News from home: Praying through an execution

Spiritual Life, Fall 2000 by Reese, Mary Ann

Two counties north the storm has taken lives.

Two counties north, to us, is far away,

A land of trees, a wing upon a map,

A wild place never visited, so we

Forget with ease each far mortality.

-Mary Oliver, from "Beyond the Snow Belt"1

THREE COUNTIES EAST OF US, Wilford Berry is scheduled to die tonight. Three counties east of us is a blip on the map, a land of deer and gun-racks and trees. We know Scioto County, OH, for the prison at Lucasville. At Easter 1993, an eleven-day riot there claimed ten lives. For most of my life, however, we have not known this or any other county as Ohio's place of execution.

Now that this execution is imminent, six of us climb into a creaky van. Two elderly activists in flannel shirts sleep in back. Sister Alice drives, a nurse teaches us hymns. A woman up front with a black ponytail reads the directions aloud.

I sit in the middle layered in outdoor gear. I do not know my fellow travelers, and I am not really an activist. Nor can I even say for sure what has led me to this moment. I scan my life as an attorney and free-lance writer and I wonder.

Reasons

Perhaps it has something to do with the book I am reviewing for Spiritual Life. Over the past six months, Trees of Life: The Prayer of Intercession and Its Cost2 has slowly changed me. Its main point is that through intercessory prayer we become one with all humankind. We participate in Christ's transformative work on the cross when we prayerfully embrace the suffering of others. Reading, living, and writing about the book, I notice myself caring more about the struggles around me. I even pray during the news, directing God's loving gaze toward places such as Bosnia and Belfast.

Una Kroll, the author of Trees of Life, would not be surprised. She warns that those who pray to intercede for others "often find that their apparently settled patterns of thought, their understanding of events and symbols, must give way to new insights given by God." Many are moved to speak out, to take righteous action against evil and suffering. Is that what led me here?

Or was it the slideshow of experiences with the legal system that now flashes in my mind: the lawyers who advocate for execution calling the chair "Old Sparky" and themselves "The Electric Company"; the photo in the prison restroom of the warden smirking beside the electric chair; the faces of prisoners who have sat across the table from me with their disfiguring scars, missing teeth, and bluing skin known as "prison pallor." Is that what led me here?

Or was it the trial during which we gradually came to suspect that our detective was lying and that we might be prosecuting an innocent man? I learned then that our system of justice is too fragile to dictate who lives and who dies. In fact, since 1990, nearly forty convicts awaiting execution have been exonerated.4 My personal collage of law-related memories-is that what led me here?

I do not know. I only know that I need to be at Lucasville tonight. I need to say with my body and my voice and my prayer, "This is wrong."

The Prison Scene

We drive out beyond the city, the strip-malls, and flat brown farms. The hills are high, the trees are winter sticks. We chat about this week of vigils and fasts, this season of Lent. We spot a gray wolf with a white face. With every turn in the road, I become more anxious. Having dealt with prison staff and local folks before, I fear what this night may bring.

After two hours, we face the prison, a one-story brick building bathed pink in winter's sunset. Chain-link fences with coils of razorwire keep us out. Dozens of troopers dot the perimeter like candles on a birthday cake.

We unload our signs on the grass out front. Newscasters push microphones to our mouths. I am surprised when my words flow easily: "We are here to save a life.... The death penalty is cruel and unusual punishment." Our signs are more pointed: "Don't kill for me."

A jumble of news and conversations runs through my mind. Like all human events, this is messy. Wilford Berry murdered a baker and laughed while he died. Wilford waived all appeals and requested execution. They call him "The Volunteer." Wilford was also raped and abused and suicidal-as a child, no less. He has been diagnosed schizophrenic; voices tell him what to do. His fellow inmates beat him in the head. By all accounts, he is pathetic but not likable.

Ohioans have plenty of opinions. Some say Wilford Berry is not human; he is a monster we should destroy. Others say the state is killing a white guy first to disguise the racism of the death penalty. Some are reluctant to execute a man who is mentally ill, and some support Wilford's desire to end his tortured life.

I have listened, and my own truth is written in my heart: The government should not have power to kill its citizens. Killing makes the executioners-and all of us-less human. Besides, at $1.5 million, this execution costs too much.

Night falls. Cars stream into the driveway and people join us on the grass. Eventually, we are two hundred strong: grandparents from Yellow Springs; bankers from Akron; priests from Cleveland. Students. Singers. A father and toddler from Defiance. Twenty feet away, a dozen people who favor the death penalty hold their own signs: "Thank you, Governor Taft."