Our blind spot

Barbara Crafton sent this the other day, and I pass it along to you. Be forewarned, this is not really about a fender-bender in a parking lot.

She speaks deeply to me about an issue I care deeply about; you may disagree with her (and me) but I hope you will consider her points carefully and prayerfully.

Barbara will be with us at St. Paul's for an all-day Advent workshop on Saturday Dec. 3 and she will be preaching Sunday Dec. 4. Please mark your calendars and come join us.

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BLIND SPOT
By The Rev. Barbara Crafton

I have a clean driving license -- no points. Not that this distinction is of much import in my life these days, as we no longer have a car. And it must be said that I was not always so pure -- I was penalized two points for a moving violation years ago, when I broadsided a brand-new Volkswagon at a gas station.

"What are you doing?!? the owner screamed. It was a reasonable question. "You backed right into me!"

The pavement wasn't wet and I wasn't going more than four miles an hour. The VW wasn't moving at all. It was broad daylight. I was wearing my distance glasses. I had not been drinking, nor was I fatigued. I just didn't see her car -- it was black, and it was in my blind spot. Anybody who's ever backed up or overtaken another car on a two-lane road knows about the blind spot. You have to look twice when you look behind you before passing, not once.

It certainly looked to my horrified victim like a deliberate act. Or an incredibly stupid one, which I guess is what it was. "You were in my blind spot," I said, apologizing over and over as we stood there waiting for the police to come. "I didn't see you." Not surprisingly, my explanation was not particularly well-received, and who could blame her?

I thought of this yesterday, when the news came over the radio that the Supreme Court had refused to overturn Georgia's execution order in the Troy Davis case. It seemed his innocence had not been proven to everyone's satisfaction, a standard in American jurisprudence new to me -- I thought we operated under a presumption of innocence here, and that it was guilt that needed to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. But what do I know? I am neither a lawyer nor a judge.

But I am a priest and a religious journalist, and as such am charged with pondering and commenting on what faith may say to us about the way in which we conduct our life together: a communal life lived not only with our co-religionists, but with the larger society in which we find ourselves. Faith is not only about the sublime and nourishing personal sense of God's love, though it certainly is about that. As central as the encounter with Christ is, it does not exist in a social vacuum. Faith is not faith without ethics.

Christians believe in a life larger than the life we experience as physical beings. We believe there is more to life than meets the eye, that a spiritual dimension, mysterious and beyond our capacity to describe in the concrete ways we use to describe events in the world, is part of human reality. It is true that we affirm it without understanding very much about it at all, but our answer to "Is this all there is?" is a solid "No."

That said, we also affirm the sanctity of earthly life. We don't think it doesn't matter what happens here because we're all going to heaven anyway. We don't think we'd be better off dead. Life matters. Death is an enemy. We found hospitals, sit on their ethics committees, visit the sick. We stand against death, until the moment comes when it is time to leave this world, when life in the body at last becomes too heavy to lift. Then Death, too, becomes an angel, setting the strong spirit free to enter the immediacy of God's unfiltered presence.

Human beings do not have the right to end life prematurely, before that last moment arrives. We need not torture the dying with heroic lifesaving measures after it has become clear that these will not avail, but we can't kill people to whom death has not already laid claim. Even soldiers, who must stand ready to take life in the line of duty, do not escape the stain -- just ask somebody who has had to do it. The Christian theory of the just war, in which self-defense is broadly defined to include the prevention of a greater violence, does not provide a road to the taking of life that avoids the stain. It may mitigate, but it does not absolve. This is one of the many reasons why we recognize a duty to care for soldiers and military veterans: not just because they must sacrifice their safety on our behalf, but also because they must sacrifice their innocence.

That Troy Davis may have been innocent of the crime for which he was executed yesterday may someday be proved beyond a reasonable doubt. If it is, he will join the ranks -- not small in number -- of innocents killed by the state. Even a supporter of the death penalty must acknowledge this as tragic.

But the greater tragedy is that Americans think capital punishment is ever appropriate. That we do not ask ourselves why it is that we cling to it, in company with regimes we consider wholesale violators of the human rights about which we are very willing to lecture them every chance we get. That we do so in the face of abundant clear evidence that capital punishment fails to deter violent crime. This cognitive dissonance bewilders the countries we like to believe admire us and our way of life. They do admire us, in many ways. But not in that one.

America has a blind spot.

The death penalty panders to the basest part of our personalities: our craving for revenge. Everybody has this craving, but we learn in early childhood that violence does not bring about peace. Our parents teach us to talk things out, rather than hitting each other, when we disagree. Growing up is a process of learning to say no to ourselves about many things, and revenge is one of them. This is not easy: the desire for revenge is a natural desire, upon which we must learn not to act. Punishment in the service of restraining evil? Yes. In the service of exacting payment of a debt to society? In order to ensure society's safety? Yes -- there are criminals who must never again be allowed to go free. But revenge? No. Though we acknowledge our primitive longing for it, we must learn to say no. Revenge is far from a solution to violence. It fuels it.

Mature individuals have learned to control this universal urge. Many societies have learned to control it. But not ours. Can we really call ourselves civilized until we do?

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China, together with Iran, North Korea, Yemen and the United States carried out the most executions last year. Runners up include Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Somalia and Libya under Muamar Qaddafi. In Europe, only Belarus retains the death penalty in its law; abolition is required of European Union member states. To see a complete listing of state-sponsored executions carried out worldwide last year, visit HERE.

A tiny tear, a loss, the beloved in us is born

Life comes with tears. Life does not shelter us from the pain of loss, or the emptiness of unfairness. But without tears, we wouldn't understand life. We would be a shell, closed, hidden, trapped inside ourselves, dead.

Here is a gift from our friend Karen in Tennessee that captures this better than I can explain it:

Some say you're lucky
By Gregory Orr‏

Some say you're lucky
If nothing shatters it.

But then you wouldn't
Understand poems or songs.
You'd never know
Beauty comes from loss.

It's deep inside every person:
A tear tinier
Than a pearl or thorn.

It's one of the places
Where the beloved is born.

Please pray for Teresa Lewis, scheduled to be executed Thursday

I would ask your prayers today for Teresa Lewis, who is scheduled to be executed Thursday here in Virginia for the murders of her husband and his son in an insurance scam. I would also ask your prayers for Governor Robert McDonnell, who has declined to commute her sentence to life in prison.

This has become an emotional issue on all sides in recent days. Lewis, who is mentally retarded, was convicted of being the "mastermind" in the murders. The two men who carried out the killings were given life sentences.

The Washington Post wrote a factual story on the case over the weekend, which you can read HERE. I also wrote about this case a few weeks ago on this blog, which you can read HERE.

The Episcopal Church has taken a consistent stand against capital punishment since 1958, and has reaffirmed that position at several general conventions. You can read a resolution from 1991 by clicking HERE.

This case, I believe, highlights the arbitrariness of the death penalty. I am not an activist on this issue, and I have no intention of becoming one. My own opposition to the death penalty extends beyond the immediate case and to capital punishment generally. I wrote a long reflection about the death penalty last summer, drawing on my own experience with two friends who were viciously murdered. You can read that by clicking HERE.

The Washington DC Peace Center is publicizing many vigils around the state on Thursday. There will be a vigil in front of the Charlottesville Circuit Court, at 315 East High Street, at 12 noon on Thursday. For more information, click HERE.

I would again plead that the governor show mercy and that we keep him in our prayers. You can email the governor by clicking HERE.

An execution draws near in Virginia

I've been asked to post information about Teresa Lewis, a prisoner in Virginia who is scheduled to be executed later this month for the murder of her husband and his adult son.

Although mentally retarded, she was given the death sentence as the "mastermind" of these killings. The two men who carried out the killings were given life sentences.

Few issues are fraught with more politics than capital punishment. Yet this should not be about politics, but about justice. Honest people can disagree honestly on this.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a lengthy essay about my opposition to the death penalty, and how it has taken me a long time to get there. I would invite you to read that entry if you have not already (please click HERE).

Below is information provided by her defense team, who are asking that people of faith write letters to Governor Robert McDonnell asking that her sentence be commuted to life in prison. The Episcopal Church also opposes the death penalty. I would invite your consideration, your prayers, and your letters if you feel able. You can also learn more about the case by clicking HERE.

Here is the information from her defense team:

Teresa Lewis

Incomplete and inaccurate evidence led a judge to impose a death sentence on Teresa Lewis, whose IQ is in the 70-72 range, as the “mastermind” behind a plan to kill Lewis’s husband, Julian, and his adult son, C.J., for life insurance funds. The two men who actually committed the murders both were sentenced to life in prison.

Unbeknownst to Teresa’s sentencing judge, one of the killers had an IQ of 113 and boasted after the crimes that he was the mastermind of the crimes.

Teresa has lived alone in a segregation cell for seven years, separated from physical contact with other prisoners. Reverend Lynn Litchfield, a former prison chaplain to Teresa, has been inspired by Teresa who, despite severe restrictions, holds steadfastly to her faith and shares her love and support with women in the cells around her, ministering from behind a solid steel door with her kind words and beautiful singing voice. Prison officials say that when she sings hymns in her cell, the entire segregation wing calms. Teresa prays throughout her day for anyone she knows is in need.

Without your help, Teresa’s ministry will be cut short and she will be executed on September 23rd, 2010.

Teresa’s life and ministry should be allowed to continue and grace the lives of those around her. You can help save Teresa’s life by writing to Governor Robert F. McDonnell to ask that her sentence be commuted to life in prison without parole.
It is important to let the Governor know:

* that you are not seeking to excuse Teresa from punishment for her role in the killing of Julian and C.J. Lewis.

* that Teresa has only borderline intellectual functioning, with an IQ of 70-72.

* that the two actual murderers received life sentences and one of them, Matthew Shallenberger, confessed to a friend that he was the mastermind behind the murders.

* that you believe a decision to commute Teresa’s death sentence to life without parole is appropriate in this case and would support the Governor’s decision to do so.

Letters should be sent to:

The Honorable Robert F. McDonnell
Governor of Virginia
PO Box 1475
Richmond, VA 23218

The Governor can also be reached by email via his website at: http://www.governor.virginia.gov/AboutTheGovernor/contactGovernor.cfm

To learn more about Teresa please visit www.saveteresalewis.org or search “Friends of Teresa Lewis” on Facebook.

A personal reflection on the death penalty

Before you read this, please understand that this is a very personal reflection about a very difficult and politicized topic: the death penalty. The views here are mine, and mine alone. I speak for no one but myself.

And I am not talking about politics, not here, not this time.

Please also know that my descriptions are graphic. They reflect my experience about people very dear to me.

This is long. Please forgive the length.

I am writing this because I need to write it.

In the 1970s and early 1980s, I was a newspaper reporter in Riverside, a town east of Los Angeles where great beauty and great ugliness sit side-by-side.

In the considered opinion of those of us who lived and worked there, Riverside was the murder capital of Southern California. It wasn’t just in the high murder rate; it was in the endlessly cruel ways that human beings found to kill other human beings in Riverside.

And I saw it all. My beat was the courthouse, and I covered more murder scenes, murder suspects and murder trials than I can now remember. Some of my work eventually became subject of a chapter in a 1984 book, Killings, by Calvin Trillin, a writer with The New Yorker. That we will save for another day.

In those years, the Riverside courthouse crowd congregated every morning at the Wagon Wheel, a dingy dump of a coffee shop across the street from the ornate Riverside County courthouse (photo above). Cops, prosecutors, defense attorneys, and the reporter from The Press-Enterprise – me – would share a cup of stale coffee before heading into the courthouse or out onto the streets for our daily dose of mayhem. I could dependably plan my day based on the tips I’d pick up at the Wagon Wheel in the morning.

Later, after I had filed my story for the day, those of us in the courthouse crowd who were single – which were most of us – would down a few beers before going home. This was my life every day for six years, with time off for vacations and a brief and unhappy stint covering City Hall. I was part of a very tight-knit courthouse community and I loved it.

We had a judge in those years, Roland Wilson, who was tough as nails. He was not universally liked, but he was universally respected. When Judge Wilson meted out the death penalty, he delivered what became known as “Roland’s Rolaids speech.”

It went something like this: “The night you are put to death, I will not have to take a Rolaids.”

If you had asked me about the death penalty in those years, I would have told you that I was against capital punishment based on my Christian principles. But deep down inside, I have to admit, there were some frighteningly horrible people who came through my courthouse about whom I had to agree with Judge Wilson: On the night they were dispatched from this earth, I would not have to take a Rolaids. And the sooner they went, the better.

One of the regulars at the Wagon Wheel was Riverside County Sheriff’s Deputy Jim Evans, a lanky red-headed cop who was well liked by everyone (photo at right). He had been an Army lieutenant and Green Beret in Vietnam, but Deputy Evans was best known for helping kids who were confused or headed for trouble. He had been a mentor to the son of my managing editor. No one was better liked at the Wagon Wheel than Jim Evans.

When Deputy Evans was gunned down in a ferocious firefight on May 9, 1980, everyone at the coffee shop was in a state of shock or fury or both. On that day, five “survivalists” robbed a bank in Norco, a usually quiet little suburban town a few miles south of Riverside. They believed that the eruption of Mt. St. Helens signaled Armageddon (after all, it said so in the Bible), and they needed to stock up on provisions.

The robbers commandeered a utility truck and a chaotic chase ensued across two counties. The robbers shot up 30 police cars, wounding several officers, and shot down a police helicopter. I jumped into a car with a news photographer, and we got into the chase. The melee ended in the San Gabriel Mountains, 30 miles from the bank.

On a narrow mountain road, Evans was overpowered by the robbers wielding military assault rifles. He saved at least two other officers before he was coldly gunned down. In the battle, two of the five robbers were killed. The three surviving suspects were arrested a day later, bedraggled and wandering in the mountains. They became known as the “Norco 3,” named for the town where they had robbed the bank.

If you had polled the regulars at the Wagon Wheel, the vast majority -- even the defense attorneys -- would have favored executing the three bank robbers. There was no question the district attorney would seek the death penalty against all three. Not surprisingly the trial was moved out of the county; I spent a year of my life on the road covering the trial, taking turns in the courtroom with another P-E reporter, Bob Labarre. I was even called as a witness, took the stand and came close to being jailed for refusing to disclose sources and unpublished notes.

The three bank robbers were eventually convicted of murder, but the jury hung up in the penalty phase. When the Norco 3 avoided the death penalty, and were instead sentenced to life with no possibility of parole, there was a deep sense among the courthouse crowd that justice had been cheated. The three murderers, by the way, are still in prison and certainly will never be released in this life.

I moved away from Southern California 25 years ago, and I have rarely been in a courtroom since. Much has happened in my life in the intervening years including becoming an Episcopal priest.

It’s been 30 years since Jim Evans caught a bullet in his eye, and lately my thoughts have returned to him and the events that took his life. I’ve wondered if there’s been any closure for his family, or his buddies, or anyone whose life was turned upside down on that day in May 1980.

Recently I had occasion to be back in a criminal courtroom, and it was a difficult experience. I went with Lori to Sacramento County Superior Court for the sentencing of two young men who were convicted of robbing, torturing and murdering a friend of ours, Jim Arthur, who was only 23-years-old (photo at right). We had known Jim since he was a small boy and saw him grow into a wonderful young man and artist.

I had gotten to know the Arthur family when I moved to Sacramento in 1985. Jim's dad, Jeff (now deceased), was the chief aide to state Senator Bob Presley of Riverside, who had been the undersheriff of Riverside County before he was elected to the Legislature. The Arthur family introduced me to Trinity Cathedral in Sacramento. In a way, it was that Riverside courthouse connection that got me back into the Church.

A year ago, Jim Arthur befriended a young couple, Jeremy Ackerman and Nadine Klein, and allowed them to hang out at his mother’s house for a few days while she was out of the country. His guests decided to rob him of his video games to fence for drugs.

They brought another friend to help with the robbery, a sociopath by the name of Jonathan Baker. When Baker learned our friend Jim was gay, he went berserk. Jim was bludgeoned, tied up and stabbed 140 times. The others joined in the carnage and left him to die in his mother’s basement. They were caught a few days later, their bragging to friends and text messages betraying them.

Jim Arthur’s mother, my dear friend, Anne, sat through the entire trial. The only testimony she skipped was the gruesome autopsy report. Many of her family and friends – our friends – sat with her through many agonizing weeks of testimony.

If anyone ever deserved the death penalty, it would be his murderers: Jonathan Baker, Jeremy Ackerman and Nadine Klein.

On July 1, the day we went to court, Baker (photo at right) and Ackerman were sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole (a jury had hung up on Nadine Klein, and she will face a second trial in September).

Life-with-no-parole was the strongest possible sentence because the prosecution did not seek the death penalty. No one connected with the case wanted to invoke the death penalty.

Yet in seeing these murderers in the courtroom, I again had to ask myself what I think about the death penalty. My thoughts turned to my friends of so many years, those near and far away. Old feelings about Deputy Evans welled up inside me.

Anne courageously addressed the court. She looked into the faces of her son’s murderers. Baker smirked; Ackerman looked sick. Anne never broke down. She told the judge how her life has been devastated by the death of her youngest son. Yet she also spoke of how she grieves for the families of the murderers – and grieves for the murderers themselves. There was not a vengeful word from her lips. Later, outside in the hallway, she hugged the mother of one of her son's murderers.

The judge, Stephen White, himself a former District Attorney and veteran prosecutor in dozens of murder cases, remarked about how impressed he was at her courage and calmness, and the calmness of her friends. The judge said he had never witnessed such serenity from crime victims in his courtroom. There would be no Rolaids speech that day.

It struck me in that moment that these murderers no longer had an ounce of power over Anne, or an ounce of power over her family or any of us, her friends. They could smirk, or look sick, but they were powerless. They were now men in orange jump suits in handcuffs headed to the Joint for the rest of their natural lives.

The idea that the death of these individuals would somehow bring “closure” was ludicrous. To grant them the idea that their deaths would bring closure would be to give them a power they should not have. To allow the death of these killers to be the measure of our own closure is to give them a privilege they do not deserve.

Death is too easy an out for them.

My sense of life after death brings me there. I am convinced that this life is not all that there is, that death is only horizon over which we cannot yet see. Those we love who are gone from us are just beyond the horizon, but they are very close to us. I preach that at funerals, and I believe that to the depth of my soul.

I believe Jim is in a place of healing, where his wounds are swept away and his spirit is renewed. I don’t think Jim’s murderers deserve to be in the same place, at least not yet. They do not deserve the easy closure of their own death. They should be looking at the walls of a steel-and-concrete cell. They ought to wait a good long while before going beyond the horizon to wherever God will take them. I believe we should leave their lives and what comes next entirely to God alone.

There is another reason to allow them to live in prison.

By letting them live, we break the chain of death. We declare that death is not the solution to our grief, that death no longer has power over us, that death cannot represent “justice.”

Death represents only death.

Death is the enemy. As the apostle Paul proclaims (1 Corinthians 15:26), “The last enemy to be destroyed is death.”

Can we believe that enough to live? Can we believe that long enough to let others live and break the cycle of murder and death?

Death has many cruel weapons. Maybe the cruelest of all is the thick wall death erects for the living. We cannot see over that wall to the other side, though we get hints of it if we look. Death spawns a resignation that there is nothing on the other side of that wall. Death breeds futility, and that futility paralyzes us into inaction and despair in this life, and then without realizing it we are co-opted by death. If we let it, death robs us of life before we die.

We need to stop cooperating with death. We need to stop seeing death as a solution to that which hurts us. We may not be able to break the chain of death everywhere, but we can try where we can. Death is a cancer, not a cure. We need to see over the wall: “We will not all die but we will be changed in the twinkling of an eye,” says Paul (1 Corinthians 15:51-52).

We can start by saying no to the death penalty. Today is not a good day to die. Today is a good day to live.

Photographs by The Press-Enterprise of Riverside County, and The Sacramento Bee.