteen, before killing himself. Roberts’ wife, Amy, was at a

Presbyterian church prayer service at the time of the murders (Zahnd 2013, 99).

What happened next, in astounding acts which pastor and author Brian

Zahnd called “radical forgiveness,” stunned the local community and the world.

“Within hours of the killings, a group of men from the Amish community went to Amy Robert’s house to express forgiveness! They brought gifts of food to

Amy and her children, telling Amy they had forgiven her husband and held no animosity toward her” (Zahnd 2013, 100). About half of the 75 mourners at Carl

Robert’s funeral were Amish (Zahnd 2013, 100).

As Zahnd writes, “The Amish had only one way to respond to the most wicked transgression of all: only forgiveness. . . . They imitated Christ by offering only forgiveness. They took up the cross by offering only forgiveness. They lived the Sermon on the Mount by demonstrating only forgiveness. They understood there was only one way to bring about healing – only forgiveness” (Zahnd 2013,

100-101).

Forgiveness is what Jesus asked his Father for as he hung dying on the cross, suspended between two thieves. “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34). He had suffered the indignity of a mock trial, a flogging , torture and humiliation at the hands of Roman soldiers, and

derision from many of the Jewish people who had followed him just days before.

He was tortured, bloody, and dying, yet he asked God to forgive those who had persecuted and crucified him. “The radical demand to forgive and to be reconciled set aside (and fulfilled) legal limitations on revenge” (Verhey 2013, 6).

Shane Claiborne, citing Colossians 2:15, says that Jesus made a spectacle of death, becoming “a victim of violence to expose the systems of violence. . . . He did this not to glorify death but to overcome it. Love stole the show. Jesus became the water that short-circuited the electric chair” (Claiborne

2016, 93). This is real grace from God, as distinguished from the “cheap grace” that Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote about in The Cost of Discipleship (Bonhoeffer

1959). “Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession” (Bonhoeffer 1959, 44-45). That contrasts with “costly grace” about which he said,

Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: ‘ye were bought at a price,’ and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us. Costly grace is the Incarnation of God. (Bonhoeffer 1959, 45)

The thorny subject of forgiveness during wartime was deeply explored by

Simon Wiesenthal in his book, The Sunflower – On the Possibilities and Limits of

Forgiveness (1997), Wiesenthal, a Jewish Holocaust survivor who became internationally known for zealously tracking down Nazi war criminals and bringing them to justice, posed a difficult question of forgiveness based on an incident in

his life when he was imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp during World War

II (Wiesenthal 1997, 3).

While working in a hospital at the camp, Wiesenthal, who was Jewish, was asked to hear what amounted to a confession and cry for forgiveness from Karl, a young Nazi soldier dying from battlefield injuries. The soldier told Wiesenthal about the overwhelming guilt and shame he felt for his part in killing dozens of

Jewish people who were jammed into a house which was then set on fire

(Wiesenthal 1997, 63).

“In the long nights while I have been waiting for death, time and time again

I have longed to talk about it to a Jew and beg forgiveness from him,” the soldier says. “I know what I am asking is almost too much for you but without your answer I cannot die in peace” (Wiesenthal 1997, 64). Conflicted, Wiesenthal wrote that he was torn between speaking to ease the dying man’s conscience and his bitterness over the brutal Holocaust of the Jewish people, including members of his own family. In the end, he said nothing and left the hospital, never to see the soldier again. Wiesenthal struggled with his decision, eventually seeking reaction to his moral dilemma by posing it to theologians, politicians, scholars and others. Henry James Cargas, an academic and author, responded to Wiesenthal by saying he was “afraid not to forgive because I fear not to be forgiven. At the time of Judgment, I pray for mercy rather than justice” (Cargas

1997, 124).

Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg took a different course in his response, saying that the crimes committed by the Nazi officer were “beyond forgiveness” (Hertzberg

1997, 167). He said the Talmud teaches “no one has the right to commit murder even if he is sure that he himself will be killed for not complying with such an order. In the text of the Talmud there is an explanation: ‘How do you know your blood is more precious?’” (Hertzberg 1997, 166).

Wiesenthal even allowed convicted Nazi leader Albert Speer, who was

Adolph Hitler’s Minister of Armaments served twenty years in prison for his war crimes, to respond to the moral question. Speer said he could “never forgive myself for recklessly and unscrupulously supporting a regime that carried out systematic murder of Jews and other groups of people. My moral guilt is not subject to the statute of limitations, it cannot be erased in my lifetime” (Speer

1997, 245).

Sometimes forgiveness shines so brilliantly that it makes news. Such was the case when Brandt Jean, making a victim statement in a Dallas courtroom on

Oct. 3, 2019, that he forgave Amber Guyger, the former police officer who shot and killed his brother, Bothan Jean. Guyger accidently fatally shot Jean in his own apartment which was near hers. She was sentenced to 10 years in prison

(USA Today 2019). “I forgive you and I know if you go to God and ask him, he will forgive you,” the 18-year-old man said to his brother’s killer. “I love you just like anyone else. I’m not going to say you rot and die just like my brother did, but

I want the best for you. I know that’s exactly what Bothan would want to do.”

Jean then asked the judge if he could hug his brother’s killer; Jean and Guyger embraced for a minute in a courtroom stunned to silence.

Forgiveness is intensely difficult when it involves forgiving someone who has taken the life of a loved one. But it can be done: Jesus forgave, as did Bill

Pelke, grieving Amish family members, and Brandt Jean.

Additional Literature Review

Much of contemporary literature on capital punishment is written from a legal, secular point of view. There are noteworthy exceptions, such as Executing

Grace by Shane Claiborne (2006) and Dead Man Walking by Sister Helen

Prejean (1994). However, there are a wide range of works dealing with broad topics discussed in my project, including justice, forgiveness and the sanctity of life.

A writer who deals directly with a Christian perspective on capital punishment is Darrin W. Snyder Belousek, an Ohio Northern University lecturer active in the Mennonite Missionary Network. He says,

Jesus' teaching in the Gospel of John amounts effectively to a permanent moratorium on the human practice of capital punishment in fulfillment of the substance of covenant law; and that Paul's gospel announces the good news that God has put a final end to the death penalty through the cross of Christ. (Belousek 2009).

He bases his argument primarily on John 8 where the Pharisees bring to

Jesus a woman accused of adultery. It is the only time in the New Testament where Jesus is directly involved in what amounts to a death penalty case since adultery was punishable by death by stoning. In response to the Pharisee’s question about what he thinks should happen to the adulterer, Jesus responds,

“Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her” (John

8:7). As the embarrassed accusers leave one-by-one, Jesus tells the woman that

neither does he condemn her, adding, “Go now and leave your life of sin.”

Belousek says that Jesus' ruling on the woman’s sin “effectively raises the legal standard for executing a death penalty to a humanly impossible level: legally justified killing demands complete blamelessness or sinless perfection, which belongs to God alone” (Belousek 2009). “Jesus' ruling implies that only God may execute a death sentence, reminding those who would take life, even with legal justification, that sovereignty over life belongs exclusively to God.”

George N. Boyd, of Trinity University, does not argue that the death penalty was outlawed by Jesus; instead he believes that those who purposely take a life should forfeit their own life (Boyd 1988). However, he adds:

The most fundamental argument for discontinuing the death penalty is that society can best express the seriousness of its commitment to the sanctity of human life by abstaining from taking it, despite having justifiable cause. To respect human life precisely where its bearer has forfeited personal claim to that respect would be society's ultimate statement both of the sanctity of life and of the kind of society it wants to be. (Boyd 1988).

By not executing even those who are deserving of death, Boyd says, society best expresses “God's greatest attributes [which] are love, mercy and compassion - which attributes are held to be expressed precisely in the fact that persons are not dealt with as strictly as they deserve” (Boyd 1988).

Thoughts on capital punishment from two radically different perspectives are delivered by Rev. Carroll Pickett in Within These Walls, Memoirs of a Death

House Chaplain (2003), and Anthony Ray Hinton in The Sun Does Shine, How I

Found Life and Freedom on Death Row (2018). Pickett says in his book that he was a Death Row chaplain in Texas, witnessing 95 executions over fifteen years.

Hinton writes that he spent twenty-eight years on Death Row in Alabama for

crimes he did not commit before being exonerated and freed in 2015. Hinton’s cell was thirty feet from the execution chamber, where he watched 54 men walk to their death, some by electrocution, others by lethal injection.

While the two men, one a white minister, the other a black laborer, came from very different positions in life, they came to the same conclusion: capital punishment is morally wrong and serves no valid purpose for society. “Like so many Texans, I was raised in an atmosphere that insisted the only real justice was that which claimed an eye for an eye,” Pickett writes. “I was wrong. As I participated in the endless process that would earn my state infamous recognition for its death-penalty stance. I found myself wondering just what we were accomplishing” (Pickett 2003, xi).

Throughout his account of executions, Pickett picks apart the reasons cited by capital punishment supporters, including the argument that it provides relief and closure for victim families.

In those dark early morning hours following an execution, I spoke with the loved ones of crime victims – husbands and wives; mothers, fathers and children- and almost without exception found that the feeling of relief so long anticipated was not realized. A death, however horrible and senseless, cannot be erased by another death, however quick and humane. (Pickett 2003, xii)

At the same time, the former chaplain said, executions create a new set of victims, the family of the person put to death.

By killing a person, we inflict great damage on yet another family. While I do not wish to be viewed as a naïve apologist for the evils of those deserving punishment, I know that they, too, have loved ones that grieve just as desperately as do the families of their victims” (Pickett 2003, xiii).

He goes on to say that the “families of criminals are, I believe, the forgotten victims of crime, people forced to share guilt that is not theirs, questioning what they might have done differently to avert the horrible crimes their relatives have committed” (Pickett 2003, 104).

Pickett rationalized his participation in the execution process by acknowledging “I had made no laws that led the way to such an act. I held no power to determine who lived and who died. Though officially a member of the prison staff, I was not charged with the duty of inserting needles into an inmate’s arm and gave no orders for the chemicals to flow” (Pickett 2003, 116). But after his retirement, he concluded, “I am not a doomsayer. Nor am I an idealistic Bible- thumper. I am simply a man who saw the system at work, not from the distant vantage point of political office or the halls of academia, but close enough to smell fear’s sweat and foul breath” (Pickett 2003, 252).

While Pickett was escorting men to their Death, Hinton was struggling to maintain his sanity on Alabama’s Death Row in a cell just five feet wide and seven feet long. The fact he was innocent, yet condemned to death, rattled his soul every day, prompting him to think,

There was no God for me anymore. My God had forsaken me. My God was a punishing God. My God had failed and left me to die. I had no use for God. Forgive me Mama, I thought to myself as I threw the Bible under the bed. I had no use for it. All of it was a lie. (Hinton 2018 84)

He describes what it was like living on death row with dozens of condemned men watching the clock tick away on their lives.

The agony of men facing death was like “being in the middle of a horror movie – creatures crawling around, men moaning, or screaming or crying. Everyone cried at night. One person would stop and another would start. It

was the only time you could cry anonymously. I blocked out the sound. I didn’t care about anyone’s tears or their screams” (Hinton 2018, 94).

In the early years, when Alabama used an electric chair for executions, the smell on Death Row as horrible, Hinton said. “It’s hard to explain what death smells like, but it burned my nose and stung my throat and made my eyes water and my stomach turn over” (Hinton 2018, 98).

The arrival of Bryan Stevenson, an attorney and later author of Just

Mercy, A Story of Justice and Redemption, finally gave Hinton hope and made him realize, “God had a plan, and God was always on the side of justice. God could do everything but fail” (Hinton 2018, 182). After Stevenson helped Hinton get exonerated and freed from prison in 2015, Hinton said his mind turned to forgiveness and to his mother who died while he was in prison. “I forgive because not to forgive would only hurt me,” he wrote. “I forgive because that’s how my mother raised me. I forgive because I have a God who forgives” (Hinton 2018,

241).

The subject of forgiveness is described as “the divine answer to the question implied in our existence” by Adam Hamilton in Forgiveness: Finding

Peace Through Letting Go (2012). “More than any other world religion,

Christianity teaches, preaches and veritably shouts forgiveness” (Hamilton 2012,

17). Hamilton, an author and United Methodist Church pastor from Kansas, writes about a parishioner whose son was murdered by his roommate.

The anger and pain formed a boulder chained to his soul. There was no way he could drag it around by himself. He had to decide whether to let his son’s death also kill his own spirit or whether to find some way to let go of the anger, resentment and pain. (Hamilton 2012, 93-94)

The grieving father told Hamilton that he “prayed over and over and over again, not only for healing, but for his son’s killer. He tried to see the inmate as another human being, as another father’s son. He tried to assume that the roommate wasn’t entirely bad, but someone who, that night, had made a terribly bad decision” (Hamilton 2012, 94). Hamilton drills down to the core of forgiveness – the Imago Dei.

When we choose to show mercy, the image of God is seen in us. Our willingness to forgive has the power not only to change us, freeing us from bitterness and resentment but to change those who receive mercy from us, just as we are changed when we finally see and comprehend the vast and wonderful mercy of God. (Hamilton 2012, 138)

In The Sacredness of Human Life, Why an Ancient Biblical Vision is Key to the World’s Future (2013), Christian ethicist David Gushee opens the door to a broader discussion about the value of human life which he calls “biblical morality at its peak, that is preeminently embodied by Jesus Christ, and is therefore appropriate to test biblical and postbiblical tests and traditions by the criteria stablished by this ethical norm” (Gushee 2013, 9).

Quoting then-Cardinal Joseph Bernadin, Gushee says each human being, regardless of their sins, remains “the clearest reflection of the presence of God among us. . . .To lay violent hands on the person is to come as close as we can to laying violent hands on God. To diminish the human person is to come as close as we can to diminishing God” (Gushee 2013, 16).

Gushee writes that the sacredness of life is reflected in every human being, without exception, as exemplified by Mother Teresa of Calcutta, who observed that “Jesus comes to us in the hungry, the naked, the lonely, the

alcoholic, the drug addict, the prostitute, the street beggars. . . . If we reject them, if we do not go out to meet them, we reject Jesus himself” (Gushee 2013, 97). He equates the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus to human existence, saying the incarnation of God in human form “elevates the worth of every human being at every stage of life, because the arc of Jesus’ own life included every state of existence, from conception to death and even resurrection” (Gushee

2013, 95). As an ethicist, Gushee said he saw a shift in the view of the sacredness of life with the debate over abortion following the Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion on Jan. 22, 1973. Thereafter, some Christians viewed what they saw as “innocent life” in the womb as sacred, while feeling those guilty of murder were not innocent and thus their lives could be forfeit. He counters, “If each and every human life is of sacred worth, unique and incalculably precious, that would apply to each and every human life,” (Gushee

2013, 354) including those convicted of murder and sentenced to death.

Ron Gleason, a theologian and pastor at Grace Presbyterian Church in

California, approaches capital punishment from a harder line in The Death

Penalty on Trial: Taking a Life for a Life Taken (2008). He harkens back to older sources, including John Calvin in Institutes of the Christian Religion, who said that the civil magistrate “carries out the very judgments of God. . . .The law of the

Lord forbids killing; but, that murderers must not go unpunished, the Lawgiver himself puts into the hand of his ministers a sword to be drawn against all murderers” (Gleason 2008, 14). Gleason acknowledges human errors occur in administering capital punishment and that innocent people are sometimes

convicted and executed. But he argues, that “does not make the case that it is far better to allow thousands of convicted murderers to live simply because of the outside chance that one innocent person might be put to death” (Gleason 2008,

74). Like some other Christians who argue for capital punishment, Gleason largely overlooks and downplays what he calls “Jesus ethics” (Gleason 2008, 89) as espoused in the teachings and leadership of Jesus. There is almost no discussion of Jesus in his book.

“In the New Testament, Scripture clearly says that the state has the responsibility, as agents of God, to execute capital punishment on convicted murderers. It is also evident that the state is in the possession of a knowledge of good and evil and has the power of the sword to execute justice and, where necessary, to execute murderers. (Gleason 2008, 99)

Sister Helen Prejean is best known for her 1993 book, Dead Man Walking, in which she describes how she became spiritual adviser to Patrick Sonnier, a man on Death Row in Louisiana. Prejean takes a broader look at her life in her latest book, River of Fire, My Spiritual Journey (2019). He provides details about how she came from a sheltered family, her decision to become a Roman Catholic nun, and explores who she learned life and spiritual lessons along the way, including developing a heartfelt opposition to capital punishment.

Prejean came from a white, privileged background and describes her sometimes difficult transformation “following a path first charted by Jesus that led to the poor, and to those whom many dismiss as ‘throwaway’ people” (Prejean

2019, xiii-xiv). She observes that that Catholic Church for centuries that “the state has the right- indeed, the duty- to keep society safe by imposing the death penalty on violent criminals. It’s clearly a question of self-defense for society, just

as countries in war have a right to self-defense” (Prejean 2019, 9). Prejean describes how over time she began to understand the “radical nonviolence of

Jesus” in the New Testament.

Not only did he say - and exemplify - was that his way of loving means we must not seek revenge on those who hurt us, but he goes further, urging us to forgive our enemies. Then Jesus really pushes it over the edge. He says that if someone hits us on one cheek, instead of hitting them back, we should turn the other cheek. . . . It seems so over-the-top, maybe even psychologically unhealthy. But people like Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King discovered a way to actively resist social injustice by harnessing a positive, non-violent force that Gandhi called satyagraha, or ‘truth force.’ (Prejean 2019, 202-203)

Prejean’s said her spiritual journey alongside Death Row inmates convinced her that both the guilty and the innocent are worthy of mercy. “Is it only the innocent who have dignity? I had noticed-it was blatant-the large number of

‘pro-life” Catholics who readily condemned abortion, yet supported the death penalty.” But that denies the ‘inviolable dignity of every human person’” (Prejean

2019, 283).

Other theologians look at taking the life of others in a larger sense not limited to capital punishment. One of those, the late James H. Cone, a theologian, author and professor at Union Theological Seminary, wrote about the subject in The Cross and the Lynching Tree (2011) where he made the connection between hundreds of black Americans who died from being lynched by angry white mobs and the suffering and crucifixion of Jesus on the cross. He says black slaves related to “God’s loving and liberating presence” and that ultimately “they would not be defeated by the ‘troubles of this world’ no matter how great and painful their suffering” (Cone 2011, 2). He discusses the fear of

lynching among blacks in what he referred to as the “lynching era” from 1880 to

1940. “The lynching tree was the most horrifying symbol of white supremacy in black life. It was a shameful and painful way to die. The fear of lynching was so deep and widespread that most blacks were too scared to even talk publicly about it” (Cone 2011, 15).

Ultimately, the story Cone tells is not only about giving in to fear and mob rule, although that is a topic of weighty consideration, but also about the salvific power of Jesus. “God transformed lynched black bodies into the re-crucified body of Christ. Every time a white mob lynched a black person, they lynched Jesus.

The lynching tree was the cross in America” (Cone 2011, 158). “God took the evil of the cross and lynching tree and transformed them both into the triumphant beauty of the divine” (Cone 2011, 166).

Chapter Four will outline the methodology of the project, including the survey used to inquire into the thoughts and opinions of murder victim families and Death Row inmates.

CHAPTER FOUR

DESIGN, PROCEDURE AND ASSESSMENT

The purpose of this project was to discover if forgiveness contributes to the feeling of resolution among murder victim families and inmates convicted of murder in the state of Ohio. The emphasis was on how murder affects the lives of people ensnarled in the criminal justice system to see if they engaged in forgiveness though church, counseling or some other means, and if so, if it made a difference. The research question was: How does forgiveness contribute to the feeling of resolution among murder victim families and inmates convicted of murder in the state of Ohio?

As a newspaper reporter, now retired, and seminary student, I was presented by God, unbeknownst to me at the time, with the rare opportunity to combine two very different streams of experience to research capital punishment, a subject to which I had devoted much of my time and reflection over many years. I knew how I felt about the topic, as an opponent of capital punishment.

But I wanted to know how others felt, particularly those who had the most painfully intimate relationship – those who committed murder and those loved ones were victims of murder.

Do they support or condemn the death penalty? Do murderers and victim families feel differently about punishment and forgiveness in the aftermath of such horrific events?

The project goals were:

1. To discover the extent to which participants have attitudes about

forgiveness for those affected by the crime.

2. To discover the extent of participants beliefs about capital

punishment.

3. To discover the extent to which participants believe in “an eye for an

eye” punishment as a factor in favoring execution.

4. To discover the extent to which participants consider the concept of

forgiveness after the commission of the crime.

5. To discover the extent to which participants have a common attitude

about forgiveness related to the death penalty.

6. To discover the extent to which participants have a sense of

resolution in their lives in connection with the crime.

7. To discover the extent to which participants understand forgiveness

can facilitate emotional healing.

Context

A vocation as a journalist provided access to both groups through a twenty-five-year objective cooperative relationship with officials at the Ohio

Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, the state agency in charge of operating prisons and managing nearly 50,000 adult male and female inmates. It was determined from the outset to survey both convicted inmates and victim families to get a multi-layered view. The decision proved far more problematic than imagined in several ways.

The plan was to submit a voluntary, anonymous written survey of twenty multiple-choice and seven open-ended questions to all inmates on Death Row in

Ohio (137 people) and about 250 victim families identified in 2018 by the state agency’s Office of Victim Services. Victim families appear on the official notification list for death penalty cases, including past and pending executions.

The list is not publicly available and is rigorously protected by the state.

The victims list includes family members, such as a spouse, father or mother, children, siblings, and more. The survey did not seek specific case information, identification of the respondent’s relation to the victim, or the time frame of the crime. Case-specific information under any circumstances was not the goal; the aim was to maintain complete anonymity.

In order to do this, the personal approval of Gary Mohr, then director of the

Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction (DRC), was obtained in July

2017. This was a huge step and a major commitment by the director to provide access, albeit for academic purposes, to a population sensitive to public opinion about capital punishment. The death penalty is the focus a steady stream of litigation against the state, ranging from county courts to the U.S. Supreme

Court. This made Director Mohr’s agreement critical to the project.

Director Mohr suggested potentially expanding the survey to an even larger pool of inmates (and their corollary victim families) who had been charged with murder but were eventually convicted on a lesser charge. While the idea was intriguing, it was decided to not go to go that route for fear of further complicating the task of developing, processing and analyzing a survey.

An application for Human Subjects Research Review permission was submitted and approved by the agency. Meetings with DRC officials followed on several occasions as well as phone conversations about to proceed.

A project with many moving parts, including direct involvement with a bureaucratic state agency, was destined to have some issues; many cropped up, which will be discussed.

Participants

Thirty valid responses to the survey were received, combining those identifiable as being from victim families (eighteen), and Death Row inmates

(eleven). While the total was below the 50 to 60 responses sought, it nevertheless provided sufficient data for analysis. Not all of those surveyed responded to all questions; the situation of one respondent could not be identified as either a victim family or inmate.

The path to completing the survey was by no means easy, as was mentioned previously. I was able to make it work through a combination of contacts that also included inmate attorneys, crime victim groups and victim families whom I had dealt with in the past. This supplemented the initial questionnaire, all with anonymity because once submitted I had no way of knowing for sure who provided responses to SurveyMonkey.

The number of responses from Death Row, which was eleven of twenty- nine identifiable surveys, was lower than anticipated. Anecdotally, an attorney with the Ohio Public Defender’s Office, the state agency that provides legal defense for the vast majority of Death Row inmates, said that many inmates were

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suspicious of the survey, even though it was anonymous, confidential and limited to academic purposes, fearing information they submitted would somehow be used against them in court. The prison grape vine is pervasive, volatile, and frequently inaccurate and it seems possible that many inmates discarded the survey for that reason, or simply did not want to discuss their thoughts and feelings with an outsider.

Demographically, male respondents outnumbered females nineteen to eleven. There were two respondents in the 31 to 35 age range, two in the 35 to

40 range, one in the 46 to 50 range, four in the 51 to 55 range, ten in the 56 to 60 range, three in the 61 to 65 range, four in the 66 to 70 range, three in the 71 to

75 range, and one older than 75.

Two of twenty-six of those surveyed who responded to the question about education did not have at least a high school diploma. There were eight with high school degrees, eleven with college degrees, and five with graduate degrees.

Procedure and Assessment

Crafting questions was challenging and lengthy, not only because of the need to ask the right questions to elicit measurable results, but also to make them applicable to both inmates and victim families. This process between Dr.

Morton and myself lasted about two months and was nearly complete when concerns about some questions were raised by Chrystal Alexander, director of the DRC Office of Victims Services. She felt the questions might prove too painful for some sensitive victims and were “preachy” about the impact of religion and forgiveness.

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After a few more weeks of fine-tuning and some compromises on wording, the survey was finalized and set to go to DRC. It was to be submitted on paper in person by prison staff members to inmates on Death Row and mailed by the agency, with outgoing postage and return postage paid at my expense, to identified victim families. By May 2018, I had the survey (Appendix Two) printed, along with a cover letter (Appendix Two), and submitted it along with stamped, addressed return envelopes to the prisons agency.

A major hurdle arose at this point that threatened to derail the entire project. As everything was ready for distribution, attorneys for the state agency belatedly decided that by submitting the survey to victim families the state might somehow open itself to legal liability for an invasion of privacy of crime victim’s right, a very sensitive subject. This objection was raised despite the project having been approved personally by the director, and signed off on by both the

Office of Victims Services and the Public Information Office. Further, it seemed to be an overly cautious legal concern given the survey was completely voluntary and anonymous. I specified to state officials directly, and in my cover letter, that I would not know – and did not want to know – the identity of respondents to the survey and would have no way to contact them. The surveys were to be submitted to the state by inmates directly, with victims mailing responses to my post office box.

I understood the concern of state attorneys to an extent because the subject of crime victim rights has been very contentious in the courts and, as it turned out, at the ballot box. Ohio voters statewide overwhelmingly approved a

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state constitutional amendment, the Ohio Crime Victims’ Bill of Rights, also known as Marsy’s Law, on Nov. 7, 2017. The law took effect Feb. 5, 2018, about the time I was negotiating with prison attorneys about my survey.

The law gives crime victims expanded rights, including the right to “safety, dignity and privacy” (Crime Victims Services, https://www.crimevictimservices.org/ohio-victim-rights-laws.html). Other provisions include notification of legal proceedings, the right to refuse interviews, depositions and other requests, and restitution from the criminal perpetrator

(Crime Victims Services). While the law was not specifically mentioned by attorneys in discussions with the state, it seems likely it was a concern as we discussed a survey intended for the mailboxes of 250 victim family members.

After contentious discussions with state attorneys, we reached a compromise: Prison officials would distribute the survey on paper to inmates, but would not mail it to victim families. Instead, agency officials said they would call victim families by phone to offer them the opportunity to respond to the survey, either by phone at the time of the call, or by going to SurveyMonkey, a paid online survey tool, where they could fill it out and submit it anonymously. A final concession was made by tweaking the SurveyMonkey questionnaire so it would not record incoming email addresses of senders, guaranteeing complete anonymity.

As with most compromises, this solution was not totally satisfying. It greatly limited my access to victim families whom would provide a wealth of responses. It relied almost entirely on victim families having access to a

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computer, the Internet and the savvy to access and use the on-line

SurveyMonkey program. It also left the task of contacting families completely to the discretion of the state without any means for me to effectively gauge if in fact the contacts had been made at all.

I do not know if all or most of the 250 families were told about the survey.

Nor do I know what reaction these family members had to being contacted by a state prison employee offering them the opportunity to respond online to an academic survey about the most sensitive and painful subject of their lives. I firmly believe the response rate would have been far more robust if it would have proceeded on paper as originally agreed.

One of the benefits of using SurveyMonkey was being able to enter the results received on paper from inmates into the electronic system, adding them to those entered online. This allowed use SurveyMonkey tools for analysis and graphics.

There were twenty-eight responses received from July to October 2018, with three submitted in April 2019. One response was discarded since it was incomplete.

As outlined in the goals above, the purpose was to assess respondents’ attitudes about the death penalty, followed by probing for their thoughts about how forgiveness has or could change their lives. For the inmates, this could mean seeking forgiveness from God, their family, the victim family, and society in general. Further, it could mean forgiving themselves for taking the life of another person and doing irreparable damage to many loved ones.

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For victim families, the questions sought to get at the giant leap of faith necessary to forgive someone who ended the life of a loved one, and with it, all the things that life would have meant over time. Could they make that leap and if they could, would it allow them to relieve some of the pain, anguish and bitterness accumulated from murder?

A differential scale was used to analyze the responses to the twenty-one multiple choice questions and a qualitative analysis was done on the seven open-ended questions. The results will be reported in detail in Chapter Five.

In Chapter Five, we will look at the results of the survey in greater detail, including the scores on twenty-one multiple choice questions and revealing responses to the open ended questions.

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CHAPTER FIVE

REPORTING THE RESULTS

The purpose of this project was to discover if forgiveness contributes to the feeling of resolution among murder victim families and inmates who have been convicted of murder and sentenced to death in the state of Ohio. The emphasis was on how murder affects the lives of people ensnarled in the criminal justice system to see if they engaged forgiveness through any means. The research question was: How does forgiveness contribute to the feeling of resolution among murder victim families and inmates convicted of murder in the state of Ohio?

The survey was assessed in Chapter Four to determine if it measured the extent to which the project’s overall purpose and seven goals were achieved.

The twenty-one multiple choice quantitative questions on the survey are hereafter aligned under the six goals previously outlined. They are discussed in descending order based on the strength of the average score received.

Goal Seven: Forgiveness Can Facilitate Emotional Healing

The goal that scored the highest of the seven quantitative goals was “To discover if participants understand forgiveness can facilitate emotion healing.”

The average for the three questions asked under this goal was 3.83, which is just under “agree” on the scale. The three questions under the goal were as follows:

“I believe that forgiveness may be a beginning step to emotional healing” (#16). “I believe forgiveness can help heal emotional wounds caused by aggravated

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murder” (#19). “I believe I can experience emotional healing by practicing forgiveness” (#13). The following table shares the results.

Table 1. Goal # 7: Forgiveness and Healing ______Question Average Responses 16 – Forgiveness may be a step to emotional 3.90 29 healing.

19 – Forgiveness can help heal emotional 3.87 30 wounds caused by murder.

13 – I can heal by practicing forgiveness. 3.72 29

Composite Score 3.83 N=30

Scale: 1=Strongly Disagree; 2=Disagree; 3=Neutral; 4=Agree; 5=Strongly agree.

The survey discovered that there was general understanding among respondents that forgiveness is a significant factor in emotional healing following a murder. While the strength of the responses to the three questions under this goal was not overwhelming, it was the highest of the seven goals comprising my survey. The average score for the three questions was 3.83.

The response to Question Sixteen, 3.9, was second-highest overall in the survey, with twenty-two responses agreeing that forgiveness could help healing, with five disagreeing and two offering no opinion. The responses to Question

Nineteen were similar with twenty-one in agreement, six disagreeing and three neutral. Responses to Question Thirteen were much with same: nineteen agreed, five disagreed and five were neutral.

Generally speaking, three of four respondents agreed or strongly agreed with concept of forgiveness in the three questions under this goal.

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Goal Four: Forgiveness in Personal Loss

While forgiveness was asked about in a more general sense in Goal

Seven, it became more specific in the three questions included in Goal 4 which asked respondents if they considered forgiveness in the crime in which they were involved as either the murderer or the victim family. Responses to the three questions averaged 3.60, which again is lower than the “Agree” category ranking of 4.0. The three questions under the goal were as follows: “I believe I have made progress toward resolution” (#18). “I believe someone who murders can be forgiven” (#6). “I would consider forgiving someone who killed a family member”

(#12). The following table shares the results.

Table 2. Goal 4: Personal Forgiveness after a Murder ______Question Average Responses 18 – I made progress toward resolution. 3.83 30

6 – I believe someone who murders can be 3.73 30 forgiven.

12 – I would consider forgiving someone 3.24 29 who killed a family member. Composite Score 3.60 30 ______Scale: 1=Strongly Disagree; 2=Disagree; 3=Neutral; 4=Agree; 5=Strongly agree.

The highest scoring question asked respondents if they had achieved some resolution in their life after a murder. The average for that question was

3.83, just under the “Agree” ranking. There were twenty people who agreed, five who disagreed and five who were neutral. The survey found people generally believe that someone who commits a murder can be forgiven, with a score of

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3.73. There were twenty respondents in agreement and six who disagreed. The lowest-scoring question, asking respondents if they would consider forgiving someone who took the life of a family member, was 3.24. But even in that question, sixteen of twenty nine respondents agreed or strongly agreed.

There was a significant split, understandably, on Question Twelve about forgiving someone who took the life of a loved one, with nine saying no or definitely no while, sixteen of twenty-nine agreed or strongly agreed. The issue becomes critical here because forgiveness is an enormous emotional and spiritual mountain to climb with the death of family member or loved one. The split numbers reflect that.

Goal One: Attitudes About Capital Punishment

Goal One (Table 3) looks specifically at various attitudes about capital punishment by victims and inmates. Question Three, which reflected on how murder changes attitudes of both groups, received the highest-ranked response of the survey, 4.03, just above the “Agreed” category. Nearly three of four respondents said murder had long-lasting effects on their lives.

The three questions under this goal were as follows: “My outlook on life changed after a murder” (#1). “My attitude about loss changed after a murder”

(#20). “I have resolved my anger after a murder” (#3). The following table shares the results.

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Table 3. Goal One: Attitudes about Murder

Question Average Response 1 – My outlook on life changed after a 4.03 30 murder.

20 – My attitude about loss changed 3.43 29 after the murder.

3 – I have resolved my anger. 3.07 30 Composite 3.51 N=30 ______Scale: 1=Strongly Disagree; 2=Agree; 3=Neutral; 4=Agree; 5=Strongly Agree

Overall, the three questions under this goal had a composite score of

3.51. The highest score came in response Question 1, with twenty-two people who agreed or agreed strongly compared to four who disagreed. Four had no opinion. There were fifteen responses in agreement or strong agreement to

Question 20 about attitudinal change, with eight who disagreed and seven who were neutral.

The lowest score of the three was Question Three in which respondents were asked if they resolved their anger about the murder that impacted their life.

There was a close split between those who had not resolved their anger (thirteen of twenty-nine) and those who had (eleven of twenty-nine), with five respondents neutral on the question (Table 3).

People feel strongly about the death penalty, particularly those who responded to this survey because the subject deeply affected their lives. They either were convicted for murder in the case of the Death Row inmates or lost a family member to murder. Both situations solidify opinions about the “eye for an eye” approach to capital punishment in the United States.

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The issue of resolution of anger is particularly telling since bitterness resulting from loss is major impediment to those trying to heal and move on with their lives after they have lost a loved one.

Goal Six: Healing After Murder

Responses to Goal Six, to discover if inmates and victim families had any healing after the murder, scored essentially the same as Goal One, 3.51. This is under the “agreed” ranking but still significant because of the general consistency in answers across the board.

The questions under this goal were as follows: “I believe it is possible to get a sense of resolution after a murder” (#17). “I believe it is possible to get a sense of resolution after a murder” (#21). “I have healed after a murder” (#3).

The following table shares the results.

Table 4. Goal Six: Attitudes about Murder and Resolution

Question Average Response 17 – It is possible to get a sense of 3.67 30 resolution after a murder.

21 – It is possible to get a sense of 3.57 30 resolution after a murder.

3 – I have healed after a murder. 3.28 29 Composite 3.51 N=30 ______Scale: 1=Strongly Disagree; 2=Disagree; 3=Neutral; 4=Agree; 1=Strongly Agree

The lowest response result of 3.28 was to Question Three, “I believe I have healed after the murder that affected my life.” There was a clear cut difference of opinion with twelve respondents indicating they had not healed and fourteen saying they had some measure of healing. The remainder were neutral.

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There was an interesting, unintended finding under this goal due to a duplicated question. Due to a last minute change in the questionnaire, I mistakenly duplicated the question, which was, “It is possible to get a sense of resolution after a murder.” Even though Questions Seventeen and Twenty-one were the same, they received slightly different responses, with Question

Seventeen at 3.67 and Question Twenty-one at 3.57. There were sixteen responses in agreement and four in disagreement on Question Seventeen, compared to seventeen responses in agreement and five in disagreement on

Question Twenty-one. There was no obvious explanation for the differences, which resulted mostly from more people being neutral in responding to Question

Seventeen compared to Question Twenty-one.

The concept of resolution is nearly as difficult to understand as it is to achieve when the hurt is as devastating as murder. Resolution can, and does, mean different things to different people. For some it means moving past what happened in any way possible, or burying the loss with other people are activities. For others, resolution can mean forgiving the murderer, or in the case of an inmate, forgiving himself, to be able to live with the consequences. For yet others, resolution is simply impossible because nothing will bring back the lost loved one or undo a tragic, deadly mistake.

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Goal Five: Shared Attitudes about Capital Punishment

The idea of Goal Five was to discover if participants are flexible in their attitudes about forgiveness and capital punishment, specifically in relation to the subjects of forgiveness, face-to-face meetings with the killer or victim family, and a sentence of life without the possibility of parole.

The questions under this goal were as follows: “I would consider meeting face to face with the other party in my case” (#7). “I believe you can forgive without forgetting the victim” (#15). “I believe a sentence of life without the possibility of parole would be acceptable in my case instead of the death penalty”

(#9). The average for the three questions was 3.43. The following table shares the results.

Table 5. Goal Five: Shared Attitudes about Capital Punishment

Question Average Response 7 – I would consider meeting face to 3.72 29 face with the other party in my case.

15 – I believe you can forgive without 3.63 30 forgetting the victim.

9 – A sentence of life without parole 3.23 30 would be acceptable in my case instead of the death penalty.

Composite 3.42 N=30 ______Scale: 1=Strongly Disagree; 2=Disagree; 3=Neutral; 4=Agree; 1=Strongly Agree

The highest response of 3.72 was to Question Seven, “I would consider meeting face-to-face with the other party to the murder in my case.” There were

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nineteen respondents who agreed or agreed strongly with the question, while six indicated they would not meet and four were neutral.

Question Fifteen, “I believe you can forgive someone who commits aggravated murder without forgetting the victim” received an average score of

3.63, a large number of respondents, twenty-one of thirty, said they would forgive without forgetting, with nine disagreeing and no neutral responses. Question

Nine, “I believe a sentence of life without the possibility of parole would be acceptable in my case instead of the death penalty,” scored 3.23, the lowest of the three under this goal. There were nine respondents in agreement and thirteen who disagreed either in general or strongly.

Goal Two: Does Support for Capital Punishment Change Over Time?

The focus of Goal Two was to examine respondent’s support for capital punishment over time and in specific circumstances. I discovered mixed results without a clear consensus in response to the three questions under this goal. The composite score for Goal Two was 3.22, slightly above neutral.

The questions under this goal were as follows: “My support for the death penalty changed after the murder” (#2). “I supported the death penalty prior to the murder that affected my life” (#5). “I support the death penalty for aggravated murder” (#10). The following table shares the results.

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Table 6. Goal Two: Support for Capital Punishment Over Time

Question Average Response 2 – My support for the death penalty 3.40 30 changed after the murder.

5 – I supported the death penalty 3.30 30 before the murder.

10 – I support the death penalty for 2.97 30 aggravated murder.

Composite 3.22 N=30 ______Scale: 1=Strongly Disagree; 4=Disagree; 3=Neutral; 4=Agree; 1=Strongly Agree.

Question Two, which asked “My support for the death penalty changed after the murder,” had a score of 3.40, the highest of the three questions under

Goal Two. There were seven respondents who either agreed or strongly agreed, nine responses neutral, and fourteen who said their support for the death penalty did not change after the murder.

Question Five, “I supported the death penalty prior to the aggravated murder that affected my life,” had a score of 3.30, with ten responses either in strong or general agreement. There were five neutral responses, and fifteen that disagreed to one degree or another. The lowest response of the trio of questions under this goal was Question Ten, “I support the death penalty for aggravated murder,” which scored 2.97, with an even split of twelve respondents agreeing and twelve disagreeing, with seven neutral. This appeared to reflect a difference of opinion on the general favorability of capital punishment and a strong indicator of the divided mind on the issue.

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Goal Three: Is Revenge a Factor in Capital Punishment?

The idea of revenge as an element of attitudes about capital punishment is the focus of the three question under Goal Three. The composite score for the three questions was 3.22, with the generally low scores seeming to indicate a lack of consensus among respondents on how murderers should be punished.

The questions under this goal were as follows: “Life without parole would be a fair way generally to resolve an aggravated murder conviction” (#14). “A life for a life is an appropriate punishment for aggravated murder” (#4). “An execution is the only way to achieve justice in an aggravated murder case” (#8). The following table shares the results.

Table 7. Goal Three: Revenge as a Factor in Capital Punishment

Question Average Response 14 – Life without parole would be a 3.27 30 fair way generally to resolve an aggravated murder conviction.

4 – A “life for a life” is an appropriate 3.13 30 punishment for aggravated murder.

8 – An execution is the only way to 2.31 29 achieve justice in aggravated murder cases

Composite 3.22 N=30 ______Scale: 1=Strongly Disagree; 2=Disagree; 3=Neutral; 3=Agree; 1=Strongly Agree

Question Fourteen, which asked, “Life without parole would be a fair way generally to resolve an aggravated murder conviction,” received the highest score of three questions under Goal Three, at 3.27, with eight responses

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agreement and nine in disagreement. However, thirteen of the thirty respondents were neutral.

On Question Four, which stated “A ‘life for a life’ is an appropriate punishment for an aggravated murder, the score was lower, 3.13, with fifteen in agreement and eleven in disagreement, and four offering no position. Finally, the responses to Question Eight, “An execution is the only way to achieve justice in an aggravated murder cases,” brought out the lowest score at 2.31, with sixteen responses in agreement compared to six in agreement, and seven neutral.

An interesting comparison is to look at Question Nine and Question

Fourteen. Both questions ask respondents their opinion on life without the possibility of parole with one critical difference – Question Nine asks about their case specifically, while Question Fourteen asks about the sentence in general.

The average results were not significantly different, with Question Fourteen at

3.27 and Question Nine at 3.23. Both indicate a slight preference for life over death in murder sentencing. There is an internal difference in the results, however, because thirteen of thirty respondents on Question Nine disapproved of a life without parole sentence in their particular case. That compares to nine of thirty respondents who disapproved in Question Nine which referred to life without parole in general and not their specific case.

Qualitative Analysis

The responses to six open-ended questions on the survey provided a wealth of revealing, personal and sometimes painful information from both victim

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families and inmates. Whereas the multiple choice questions gleaned numbers, the open questions yielded personal insights.

Of thirty valid respondents, twenty-nine answered the open questions. Of the twenty-nine, eighteen came from family and eleven from inmates. While the questionnaire was anonymous and purposely did not ask respondents to self- identify whether they were an inmate or a family member, it was reasonably easy to distinguish between the two kinds of responses since all inmates responded on paper, and their responses were entered manually into SurveyMonkey, while victim family responses were entered directly to SurveyMonkey online questionnaire. A careful reading of the responses also confirms that family members usually referred to a lost loved one, while inmates mentioned serving time in prison.

By far, the most common reference in the open questions in general was capital punishment itself, mentioned by twenty-six of the twenty-nine respondents; fourteen said they oppose it and twelve said they support it.

Interestingly enough, some of the inmates said they favor the death penalty even though they are scheduled to die under a death sentence.

The second-most frequently mentioned topic was forgiveness which was cited in one form or another in twenty of the twenty-eight responses. In addition, there were six references to anger, hatred or bitterness, and three separate mentions of fear. There were twenty-nine responses Questions Twenty-three,

Twenty-four and Twenty-five; twenty-eight responses to Questions Twenty-two and Twenty-six and twenty-seven responses to Question Twenty-seven.

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Table 8: Qualitative Results Question Keywords Frequency ______22. Describe what attitude changes Thoughts about killer 9 you experienced since the murder. Death penalty worries 7 My life disrupted 6 Murder and suffering 5 Changed opinion on DP 4

23. What would change your position Nothing 6 on the death penalty? Changed my mind 4 Might change mind over time 3 Another murder 3 Never change 3

24. What are the reasons to support the death penalty? Violent murder 5 Killed loved one 4 Life taken 4 Seeking closure 3 None 3 Always supported death penalty 3

25. How do you think a murdered Forgive the killer 16 loved one would feel about forgiving They would feel pain 7 their killer? Want family pain to end 4 The victim suffered 4 Loved one suffered 4

26. How do you think forgiveness Pain continues 8 would affect the pain you feel? Forgiveness might help 7 Forgiving killer could help 7 Remove pain 4 Remove some pain 3

27. What kind of spiritual experience, God in my life 8 if any, have you had in your life? Forgiveness of killer 5 Had spiritual experience 4 Pray regularly 3 Death penalty changed things 3

In Chapter Six, I will discuss my conclusions and reflections on this project and the potential applications of the finding in both church and secular settings.

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CHAPTER SIX

SUMMARY AND REFLECTIONS

The seemingly endless procession of pain at Alton Coleman’s execution awakened me to the true horror of murder, both illegal and legal at the hand of the state. It took three years of writing about the death penalty to lift the scales from my eyes. In many ways, April 26, 2002, was the beginning of a journey that culminated in this project on Capital Punishment and Forgiveness.

About thirty minutes after serial killer Alton Coleman drew his last breath that day in the Death House at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility near

Lucasville, Ohio, relatives of his victims began filing into a large meeting room to speak to the news media. The trail of souls seemed to go on and on as twenty- eight people from three states gathered uncomfortably behind a lectern in the corner of a space normally used for families to visit inmates. The unbearable pain of lost loved ones etched on their faces forever connected this group of strangers. Coleman, along with his girlfriend, Debra Brown, brought them all together by a seven-week murderous rampage through Ohio, Indiana and four other states in 1984. When it was over, eight people were dead.

It was the first and only time in the two decades since Ohio resumed capital punishment in 1999 that an execution was shown both in person and on closed-circuit television, the latter only to sixteen victim-family witnesses gathered in a separate, secure room at the prison. They watched Coleman die on a two twenty-five-inch televisions before going to speak to the media, or those

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who chose to do so. The execution was not recorded or broadcast outside the prison.

Memories of that procession of hurting people burned in my brain and remain there to this day. The sheer number of people, their slow gait, the drained looks on their faces, stay with me. “It's over, and I'm glad,” said Juanita Wheat, a witness to Coleman’s lethal injection. “Thank God Almighty we can get justice and peace.” Wheat’s daughter, Vernita, nine, was the first of Coleman's eight victims (Johnson 2002).

What I took away from that horrible day were disturbing questions, not about the death penalty itself, which I already believed to be wrong, but about what happens after an execution, particularly to victim families. How would they go on with their lives knowing, at last, that the person who killed their loved one was gone for good? Would they find resolution or closure, or would the murder continue to haunt them?

I also began thinking about the impact on families of executed inmates who, by legal action of the state, also lost a loved one to homicide. How would they cope? Would bitterness overtake them?

Finally, my thoughts turned to the condemned killers who typically spend fifteen to twenty years or more on Ohio’s Death Row before they are put to death. Could they forgive themselves for their horrible crimes? Did they want forgiveness from the victim’s families? Or did they just want it all to be over?

In all this, I kept returning to the central theme of forgiveness. It seemed pain and forgiveness were the only common denominators in the murder cases

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with which I was familiar, connecting victim families, inmate families and the men

(and one woman) on Death Row. The pain was inevitable and constant, but I wondered if forgiveness was even possible in the face of such suffering and, if it was possible, would it make a difference in how they lived their lives?

I discovered that many respondents were generally willing to put aside feelings of anger and loss enough to consider meeting face-to-face with the person who took the life of their loved one, or someone whose loved they murdered in the case of inmates. Likewise, respondents seemed open to the idea of forgiving while not forgetting, a crucial step since forgiveness is a constant process and not a one-time checklist. On the other hand, many people had reservations about the thought of a life without parole in their case.

Project Goals

My overall goal, to see how forgiveness impacted the groups surveyed, was met through answers to twenty-one quantitative questions on death penalty issues. The data yield was reduced by a last-minute decision by the state not to distribute a questionnaire by mail to 250 people as we previously agreed.

However, significant findings were obtained through a combination of a paper questionnaire sent to Death Row inmates and an online SurveyMonkey questionnaire taken by victim families. Both survey methods were voluntary and anonymous.

As important, seven qualitative questions produced deeply emotional and revealing responses about forgiveness and related topics.

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Goal Number Seven: Forgiveness and Healing

“To discover the extent to which participants understand forgiveness can

facilitate emotional healing.”

The responses to the three questions under Goal Seven were the strongest of any of the seven goals, at 3.83. Clearly, the survey discovered a correlations in the minds of inmates and families between forgiveness and healing and overcoming the pain of loss and the agony of bitterness.

Respondents exhibited a significant linkage between forgiveness and healing, as indicated by scores of 3.90 on Question Sixteen, 3.87 on Question Nineteen, and

3.72 on Question Thirteen, all of which spoke to forgiveness. It was not as clear, however, the extent to which respondents were willing and able to forgive under such horrific circumstances. It may be there is a leap of faith between the desire to forgive and the persistent effort required to forgive.

In a related issue, responses to open-ended Question Twenty-six, “How do you think forgiveness would affect the pain you feel,” were revealing and starkly contrasting. Many victim family respondents expressed what appeared to be a genuine desire to forgive, not necessarily because of the biblical commandment to forgive, but borne of a need to relieve the heavy burden of pain they feel.

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Goal Number Four: Forgiveness After a Murder

“To discover the extent to which participants have attitudes about for forgiveness

after the commission of the crime.”

Getting personal makes a difference about any subject, striking different chords compared to general questions. While Goal Seven touched upon the general attitudes toward forgiveness, Goal Four took a deeper, more introspective look at the subject by interjecting, in one case, Question Twelve which queried the subject of forgiveness if the victim was a family member. The responses to three quantitative questions under Goal Four had a composite score of 3.60. About two of three respondents felt they have made progress toward emotional healing after a murder (Question Eighteen), and an equal number said that someone who murders can be forgiven. Respondents were some less willing to forgive the killer of a loved one (Question Twelve), where sixteen of twenty-nine responses were positive.

The answers to open-ended Question Twenty-seven, “What religious experience have you had?” strongly show religious beliefs, predominantly

Christian, although a few inmates indicated they are Muslim. The answers run the gamut from strong faith, to questioning God, and skepticism about religion in general. Some victim family members said religious belief sustained them through the horrible ordeal, while others said the trauma caused them to lose their faith and even leave the church, in the case of a former minister. One respondent said in their desperation they resorted to going to a spiritual medium;

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another said responding to the survey reopened old wounds from the loss of their loved one.

Some inmate respondents expressed a new-found faith in God, with a few saying that was what kept them going day-to-day on Death Row.

Goal Number One: Attitude Changes

“To discover the extent to which participants have attitudes about forgiveness for

those affected by the crime.”

This goal received a composite score of 3.51, but that includes a score of

4.03, the highest of the full survey, in response to straightforward Question One,

“My outlook on life changed after the murder.” It is impossible to not undergo changes after a murder because the inherent violence upends the lives of victim families, as well as the life of the perpetrator and the inmate’s family.

The feeling of loss, as queried in Question Twenty, were reflected in the results which found fifteen of thirty respondents said their attitude changed after the murder. By comparison, thirteen of thirty said they have resolved their anger after the crime.

Respondents said generally on related qualitative questions that their opinion on capital punishment grew stronger after the murder, although some indicated they changed their mind as a result. The open-ended Question Twenty- two, “Describe what attitude changes you experienced since the murder,” evoked a wide range of responses from victim families, with several referring to fear, anger, bitterness and hatred. There was a general feeling of distrust of other people.

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Among inmate respondents, some candidly said they deserved to die for the crime they committed. One said he did not know about the death penalty until after he was arrested for murder.

Goal Number Six: Healing and Resolution

“To discover if participants have a sense of resolution in their lives in connection

with the crime.”

The complicated concept of resolution or closure after a murder was explored in Goal Six which had a composite score of 3.51, the same as Goal

Number One. This is under the “Agreed” ranking but is still valuable because of the general consistency in answers across the board. There was an interest, albeit unintended finding under the goal because of the inadvertent duplication in

Question Seventeen and Question Twenty-One. Both ask the same thing: “It is possible to get a sense of solution after a murder.” About the same number of people agreed on both questions (sixteen and seventeen, respectively), but one out of three were neutral on Question Seventeen compared to eight on Question

Twenty-one.

The bottom line on Goal Six is there was not a strong consensus about resolution after a murder, a finding similar to academic, sociological and criminal justice research. There was no open-ended question with this goal.

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Goal Number Five: Shared Attitudes about Forgiveness

“To discover if participants have common attitudes about forgiveness related to

the death penalty.”

The questions associated with Goal Five probed deeper for respondents’ thoughts about specific issues related to forgiveness: meeting face-to-face with the murder/victim family, the fairness of life without the possibility of parole, and forgiveness without forgetting the victims. The composite score for this goal was

3.42.

The responses to Question Seven, which asked about a face to face meeting with the other party in the murder case, had the highest score, 3.72, with nineteen of twenty-nine respondents saying they would agree or strongly agree to such a meeting. I discovered there was a strong sympathy for the idea of forgiving the killer without forgiving the killer (Question Fifteen), with twenty-one of thirty respondents in support and no one neutral. Responses to Question Nine, which posed the idea of a life without parole sentence in the participant’s case, showed more disparity, with eleven responses in support, and thirteen opposed; there were six neutral responses.

The open-ended Question Twenty-five, “How do you think a murdered loved one would feel about forgiving their killer,” evoked some confusion, yet strong feelings. Several respondents said they did not know how their loved one would react, while others seemed to understand the question applied to themselves. One family member made the stark observation, “She begged for her life.” Several respondents said they could not answer the question, but others

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said their loved one would forgive rather than live with the pain of what one called a “self-cancer.”

Inmate respondents were less forthcoming, with few saying they hoped for forgiveness from the victim.

Goal Number Two: Changing Attitudes about the Death Penalty

“To discover if participants’ support for the death penalty changed over time.”

These three questions under Goal Two probed the attitudes about capital punishment before, during and after the murder that impacted their lives, resulting in a composite score of 3.22. The score for Question Two, “My support for the death penalty changed after the murder,” yielded fourteen people in agreement and seven opposed, with nine neutral, a score of 3.40. The scores for

Question Five and Question 10, which asked respondents for their attitude on capital punishment before the murder and currently, respectively, received scores of 3.30 and 2.97. There was an even split on Question Ten, with 12 respondents in favor and opposed to a death sentenced in an aggravated murder case.

The open-ended Question Twenty-three, “What would change your position on the death penalty?” brought a wide range of responses. Several respondents simply said “Nothing,” while others mentioned forgiveness. One family member responded, “Bring the murdered people back to life and then

MAYBE we would change our minds.”

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There was a marked difference of opinion among victim family members, with several saying they never supported it or came to oppose it, while others said it is the law and should remain the law, even if there is no proven deterrent to future crimes other than by the individual who is executed. Inmates who commented said there should not be a death penalty.

Goal Number Three: An Eye for an Eye

“To discover the extent to which participants believe in ‘eye for an eye” punished

as a factor in capital punishment.”

The “eye-for-an-eye” justice discussed in the Old Testament is the focus of the three questions under Goal Number Three which resulted in a composite score of 3.22. I discovered here that while eye for an eye justice is thousands of years old, survey results indicate it was not a consensus opinion among victim families and condemned killers. There was a split in responses to all three questions in under the goal, and Question Eight, which said, “I believe an execution is the only way to achieve justice in an aggravated murder case,” received the lowest score of all twenty-one questions, 2.31. Only seven of twenty-eight respondents agreed or strongly agreed.

The composite results of the questions under this goal, when examined together, seem to indicate that both victim families and inmates believe there are other options to executions, particularly life without the possibility of parole.

The open-ended Question Twenty-four, “What are the reasons to support the death penalty?” prompted a wide range of responses, which some saying they do not support it, saw no reason to support it, or felt that it made no

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difference. Others said it could provide closure to victim families or at the least prevent the individual murderer from killing again.

A few respondents expressed a clear desire for revenge. “To allow the person that committed the murder to feel the fear and pain their victim felt,” one respondent said. “The Bible, Eye for an Eye, Tooth for Tooth. Forgive only those who are your brothers in the Lord. Love they neighbor if your neighbor ain't

Satan,” another said.

Some victim family respondents said an execution could bring closure to victims; others suggested closure after an execution was a “myth.” A feeling expressed by some was that the death penalty should be reserved for only the most heinous murders but not all murders. Several said it guarantees that person will never harm anyone again.

Application

The central focus of this project, that forgiveness is crucial in dealing with the devastation caused by murder, can be applied universally within the church and the secular setting. Not many churches or religious organizations have specific ministries aimed at helping those who have lost loved ones to violence.

But some churches do, and many have outreach to those suffering physical and psychological losses from sexual assault, childhood abuse, domestic violence, violent crimes and more. The common element here, as in the case of homicide, is a painful loss cause by the intentional acts of another person. In most of the cases, the damage inflicted cannot be undone, so it follows that the mission of

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the church is to support the person in coping with loss and forgiving the sins of the person who caused the injury.

The Lord’s Prayer is instructive in many ways but especially in dealing with forgiveness. “Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us” (Luke 11:4A). The Gospel of Matthew has the same sentiment, using a different word, “And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors”

(Matt. 6:12), but the key word is the same: forgive. What Jesus was telling his disciples, in instructing them how to pray, was that their sins, debts and trespasses have been forgiven by God through the sacrifice of his son. Thus,

Jesus is saying people should respond in kind by forgiving those who have sinned and hurt them.

That is easier said than done even in minor situations, but in the case of a murder forgiveness is a mountain to climb, or perhaps like Sisyphus pushing the boulder uphill. Forgiveness is a repeated action, never a one-time practice as we saw when Peter asks Jesus how many times he should forgive those who sin against him. He responds, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times”

(Matt. 18:22).

The application point of this in the church setting is to practice forgiveness in general and a specific sense, through outreach ministry teaching people the enormous value of forgiveness for their souls, their healing and peace of mind. I suggest that in larger and urban churches a specific ministry aimed at people who have lost someone to murder could be very helpful to congregants struggling to fill the void of a lost loved one. Given the context of recent

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awareness of soul-damaging racism, forgiveness in that area could be helpful was well.

I would urge church leaders to deal directly in forgiveness teaching, perhaps in a sermon series, classes, or small groups. It is essential to Christian teaching and life, but is often overlooked. People often give lip service to, “I forgive you,” but a few words on the lips are not imprinted as they must be on the heart for forgiveness to mean something.

In the secular world, a possible application of this lesson is something many prisons and correctional institutions already do - victim-offender dialogues.

These dialogues involve face-to-face meetings between victims and the inmate who injured them, or in the case of a murder, a loved one. They are operated in tightly controlled settings because of the potential for the eruption of disturbing reactions. But as I know from the survey results, about two of three respondents said they would be very likely or likely to meet face-to-face with the person with the murderer or the victim family (Table 5, Chapter 5). In the case of Joey

Murphy (described in Chapter 3), a niece of Murphy’s victim agreed to meet with

Murphy and afterward said she forgave him for taking her aunt’s life. Forgiveness is possible and has great healing effects.

Expanding victim-offender dialogues could have great value in the prison setting, but also perhaps in earlier stages of the criminal justice process, such as the courts. There are, of course, limits on time and the cost of such procedures, but the result could be invaluable for victims, offenders and the justice system.

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“If Christianity is about anything,” Brian Zahnd writes, “it is about forgiveness” (Zahnd 2013, 1).

Further Study

More empirical research should be done on the subject of forgiveness related to murder and violent crime. The results I obtained substantially showed the need for and positive impact of forgiveness in dealing with capital murder cases. However, I was hampered by obstacles in the survey process by my own design, a last-minute change of mind by attorneys for the state, and distrust from

Death Row inmates about completing the questionnaire. All of these contributed to a less than robust response rate.

Further study should be done specifically with victim families in particular, perhaps through public or non-profit victim organizations, as Parents of Murdered

Children, Journey of Hope, Murder Victims’ Families for Reconciliation and others. While the opinions and attitudes of Death inmates formed a vital part of this survey, I conclude that further research would be better aimed at victim families. It is that field of endeavor where I think more inquiry would bear fruit.

Personal Goals

A personal goal I hoped to see when I began this project was to see the end of the death penalty in Ohio. Not surprisingly, that has not happened after six years of work and the law remains on the books in the state. That outcome was not connected directly with this project, but I remain hopeful to see it come true some day. I saw no conflict in my opinion opposing the death penalty when I began this work and see none today. If anything, my research of biblical history,

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theology, contemporary literature and the criminal justice system strengthened my resolve that God is, and always should be, the sole arbiter of life and death.

There is positive news on the execution front since the death penalty has been at a standstill in Ohio since 2018 because of the state’s continuing inability to buy legal drugs required for the lethal injection. Gov. Mike DeWine has postponed and rescheduled several executions due to the drug situation, pushing them to 2021 at the earliest. With the number of executions and public support for executions declining, I hope to see the end of state-sanctioned homicide.

My personal goals were:

1. To reaffirm my commitment to forgiveness to those who offend me.

2. To be a better witness about God’s grace from the lessons I have earned from reporting on capital punishment.

3. To better understand the heart of Jesus about loving others and to better reflect that in my own life.

Goal One: Affirming my commitment to forgiveness

My research into forgiveness resulted in gathering more knowledge but also considerable soul-searching. I realized that I could not expect others to forgive unless I also was willing to learn to forgive. As is often the case, God intervened at the right time by injecting some much needed direction through a sermon at Vineyard Columbus, my home church, delivered by Pastor Eric

Pickerill on Sunday, Nov. 10, 2019. The sermon, entitled Forgive Us Our Sins, was part of a series on the Lord’s Prayer. Pickerill said what sets Christianity apart from other world religions is its focus on the “the incredible gift of

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forgiveness” (https://www.vineyardcolumbus.org/video/forgive-us-our-sins). While most people focus on God’s forgiveness of our sins, there is a corollary expectation that we will forgive others who sin against us, Pickerill said.

Forgiveness isn’t just meant to come to you, it’s meant to come through you to others Forgiveness isn’t minimizing. Forgiveness isn’t saying it’s okay. Forgiveness isn’t saying that there shouldn’t be consequences because there often should be consequences. Forgiveness isn’t even forgetting. (Pickerill 2019)

Pickerill’s words crystalized for me what I learned throughout this project: forgiving is an ongoing process that I experience from God to me and from me to others. It cannot be abbreviated, there are no shortcuts, and no checklist to be completed. Forgiveness is an ongoing requirement of being Christian.

I often remember how angry I became when a former supervisor rebuked me for criticizing a fellow employee for not wanting to do a certain task when I, in a different situation, had balked petulantly at doing an assigned job that I considered drudgery. My supervisor, who is a follower of Jesus, quoted Luke

6:41 to me, “Why do you look at the speck of dust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?” I was angry that he was quoting the

Bible at me, but he was right I see now because I was looking selfishly at my own interest and not that of others.

Goal Two: To be God’s witness from my capital punishment experience

As noted in Chapter 3, I became concerned over a period of time about how I was reacting, as a Christian, to my professional duties observing and reporting on executions. I did not want it to be just another part of the job of being a journalist, albeit an unusually stressful part of the job.

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That was the point where I approached Rich Nathan, senior pastor of

Vineyard Columbus, to discuss the conflicts I was feeling. Was I taking this duty too lightly? After we prayed, Pastor Nathan said he believed God had purposely put me, as a journalist and a Christian, in a dark place to serve as his witness.

There was a purpose to it, my pastor said, and it was not simply a coincidence of profession and Christian belief.

That prayer and conversation took me out of a dark place and allowed me to feel a sense of purpose as I continued with my duties as a reporter covering death penalty cases until my retirement in September 2017. The last execution I witnessed was that of Ronald Phillips on July 26, 2017, as I described in a video for the Columbus Dispatch (https://youtu.be/dyog6QFM_Bo).

This project is a big part of fulfilling my goal of being a witness for Christ by the research, writing and completion. I hope that it will have an impact beyond my own cognition by showing that forgiveness, and not more death, is the answer to dealing with murder.

Goal Three: To better understand the heart of Jesus about loving others

This is the most compelling and demanding of my three personal goals, but I believe it in some ways was the easiest to accomplish. I say that because my research, from the ancient Code of Hammurabi, through the time of Jesus’ ministry, to the current day is a straight line from vengeance to mercy. I see clearly that an “eye-for-an-eye” was the accepted norm in the days before Christ, mostly as a leveler to reduce blood feuds by balancing justice.

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Those old ways of doing things changed forever with the coming of Christ.

While not disregarding the old law, he proclaimed that in the Kingdom of God there would be no revenge, no killing for killing’s sake. Instead, there would be forgiveness, as modeled by Jesus on the cross asking the Father to forgive those who put him to death “for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34).

That heart of forgiveness is the heart of Jesus. While I know I cannot achieve that state of grace, I have a much better understanding of Jesus and his command that we forgive.

Concluding Thoughts

There were times, as a journalist, when I would look through the Ohio

Capital Crimes Report (https://www.ohioattorneygeneral.gov/2018/, the Attorney

General’s annual update on the status of death penalty cases in Ohio, and conclude because of the horrible, unfathomable murders committed, that I did not mind if the killers were no longer on earth. The short, pithy paragraphs describing each crime and the victims are ghastly and mind-numbing.

My view of that book changed over time with my return to church after a three-decade hiatus and embarking on my studies at Asbury Theological

Seminary and later Ashland Theological Seminary. While my horror and sadness at the brutal nature of the crimes did not go away, I learned that taking a life to compensate for the taking of a life did little to help the victim family, created new victims, and often produced a miscarriage of justice when innocent people were put to death or jailed for decades for crimes they did not commit. There is

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indisputable evidence of racial, socio-economic and geographic bias in the criminal justice system.

Through extensive research for this project, I learned the history of the death penalty, theological arguments pro and con, and the evolution of the capital punishment process to something that now serves more to mollify the witnesses, and to appease the general public, than to execute justice.

More importantly, I learned that there seems to be only one proven way to cope with the loss of a murdered loved one – and that is through forgiveness. An execution may provide some closure because there will be no more trials, hearings, execution dates and media coverage. But even through the limited sample gleaned by my survey, it is clear that those people who learned to forgive, while not forgetting, were best able to overcome and cope with the enormous grief and sense of loss when a loved one is murdered.

Forgiving is never easy, never a one-time action. It takes forgiveness over time, maybe even a lifetime, to let go of even a fragment of the grief, bitterness, pain and anger that a murder causes. But that bitterness, if unrelieved, is a ruthless cancer eating someone from the inside.

That is the lesson I learned here: forgiveness is not just a part of

Christianity – it is the focus of Christianity.

I hope this project can be an incentive to help people to learn to practice forgiveness to heal the pain they suffer, not just from murder, but from other crimes and injustices.

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APPENDIX ONE

ASHLAND THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY

A DISCOVERY PROJECT ON FORGIVENESS AND CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

A PROJECT PROPOSAL SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF ASHLAND THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF MINISTRY

BY ALAN W. JOHNSON

ASHLAND, OHIO MARCH 8, 2018

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Purpose Statement

The purpose of this project is to discover how forgiveness contributes to the feeling of resolution among murder victim families and inmates convicted of murder in the state of Ohio. The research question is: How does forgiveness contribute to the feeling of resolution among murder victim families and inmates convicted of murder in the state of Ohio?

Overview

The purpose of this project is to discover if, and how, forgiveness impacts people directly affected by murder in Ohio. I will look at families of those who have been murdered and, in the same way, examine if forgiveness is a factor in the lives of men on Death Row who have a capital punishment sentence. The participants will be surveyed via an assessment administered either on paper or online in the case of the victim families, and on paper exclusively in the case of

Death Row inmates in the custody of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and

Correction. I will evaluate the results of both surveys using an online instrument.

My goal is to evaluate first, if forgiveness is a factor in how people in the two target groups cope with grief in their lives after a murder is committed.

Secondly, to the extent that forgiveness is a factor, I want to see how it can be cultivated though the heart of Jesus to help heal their wounds and improve their lives.

Foundations

For nearly half of my 44-years as professional newspaper journalist, I researched and wrote about capital punishment in Ohio and the United States.

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For the last 15 years of that period, I was on my Christian walk, including nine years as a seminary student. In those roles, I observed the incalculable, agonizing impact of the crime of murder on victim families, the offenders involved, the prison staff, and the public at large. Moreover, it became apparent that God was there, sorrowful but active, as man’s instrumentality of death ground relentlessly forward. I became a part of the process.

Capital punishment has existed nearly as long as the crime of murder.

Taking the life of another human being, along with other crimes, resulted in a sentence of death for more than two millennia. While the number of executions has declined dramatically in recent years in the U.S., it remains the law of the land in 31 states, including Ohio, where 55 men have been lethally injected since

1999 (Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction 2018).

The bigger question is how, or if, forgiveness plays a role in the lives of a family dealing with the sorrow, bitterness and anger over the loss of a loved one.

Proponents of capital punishment argue that executing the killer brings justice and closure to the situation, but does it really? Does the death of another person, an eye for an eye, remove any of the sorrow over the loss of a loved one? I will argue that is not the case in the vast majority of situations.

On the other side, how does the person convicted of murder and sentenced to die for their crime deal with the guilt and regret for their actions, assuming they feel guilt and sorrow? How do they find forgiveness for the horrible act they did while they live in solitary confinement for what can be 15 or

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20 years prior to an execution? We know that Jesus forgives all sins, but forgiveness does not come easily in such horrific circumstances.

The foundations of this paper will incorporate a summary of my personal background, in my capacity as a journalist and my journey as a Christian and a seminary student, and the overlap of those two areas that led me to this point.

The other foundations will focus on a biblical and theological context of the “eye for an eye” aspect of the death penalty, as well as a deeper historical look at how capital punishment evolved in the U.S., became entrenched, and is in a slow retreat. Finally, I will examine the contemporary view of capital punishment with an eye toward the future.

Personal Foundation

My personal experience with capital punishment began many months before the Feb. 19, 1999, execution of Wilford Berry, the Cleveland man who became known as “the volunteer” because he voluntarily waived several layers of legal appeals that would have prolonged his life by years. As a state government reporter for the Columbus Dispatch newspaper from 1990 to 2017, my assignment included coverage of state prisons and by default writing about executions. The potential for an execution in Ohio was a significant news event because, at the time, no one had been put to death in the state since 1963, a 36- year hiatus during which the capital punishment law was found unconstitutional by the courts before being reinstated in 1973, overturned and finally put in place again in 1981 (ODRC). There were no executions between 1973 and 1999.

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I have been a Christian my entire adult life, but I drifted in my faith for many years. In 1999, I was somewhat ambivalent about capital punishment because I knew, from my research, the horror of what murderers had done and I was confident that the death penalty, while troubling, was appropriate because it was then and still is the law of the land in Ohio. Reading just a few pages of the

Attorney General’s Ohio Capital Crimes Annual Report, which provides details of the crime and the legal status of every case on Death Row, was a chilling experience, leading me to believe some people committed such heinous crimes that society would be better off without them. Yet my conscience nagged me because I knew that with every execution, new victims were created, namely family members of the condemned inmate who had joined the ranks of others who lost a loved one. To what end?

It was not until I began attending Vineyard Columbus church about 2005 that I began having grave reservations about the death penalty and my job reporting on executions. My conflict intensified once I began attending Asbury

Theological Seminary in 2009 and later transferring to Ashland Theological

Seminary to complete my master’s degree and begin the doctoral program. In the meantime, I continued reporting on and attending executions, witnessing 21 in person.

I became convinced that killing is wrong through a season of prayer, soul searching, reading and studying the Bible, especially the New Testament. I continued doing my job as a reporter, witnessing and writing about executions, but it began troubling me that I did not find being a witness to death more

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disturbing than I did. I approached my pastor, Rich Nathan, and we discussed and prayed about my role in the death penalty process. Pastor Nathan concluded, and I agreed, that God wanted me to be there in the execution chamber as his witness to the ugliness of death. Neither of us discerned the exact purpose for my presence there, but nevertheless I took some comfort in having joined with my pastor in prayer about it and that my reporting was not borne of a desire only to report on important news.

Of many memorable experiences covering executions, one stands out: the execution of serial killer Alton Coleman on April 25, 2002. Coleman and his girlfriend, Debra Brown, killed eight people in six states over a two-month period in 1984. Coleman was on Death Row in Ohio and two other states (Capital

Crimes Report, 89-91).

It was not Coleman’s execution, which I watched via closed circuit television along with some victim family members, as much as what happened afterward that burned into my memory. Family members of the murder victims were permitted to speak to reporters after the execution was completed. Because there were so many victims, people began streaming into a prison visitor center that served as a media briefing room. I was stunned at the pain etched on the faces of the survivors as about 30 people filled a corner of the room. I realized two things: killing creates life-long pain for survivors and that capital punishment would not and could not erase that pain. Another death, however legally justified, would not offer comfort and resolution, but only add another victim family to the

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parade of pain. That memory was the jumping off point for what would become my current journey into the death penalty.

Biblical Foundation

The biblical foundation of my project touches on both the Old and New

Testament. While there are many scriptural points to discuss, there are two touchstones: Exodus 21:23-25 (NIV) which says “life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise, ” and Matthew 5:38 (NIV), “You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.” These form the bookends of my biblical foundation.

They approach the subject of capital punishment very differently, but the

New Testament is informed by the Old Testament view of lex talionis, the concept that retaliation or revenge should be equivalent to the loss (Hanks 2002,

68), as described in Exodus 21:23-25. The view of revenge or retribution is changed forever by the coming of Christ Jesus. Essentially, it is abolished by

Jesus in favor of forgiveness.

God has God made mankind” (Gen 9: 5-6 NIV).

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But a conflict quickly arises in Exodus where God hands down the Ten

Commandments to the people of Israel. “You shall not murder” (Exod. 20:13

NIV), although the King James version translates the commandment as “Thou shall not kill” (Exod 20:13 KJ). There is a significant difference between the two descriptions that I will discuss in my paper.

In the full version of my paper, I will delve into Mosaic Law and older set of laws known as the Code of Hammurabi, in which the death penalty played a significant role in many offenses. Before the time of Moses and Mosaic Law, civilizations sprang up in the area of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers as cities developed and the transition began to a less nomadic lifestyle than experienced by the shepherds who previously roamed the land (Hanks 2002, 29). This area of

Mesopotamia was the center of the powerful kingdom of Babylon, ruled over by

Hammurabi, the most famous Babylonian king whose reign lasted from 1810 BC to 1750 B.C. Although law codes have been found in existence pre-dating it, the

Code of Hammurabi is the earliest, intact set of rules known to exist (Hanks

2002, 29).

The Code of Hammurabi is the first know reference to lex talionis, where the death penalty, as a civilized tradition, had its beginnings. The Code included more than two dozen crimes for which the death penalty was proscribed, many of which by modern standards seem wildly out of proportion to the nature of the crime, including witchcraft, theft, perjury, selling lost property, kidnapping, detaining a fugitive slave, housebreaking and highway robbery.

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Hebrew law took another step up the ladder of civilization by requiring a greater level of certainty for a conviction in a death penalty matter. In our modern criminal justice system, the standard for a conviction is “beyond a reasonable doubt.” But the Mosaic code established a “standard of proof required amounted to virtual certainty” (Marshall 2001, 207). There were 23 judges in capital cases and if the verdict was guilty with death as the possible punishment, the judges were required to go off in pairs to further deliberate, not returning with a decision until the following morning (Hanks 2002, 82).

I found three significant situations in the Old Testament where murder was not punished by death. The first is Cain’s murder of his brother Abel in Genesis

4, a foundational example because God himself forswears punishment by death for Abel, instead banishing him from the kingdom, at the same time protecting him from death by revenge. This can be seen as the highest example of radical forgiveness because by any standard, ancient, modern or in between, Cain deserved the death penalty. His killed his brother violently and with premeditation with no motive other than anger and jealousy. Yet God did not require a life for a life, but sent Cain away with a threat against those who might seek revenge to harm or kill him.

The second significant murder involved Moses as spelled out in Exodus 2 where Moses sees “an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own people.

Looking this way and that and seeing no one, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand” (Exodus 2:11-12 NIV). When his deed was discovered by Pharaoh

“he tried to kill Moses, but Moses fled from Pharaoh and went to live in Midian.”

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God forgave Moses and forged him into one of the great leaders of Israel, using him to free the Hebrew slaves from bondage in Egypt and leading them to the Promised Land (even though Moses himself was not allowed to set foot in the new land, there is nothing specific in the Bible indicating this was punishment for murder).

A third killing in the Old Testament involves premeditated murder, treachery, adultery and possibly rape. This is a chapter from the life of King

David that unfolds in 2 Samuel 11-12. David, while home from the war, became infatuated with Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, one of the officers in his army. He sent for Bathsheba, had sex with her, and she became pregnant, any of which could have been considered capital crimes under Mosaic Law. However, David compounds his sin by ordering Uriah sent to the front lines of the fiercest fighting with specific instructions that he be put in the line of fire and killed. When his plot is accomplished, David cavalierly shrugs off the death of his commander (and his lover’s husband), saying “the sword devours one as well as another” (2 Samuel

25 NIV).

David committed what in modern parlance would be a capital crime with aggravated circumstances, almost certainly punishable by the death penalty even though he did not murder Uriah by his own hand. Once again, however,

God chose not to impose the death penalty on David, instead sending the prophet Nathan to him to expose his treachery and explain his punishment.

Through Nathan, God decrees to David,

The sword will never depart from your house…Out of your own household I am going to bring calamity on you. Before your very eyes I will take your

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wives and give them to one who is close to you, and he will sleep with your wives in broad daylight. You did it in secret, but I will do this thing in broad daylight before all Israel. (2 Samuel 12:10-12)

In none of the three above cases does God impose the death penalty.

“With Yahweh, there is always openness to repentance and forgiveness.

Punishment is never his final word” (Hanks 2002, 98).

The birth and ministry of Jesus irrevocably changed the landscape of the world in so many ways, including capital punishment. In the Beatitudes in the gospel of Matthew, Jesus emphasized he was not on earth to usurp the old laws of his people, specifically the Mosaic Law.

Jesus, by example, counters the concept of lex talionis, saying,

It was a revolutionary departure from everything that came before in any civilization anywhere on earth. Jesus was setting out new rules for the Kingdom of God on earth, a kingdom that was on the horizon but had not yet arrived. In the Kingdom of God, if someone was struck, they should not retaliate, but instead turn the other cheek, Jesus said. There would be no taking of a life for a life and no death penalty, no revenge by striking back at someone who strikes you, no

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stealing a shirt when someone steals yours. The scope of what Jesus said is stunning in its purity and certainly must have been startling to the ears of listeners steeped in ancient laws that focused on retaliation. Jesus was not simply saying “It is time to change the old ways,” but heralding new ways of behaving not envisioned on earth since the fall in the Garden of Eden.

Theological Foundation

The prime theological themes in my project are sin, punishment and forgiveness. We know from reading scripture that taking a human life is a sin, but the imperative moral and theological question here is about the appropriate punishment for murder, taking into account the teaching of Jesus. Forgiveness is the over-arching theological theme as it applies both to those who commit the crime and those who suffer from the crime.

With the first murder of Abel by Cain, violence entered God’s creation. It is instructive that God did not decree death as the appropriate punishment for the first murder, instead banishing Cain. There could not have been a clearer cut cry for punishment by death, but God did not see it that way, choosing forgiveness.

Theologians have wrestled with the idea of murder and punishment for centuries. One of the first to opine on the subject was St. Augustine of Hippo

(354-430 AD), an influential Christian theologian from northern Africa. While

Augustine, like others, struggled with the idea of taking a human life as punishment for the taking of a life, he said there are “certain exceptions, as when

God authorizes killing by a general law . . . Since agent of authority is but a

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sword in the hand, and is not responsible for the killing, it is in no way contrary to the commandment, ‘Thou shalt not kill’” (McGivern 1997, 41).

St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), an Italian priest, theologian and philosopher, also was uncomfortable with the idea of a life for a life, but wrote on several occasions that it was acceptable to maintain the security of the state.

Aquinas compared it to a situation in which a physician “quite properly and beneficially amputates a diseased organ if it threatens the corruption of the body”

(McGivern 1997, 116).

Theological questions about the death penalty frequently pivot on the idea of retributive versus restorative justice. Retributive justice is essentially revenge and punishment, while restorative justice focuses on restoring and rehabilitating the convicted criminal. The line between the two concepts becomes problematic when applied to capital punishment because it is black and white: either the killer is put to death or they are spared. There is no middle ground.

Some theologians focus on atonement, arguing that the guilty person must atone for their sins, in the case of murder by losing their life. The rebuttal to that is that Jesus Christ “offered the final and perfect atonement, once and for all, for all persons, all times, and all places when he died on the cross” (Recinella 2004,

90). Therefore, under this view, the author says, “the state-sponsored killing of a human being adds nothing to God’s honor, yields no increase to God’s victory over evil, and fails to magnify in any way the compelling moral force of God’s love for us” (Recinella 2004, 91).

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The other major theological theme of this paper is forgiveness. Calls to forgiveness and grace are throughout scripture and theological discourse, past and present. “Whether we look to the Lord’s prayer or Jesus’s death on the cross or his resurrection or the great creeds of the church, we are never far from the theme of forgiveness-for if Christianity isn’t about forgiveness, it’s about nothing at all” (Zahnd 2013, 1).

Jesus instructed his disciples in how to pray to God, saying, “And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors” (Matt. 6: 11-12 NIV). In the

Apostles’ Creed, Christians express belief in “the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic

While central to Christianity, forgiveness is not easy, especially in the case of murder, and it certainly is not a one-time event, but must be repeated over and over, sometimes on a daily basis. In my paper, I will explore the nature of forgiveness with specific focus on the difficulty of forgiving someone who has taken the life of a loved one, and conversely the struggle of seeking forgiveness when you have taken a life.

Historical Foundation

In the historical foundation I will discuss how the attitude about capital punishment in the Roman Catholic Church had not changed substantially for hundreds of years by the time of the Council of Trent, an ecumenical gathering

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extending from 1545 to 1563. Much remained intact from the approaches espoused by Augustine and Aquinas. In fact, the Roman Catechism that resulted from Trent spelled out specific exceptions to the Fifth Commandment forbidding killing, at the same time urging forgiveness for those who sinned by killing

(Roman Catechism of the Council of Trent, 1566, Part III, 5, n. 4).

The use of the death penalty carried over to the U.S. colonies as they were settled, largely by Europeans. Nearly all the original punished numerous crimes with executions, as “the dark side of religion played all too large a role,” writes James J. McGivern. In many cases, capital punishment laws in the colonies “quoted from the scriptures complete with the chapter and verse cites”

(Recinella 2004, 66).

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to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1892 in which he argued that capital punishment was wrong practically and in the eyes of God. He said death penalty supporters “stuffed their ears with cobwebs of brutal prejudice, that the lessons taught by the Sermon on the Mount might not now enter their hearts” (McGivern

1997, 311).

While there were some shifts over the next centuries, seismic change in the Roman Catholic Church occurred with the Second Vatican Council, or

Vatican II, from 1962-1965. In brief, the council deliberations moved the church away from the past attitude of capital punishment as a means of removing a diseased limb or organ. Pope John Paul XXIII set the stage for change with issuance of a papal encyclical, Pacem in Terris, on April 11, 1963 (Vatican.va,

John XXIII).

The theological movement against capital punishment further gained strength in 1968 when the National Council of Churches of Christ came out against the death penalty, citing 10 reasons, including the “worth of human life,” doubt about the deterrent effect and a need for rehabilitation rather than the ultimate punishment (McGivern 1997, 333-334).

News Agency 2016).

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Contemporary Foundation

In the contemporary foundation I will look at some of the supporters and opponents of capital punishment. Many if not most modern opponents advocate abolishing capital punishment without exception. But a significant number of contemporary religious leaders, mostly conservative evangelicals, support the idea that the death penalty is acceptable for those who are guilty of the most heinous crimes.

Capital punishment is not without its contemporary believers, including pastors and theologians who firmly believe the “eye for an eye” of the Old

Testament is irrefutable gospel truth, undiminished by time and the coming of

Christ Jesus. There are some evangelicals who hold the interesting position of staunchly opposing abortion but supporting capital punishment because, in their opinion, the latter does not involving taking an “innocent life.” Some even favor death for convicted drug dealers.

The vast majority of modern literature on the subject, however, is outright abolitionist or opposed on the basis of religious, moral and fairness grounds.

Some simply argue executions do not serve as a deterrent to more killing and are not economically justifiable.

Shane Claiborne takes on the issue head-on. A founder of an inner-city

Philadelphia faith community, Claiborne’s book, Executing Grace, has a sub-title that spells out his position unequivocally: How the Death Penalty Killed Jesus and Why It’s Killing Us. Claiborne equates modern executions with the crucifixion of Jesus, concluding both were morally wrong and repugnant to God. “When it

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come to the death penalty, we’ve put Jesus on the back burner, buried him in the closet, mistaking the things he said for good advice but not applicable to the real world of politics” he writes (Claiborne 2016, 77).

He further argues that the idea capital punishment is biblically based runs contrary not only to Jesus’s teachings, but also to the beliefs of the first 300 years of Christianity.

Row inmates, leading to her book, Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty. Prejean’s activism has moved full-force, including social media where she is very active on Twitter. Through her experience in death cases, Prejean learned the difficult lesson of how to balance opposing death and encouraging forgiveness at the same time.

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On Jan. 18, 2018, Prejean posted a Tweet minutes after the execution of

Anthony Shore in Texas, put to death for brutally murdering five people. “Anthony’s crimes were horrific. Four young women and a girl lost their lives. We mourn their loss and recognize the pain their families have experienced. At the same time, we must oppose the government sponsored killing that took place tonight” (Helen Prejean, Twitter post).

Context

The participants for this survey will come from two groups: inmates on

Death Row in Ohio prisons and surviving family members of murder victims. Both groups will be surveyed anonymously with the cooperation of Gary Mohr, director of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. All surveys to inmates will be voluntary and will be distributed and collected by state employees. The

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inmates do no not have access to computers so their surveys must be completed on paper. They will be coded with a number only so I will intentionally never know the identity of the respondents. There are 144 inmates on Death Row, but the response rate is uncertain.

The same survey will be sent to victim families though the Victims

Services Office of the prisons agency. It will also be anonymous and, if possible,

I would like to allow respondents to submit surveys on SurveyMonkey as well as on paper. I will not know the identities of the respondents. At this point, I do not have an estimate of how many victim families I will be able to survey.

Definition of Terms

Capital Punishment – The legal process by which a person is sentenced to death for having committed a murder.

Death Penalty – The provision of federal and state law providing for an execution by any of several means, varying from state to state, for people convicted of murder under specified circumstances.

Rehabilitation and Correction, Execution Protocol. https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/files/pdf/ExecutionProtocols/OhioProtocol10.07.2016. pdf).

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Lex Talionis – A Latin term meaning the punishment should be in direct proportion to the nature and severity of the crime, as in “an eye for an eye”

(Hanks 2002, 68).

Project Goals

The purpose of this project is to discover if forgiveness contributes to the feeling of resolution among murder victim families and inmates convicted of murder in the state of Ohio. The research question is: Has the concept of forgiveness helped families of murder victims and those inmates on Death Row to find resolution and peace in their lives?

This section includes the following specific goals:

1. To discover the extent to which participants’ have attitudes about

forgiveness for those affected by the crime.

8. To discover the extent of participants’ beliefs about capital punishment.

9. To discover the extent to which participants believe in “an eye for an

eye” punishment as a factor in favoring execution.

10. To discover the extent to which participants consider the concept of

forgiveness after the commission of the crime.

11. To discover the extent to which participants have a common attitude

about forgiveness related to the death penalty.

12. To discover the extent to which participants have a sense of resolution

in their lives in connection with the crime.

13. To discover the extent to which participants understand forgiveness

can facilitate emotional healing.

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Design, Procedure and Assessment

The design is a survey assessment provided on paper and online to people directly affected by homicide in Ohio. I will ask demographic questions to establish sortable parameters.

The focus will be on the impact of murder on their lives and if they have engaged in any process of forgiveness though church, counseling or some other means. I expect this will yield insights about the role of forgiveness, if any, in the death penalty process. That hopefully will lead to some conclusions about how forgiveness and grace could be enhanced to help people though the crisis.

The assessment will include questions based on each of the project goals.

I plan to use a Semantic Differential Scale to measure the results from the surveys.

Personal Goals

A personal goal, although obtainable through this project, is to see the end of the death penalty. I am struck and humbled by the self-sacrificing majesty of

Jesus, his teaching about restorative justice and not retributive punishment. I see no clear path to argue that Jesus, the messiah and embodiment of love, kindness and forgiveness, would approve of the legal, state-sanctioned murder of a human being. It simply defies His divine nature to think otherwise.

That said, my personal goals are as follows:

4. To reaffirm my commitment to forgiveness to those who offend me.

5. To be a better witness about God’s grace from the lessons I have earned

from reporting on capital punishment.

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6. To better understand the heart of Jesus about loving others and to better

reflect that in my own life.

Field Consultant

My field consultant is Andrea Dean Carson, a retired long-time public information officer for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction who was present for many executions, including several I attended. Her direct experience dealing with both inmates and victim families will be invaluable to my project.

161

REFERENCES

Catholic News Agency. “There’s no excuse for it: Pope Francis on the Death Penalty.” June 22, 2016. Accessed January 25, 2018. https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/theres-no-excuse-for-it-pope- francis-on-the-death-penalty-53312.

Claiborne, Shane. 2016. Executing Grace: How the Death Penalty Killed Jesus and Why It's Killing Us. San Francisco: HarperOne.

Farkas, David S. 2011. “In Search of the Biblical Hammurabi,” Jewish Bible Quarterly. Jul-Sep2011, Vol. 39 Issue 3, p159-164. Accessed Nov. 28, 2016.

Friedman, Lawrence M. 1993. Crime and Punishment in American History. New York: Basic Books.

Hanks, Gardner C. 2002. Capital Punishment and the Bible. Scottdale, PA: Herald Press.

Johns, C.H.W. 1903. The Code of Hammurabi. Lexington, KY: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.

Lind, Millard. 2004. The Sound of Sheer Silence and the Killing State, the Death Penalty and the Bible. Teleford, PA: Cascadia Publishing House . Marshall, Christopher D. 2001. Beyond Retribution, a New Testament Vision for Justice, Crime and Punishment. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing.

Megivern, James J. 1997. The Death Penalty: An Historical and Theological Survey. New York: Paulist Press.

Meninger, William A. 1999. The Process of Forgiveness. New York: Continuum Publishing.

Muller, Steve. 2002. Bible and Capital Punishment. Mustang, OK: Tate Publishing.

Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. Capital Punishment. http://www.drc.ohio.gov/capital-punishment.

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Owens, Eric C., John D. Carlson, and Eric P. Elshtain, eds. 2004. Religion and the Death Penalty: A Call for Reckoning. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.

Recinella, Dale S. 2004. The Biblical Truth About America’s Death Penalty. Lebanon, NH: Northeastern University Press.

Sider, Ronald J. 2012. The Early Church on Killing: A Comprehensive Sourcebook on War, Abortion, and Capital Punishment. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic.

Stevenson, Bryan. 2014. Just Mercy, A Story of Justice and Redemption. New York: Spiegel & Grau.

Zahnd, Brian. 2013. Radical Forgiveness, God’s Call to Unconditional Love. Lake Mary, FL: Charisma House.

Zer-Kavok, Mordecai. 1998. “The Code of Hammurabi and the Laws of the Torah.” Jewish Bible Quarterly 26 no 2 Ap-Je 1998, p 107-110. 1998. Accessed December 1, 2016.

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APPENDIX TWO

Hello,

I’m a doctoral student at Ashland Theological Seminary working on a research project on capital punishment in Ohio.

I was a newspaper reporter for many years, but I retired last September and I’m now focused on researching and writing about the impact of the death penalty on victim families and those on Death Row and their families. As part of my research, I am asking for your help in completing a survey.

The enclosed survey is voluntary but I hope you will complete it to help me get a better understanding of how people feel who have been the most deeply affected by murder and capital punishment. No one feels more strongly about this subject than those of you who are receiving this survey.

The survey is completely anonymous. I will never ask for or use your name, nor do I want to know it. Your name and identity will never be known to me or published in any form.

The survey is NOT for a newspaper story but is for academic purposes and will be published as part of a much larger doctoral dissertation, with complete anonymity regarding the survey. Any use of information beyond that, such as for a book or other academic purposes, will follow the same strict no- name rule.

164

The questions are straightforward but I realize some will be difficult.

Please answer as best as you are able.

Most of the questions ask to respond with a scale, from strongly disagree to strongly agree. A few questions ask for a written response. Again, please respond as much as you feel comfortable doing.

Thank you in advance for helping with what I think is an important subject in the state of Ohio and our nation.

Best regards,

Alan Johnson

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Capital Punishment Survey

Present age

☐ 20-25

☐ 26-30

☐ 31-35

☐ 36-40

☐ 41-45

☐ 46-50

☐ 51-55

☐ 56-60

☐ 61-65

☐ 66-70

☐ 71-75

☐ More than 75

Gender

166

☐ Male

☐ Female

Education

☐ Primary

☐ High school

☐ College

☐ Graduate/Professional school

Please check the box number corresponding to your agreement with the following statements, according to the Likert Scale below:

☐ 1. Strongly disagree

☐ 2. Disagree

☐ 3. Neutral

☐ 4. Agree

☐ 5. Strongly agree

1. My outlook on life has changed because 1 2 3 4 5 long-lasting effects of an aggravated murder.

2. My support for the death penalty changed 1 2 3 4 5 after the murder.

3. I have resolved my anger about what 1 2 3 4 5

167

happened.

4. I believe a “life for a life” sentence is an 1 2 3 4 5 appropriate punishment in an aggravated murder case.

5. I supported the death penalty prior to 1 2 3 4 5 murder that affected my life.

6. I believe someone who commits murder 1 2 3 4 5 can be forgiven.

7. I would consider meeting face-to-face with 1 2 3 4 5 the other party to the murder in my case.

8. I believe an execution is the only way to 1 2 3 4 5 achieve justice in aggravated murder cases.

9. I believe a sentence of “life without the 1 2 3 4 5 possibility of parole would be acceptable in my case instead of the death penalty.

10. I support the death penalty for those con- 1 2 3 4 5 victed of aggravated murder.

11. I believe I have healed after the murder 1 2 3 4 5 that affected my life.

12. I would consider forgiving someone who 1 2 3 4 5 took the life of a family member.

13. I believe that I can experience emotional 1 2 3 4 5 healing by practicing forgiveness.

14. I think “life without the possibility of parole” 1 2 3 4 5 would be a fair way in general to resolve an aggravated murder conviction.

15. I believe you can forgive someone who 1 2 3 4 5 commits aggravated murder without forgetting the victim.

16. I believe that forgiveness may be a 1 2 3 4 5 beginning step to emotional healing.

17. It is possible to get a sense of resolution 1 2 3 4 5

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after a murder.

18. I have made progression toward resolution 1 2 3 4 5 In my life.

19. I believe forgiveness can help heal 1 2 3 4 5 emotional wounds caused by aggravated murder.

20. My feeling of loss because of the 1 2 3 4 5 murder changed over time.

21. Someone who commits aggravated 1 2 3 4 5 murder can be forgiven but should still be punished.

Please answer the following questions briefly in your own words. Please do not include your name or details of your case.

22. Describe what attitude changes you experienced since the murder

23. What would change your position on the death penalty?

24. What are the reasons to support the death penalty/

25. How do you think a murdered loved one would feel about forgiving their killer?

26. How do you think forgiveness would affect the pain you feel?

27. What kind of spiritual experience, if any, have you had in your life?

169

REFERENCES

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Byrd, John. Execution Timeline. Feb. 19, 2002. Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. Bruce, F.F., ed. 1979. New International Bible Commentary. Grand Rapids: Zondervan. Byrne, Joe. 2018. Interview by author. March 3. Camus, Albert. 1963. “Reflections on the Guillotine” in Resistance, Rebellion and Death. New York: Modern Library. Candisky, Catherine. "BYRD MAINTAINS INNOCENCE UNTIL DEATH." Columbus Dispatch, (OH), February 20, 2002: 04A. NewsBank: Access World News – Historical and Current. https://infoweb-newsbank- com.webproxy3.columbuslibrary.org/apps/news/document- view?p=WORLDNEWS&docref=news/10DC847B00FBC908. Carcas, Harry James. 1997. On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness, edited by Simon Wiesenthal, 124-125. New York: Schocken Books. Catholic News Agency News Agency. “There’s no excuse for it: Pope Francis on the Death Penalty.” June 22, 2016. Accessed January 25, 2018. https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/theres-no-excuse-for-it-pope- francis-on-the-death-penalty-53312. Claiborne, Shane. 2016. Executing Grace: How the Death Penalty Killed Jesus and Why It's Killing Us. San Francisco: HarperOne. Cole, R. Alan. 1973. Exodus: An Introduction and Commentary. Tyndal Old Testament Commentaries. 1973. Downers Grove: Inter Varsity Press. Collins, Terry. 2011. Letter to the editor. Columbus Dispatch, Jan. 25. ______. 2015. “Former ODRC Dir. Terry Collins opposes death penalty.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcQ6Z1vc_oU. February 11. Cone, James H. 2011. The Cross and the Lynching Tree. Maryknoll, N.Y.; Orbis Books. Craig, Jon. "GRIEF, RELIEF FILL FINAL DAY - PART 1 OF 2 - Tewksbury family finds some closure amid lingering fears of revenge." Columbus Dispatch, (OH), February 20, 2002: 01A. NewsBank: Access World News – Historical and Current. https://infoweb-newsbank- com.webproxy3.columbuslibrary.org/apps/news/document- view?p=WORLDNEWS&docref=news/10DC847AEAD3AB38. Driggs, Kenneth. “Reflecting on the Death Penalty.” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought. https://www.dialoguejournal.com/articles/reflecting-on- the-death-penalty/. Durham, John I. 1987. Exodus, Word Biblical Commentary. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers.

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Hyatt, J.P. 1971. Exodus, The New Century Bible Commentary. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing. Ilboudo, W. Justin. The Lex Talionis in the Hebrew Bible and the Jewish Tradition. https://www.bc.edu/content/dam/files/research_sites/cjl/pdf/Justin%20Ilbo udo_Research%20Paper.pdf Johns, C.H.W. 1903. The Code of Hammurabi. Lexington, KY: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. Johnson, Alan, and Jon Craig. "COLEMAN'S EXECUTION DULLS PAIN ONLY A LITTLE." Columbus Dispatch, (OH), April 27, 2002: 01A. NewsBank: Access World News – Historical and Current. https://infoweb-newsbank- com.webproxy3.columbuslibrary.org/apps/news/document- view?p=WORLDNEWS&docref=news/10DC84E6F4B3C688. Johnson, Alan. "COURT GIVES BYRD TIME TO PROVE INNOCENCE." Columbus Dispatch, (OH), October 10, 2001: 01C. NewsBank: Access World News – Historical and Current. https://infoweb-newsbank- com.webproxy3.columbuslibrary.org/apps/news/document- view?p=WORLDNEWS&docref=news/10DD3CA807444678. ______"GRIEF, RELIEF FILL FINAL DAY - PART 2 OF 2 - Byrd family sheds abundant tears but not grudges in last moments." Columbus Dispatch, (OH), February 20, 2002: 01A. NewsBank: Access World News – Historical and Current. https://infoweb-newsbank- com.webproxy3.columbuslibrary.org/apps/news/document- view?p=WORLDNEWS&docref=news/10DC847AE6817F88. ______. "EXECUTION WILL BRING THEM PEACE, FAMILY SAYS," Columbus Dispatch, (OH), April 07, 2003: 01B, accessed June 06, 2019, https://infoweb.newsbank.com/resources/doc/nb/news/10DC89EECBEB7 3E0?p=WORLDNEWS. ______. "MURDERER'S FAMILY BEGS PAROLE BOARD TO GRANT CLEMENCY," Columbus Dispatch, (OH), April 08, 2003: 05D, accessed June 06, 2019, https://infoweb.newsbank.com/resources/doc/nb/news/10DC89F06A3540 88?p=WORLDNEWS. ______. "KILLER OFFERS NO FINAL APOLOGY." Columbus Dispatch, (OH), April 30, 2003: 01A. NewsBank: Access World News – Historical and Current. https://infoweb-newsbank- com.webproxy3.columbuslibrary.org/apps/news/document- view?p=WORLDNEWS&docref=news/10DC8A12A3B7B510. ______. "Clemency request based on childhood." Columbus Dispatch, (OH), September 13, 2011: 1A. NewsBank: Access World News – Historical and

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Current. https://infoweb-newsbank- com.webproxy3.columbuslibrary.org/apps/news/document- view?p=WORLDNEWS&docref=news/139BE12D4807D8E0. ______. "YEAR AFTER COMMUTATION No future, but it beats death for spared man." Columbus Dispatch, (OH), September 25, 2012: 1A. NewsBank: Access World News – Historical and Current. https://infoweb-newsbank- com.webproxy3.columbuslibrary.org/apps/news/document- view?p=WORLDNEWS&docref=news/141878986EA6B7F0. ______. "Capital punishment Man: Pain outlives killer's execution." Columbus Dispatch, (OH), May 27, 2015: 4B. NewsBank: Access World News – Historical and Current. https://infoweb-newsbank- com.webproxy3.columbuslibrary.org/apps/news/document- view?p=WORLDNEWS&docref=news/15597E74048DAA28. ______. 2017a. “These Eyes Have Watched 20 Men Die.” Columbus Monthly. https://www.columbusmonthly.com/news/20170728/eyewitness-to-ohios- executions. ______. 2017b. “Why You Should Care: Alan Johnson talks about the execution of Ronald Phillips.” Columbus Dispatch. https://images.app.goo.gl/WYXahGL1B3rBerrt9. July 26. Kidner, Derek. 1967. Genesis, An Introduction and Commentary. Tyndal Old Testament Commentaries. Downers Grove: Inter Varsity Press. King, Rachel. 2003. Don’t Kill in Our Names: Families of Murder Victims Speak Out against the Death Penalty. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press. Lewis, C.S. 2001. Mere Christianity. New York: HarperCollins. Lind, Millard. 2004. The Sound of Sheer Silence and the Killing State, the Death Penalty and the Bible. Teleford, PA: Cascadia Publishing House. Longman, Tremper III, and Raymond B. Dillard. 2006. An Introduction to the Old Testament. Grand Rapids: Zondervan. Lyons, Michelle. 2018. Death Row, the Final Minutes – My Life as an Execution Witness in America’s Most Infamous Prison. London: Blink Publishing. Malone, Dan, and Howard Swindle. 1999. America’s Condemned: Death Row Inmates in Their Own Words. Kansas City: Andrews McMeel Publishing. Marshall, Christopher D. 2001. Beyond Retribution, a New Testament Vision for Justice, Crime and Punishment. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing. Marshall, J.W. (2002). Decalogue. In D. W. Baker, & T. D. Alexander (Eds.), The IVP Bible Dictionary Series: Dictionary of the Old Testament: Pentateuch. InterVarsity Press. Credo Reference:

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Wiesenthal, Simon. 1997. On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness. New York: Schocken Books. West, Stuart A. 1993. “The Lex Talionis in the Torah.” Jewish Bible Quarterly 21 (3): 183–88. https://search-ebscohost- com.proxy.ashland.edu:2648/login.aspx?direct=true&db=reh&AN=ATLA00 00906173&site=ehost-live. Wilkinson, Reginald. 2015. Email interview by author. February 3. Zahnd, Brian. 2013. Radical Forgiveness, God’s Call to Unconditional Love. Lake Mary, FL: Charisma House. Zer-Kavok, Mordecai. 1998. “The Code of Hammurabi and the Laws of the Torah.” Jewish Bible Quarterly 26 no 2 Ap-Je 1998, p 107-110. 1998. Accessed December 1, 2016.

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