Four activists from different religious traditions share thoughts on the challenges of organizing against the death penalty.

By Douglas Davidson

How can we become effective advocates for God’s life-giving ways in a society where most citizens support the death penalty? The Other Side recently brought together four activists from different religious traditions to share thoughts on the challenges of organizing against the death penalty.

Marshall Dayan is a North Carolina-based attorney who recently completed two years as Chair of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. Raised within the conservative Jewish tradition, Marshall is now a Reform Jew who serves on the Commission on Social Action and Reform Judaism.

Kobutsu Shindo is a Rinzai Zen Buddhist priest who lives in Ramsey, New Jersey. He teaches Zen contemplative practice at Sing Sing prison in New York and also publishes a newsletter for inmates.

Greg Abdur Rasheed is the area program coordinator for the Colorado office of the American Friends Service Committee. A Sunni Muslim, Greg’s involvement in death-penalty issues has become more extensive with the capital trial and sentencing of Timothy McVeigh in Denver.

Jennifer Johnston McKenna is a Presbyterian pastor and a member of Citizens Against State Executions in Maryland. She has worked with the Southern Coalition on Jails and Prisons and was one of the founding members of the Alabama Coalition Against the Death Penalty.

We are pleased to share their conversation with our readers.

-Doug Davidson, Coeditor

Kobutsu: About five years ago, I was asked if I was interested in teaching Zen in prison, and I said, "sure.’ So I began teaching traditional Zen practice up in Sing Sing, New York—and soon began corresponding with other inmates. Before long, I couldn’t keep up with all the personal correspondence, so I started sending out a newsletter that’s now received by over six hundred inmates.

Last year, I got a letter from a guy named Freddie Parker who was on death row in Arkansas. He was out of appeals and told me he had only two months to live. We began a very intense relationship that lasted for five months and culminated last August, when we spent his last day together, then walked that last mile together, and I watched as he was executed.

That experience profoundly affected me. I’ve decided to dedicate the remainder of this life to the abolition of the death penalty.

Marshall: I was an undergraduate in Georgia in 1980, when the state was about to carry out its first execution. Though I hadn’t thought much about the issue, I attended a vigil in a Presbyterian church across from the state capital. And as I listened to what the state was preparing to do, I was overcome by a strong feeling of nausea.

As a citizen, I knew the blood of the man they were going to kill would be on my hands. This execution also violated my traditional Jewish understanding that the Creator made us partners in completing the creation. This man’s death in no way helped to restore the creation. I just sat in the church pew weeping. I felt I would have done anything to stop it.

That night, I decided I would go to law school to represent people accused or convicted of capital crimes. With that decision, the nausea went away.

My first case out of law school in 1986 was a Virginia death-penalty case. I’ve been representing death-row inmates exclusively since 1988.

Over the past sixteen years, I’ve sometimes wanted to switch paths. This is a brutal business. I’ve had three clients executed, and I was close with all of them. I spent all day with each of them on the day they were executed. But every time I begin to think about getting out of this work, the nausea returns. So I keep doing this.

Greg: I wasn’t really involved in criminal-justice issues until I came to Denver in 1993 to work for the American Friends Service Committee. Various people were working on criminal-justice issues but often in isolation. There was a need for someone to coordinate. In September 1995, we sponsored a conference on local and national criminal-justice issues—the first event of this kind here in several years.

With the Timothy McVeigh trial here in Denver during the past year, we have been increasingly focused on the death penalty. We’re currently very involved in the case of Gary Davis, scheduled to be executed in October. That would be the first execution in Colorado since 1967. We’re working hard to organize education and public-witnessing campaigns. We’re also urging local religious groups to devote a worship service to the issue.

Jennifer: My eyes were opened to criminal-justice issues in college. I was arrested for civil disobedience in protest of the war and was held in the city jail. I met a number of women there, most of whom were in for prostitution. The majority of them had been arrested by a cop who had also slept with them. I watched women pass out because the matron in the jail wouldn’t bring them medication, and I heard horrible stories about ways the system had mistreated these women. I came out of that experience talking about criminal-justice issues more than the war.

After college, while working with the Highlander Center in east Tennessee, I met a woman whose son was on death row. She asked me if I would come with her to see him. I did, fully expecting to meet some savage person—but he was a very gentle man who shared his poetry with us.

I began working in Tennessee on the death penalty, and then went to Alabama in the late seventies to help start a coalition against the death penalty in that state. There were about forty people on death row in Alabama then, and I began visiting them, meeting their families, and working to set up this coalition.

I did that work for six or seven years until they started killing people I had been visiting for years. That was such a brutal experience. I soon felt I needed to take some kind of sabbatical—and with my church’s encouragement, I decided to attend seminary.

I’m now serving as a pastor in Maryland, while also working with the coalition Citizens Against State Execution. We recently had our first execution here in quite a while—and we did everything we could. I’ve also been working to get more faith communities involved in activism against the death penalty. So many religious groups have statements against the death penalty, but we need to translate those statements into more action.

Greg: If you listen to the media, you might think most Muslims support the death penalty and that Islam teaches, "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." Although four of the five countries other than the United States that execute children are Islamic countries, it’s simply not true that Islamic teaching supports the death penalty.

The word Muslim actually means "one who practices peace." And one of the root words of Islam is salaam—peace.

Within the Koran in Sura 23:93 it says "repel evil with that which is fairer." I believe on of the most evil things possible is for the state to kill someone in vengeance—in an attempt to make things right. That is clearly an evil that I must oppose.

A case like Timothy McVeigh’s really forces you to consider how you will live out your faith. I’ve met an awful lot of people who have claimed to be against the death penalty but feel it is justified in McVeigh’s case. I feel like you’ve got to live what you believe. You can’t say you oppose the death penalty and then make an exception.

Marshall: I share Greg’s frustration about common misconceptions. Many people believe that Jewish tradition strongly supports the death penalty. But just as salaam is such an important concept in Islam, the same word in Hebrew, shalom, is central to the Jewish tradition. The call for peace is primary in both faiths.

There are certainly places in Mosaic law that call for the death penalty. But in exploring what Jewish tradition says about capital punishment, I found that many rabbis who have elaborated on the law have opposed capital punishment. Indeed, Rabbi Akiba, one of the great rabbis of the second century C.E., said that if he had been in the Sanhedrin (the rabbinic high court), no one would ever have been sentenced to death.

I think this opposition to the death penalty comes from the prophetic tradition. The Mosaic law isn’t the whole of the Hebrew Bible, it’s only a part. The prophets taught that it is not the death of the sinner that God wants, but that the sinner would make repentance, make atonement. Verse after verse within the prophets says that explicitly.

There’s a famous Talmudic story about a rabbi besieged by robbers each day as he’s walking home. After this happens several times, he begins praying for the death of these robbers. His wife excoriates him (which I like, since Jewish tradition is not always great in terms of equal rights for women). She says, "How dare you pray for the death of these robbers; you should pray that they would make atonement and turn away from their evil ways." The rabbi changes his prayer—and because he prays for them to make atonement, they do. The idea that we are all partners with God in the creation means that all must have an opportunity for redemption. Redemption is universal within the Jewish tradition—it is available to all of us, no matter what we’ve done.

Jennifer: The same is true of the Christian tradition. Either we believe people are redeemable, or we don’t.

When Jesus was confronted with a woman caught in the act of adultery, which was then a capital offense, he said, "let the one without sin throw the first stone." Everyone had to walk away. IT is not up to us to judge.

The most basic message of the Christian tradition is to love your neighbor and certainly imposing the death penalty is not a part of this love. On the whole, the Christian Scriptures are about compassion and community—these are central themes. But like these other traditions, Christianity has also been misunderstood, mistranslated, and misrepresented—often by those who call themselves Christians.

Kobutsu: Within Buddhism, there are ten fundamental precepts, and the first precept is "I am reverential and mindful of all life. I am not violent. I do not kill." And that pretty well sums it up.

One of the other precepts says "I keep my mind calm and at peace. I do not indulge in anger." Another says "I am humble. I do not praise myself or judge others." It’s quite clear.

Kobutsu: I think religious communities are probably our only hope for real leadership on this issue. Our political so-called leaders view the death penalty as a way to win elections. The Governor of Arkansas, Mike Huckabee, is actually a Southern Baptist minister, but with his signature he has killed five people in the past year. Here’s a minister signing death warrants. I think the abolitionist movement really needs to communicate with church leaders—and to work on their courage.

Greg: When I attend meetings against the death penalty here in Denver, I’m often disappointed to find that I am sometimes that only African American there. When you think about the astoundingly high percentage of African Americans on death row, I wish there were more of an outcry from churches, from mosques, from all religious groups of color. But I see a real hesitancy.

I think we African Americans tend to be conservative on most issues. There seems to be a hesitancy to step out on issues other than the "traditional" civil-rights issues—such as the death penalty or gay and lesbian issues.

Jennifer: I think one thing that keeps many people from speaking out is that there is such a strong fear of violence in our communities. We must help people deal with their fears.

Greg: I’ve also been surprised that a lot of peace activists seem to shy away from this issue. We had someone resign from the board of our local office in Denver when they found out we were beginning to work on the death penalty. And this was someone who was always talking about peace issues and equality.

Jennifer: Support for the death penalty seems to cross all the borders. Unfortunately, neither liberals or conservatives can be counted on regarding this issue. That’s why I think we must get back to the essentials of out faith traditions and speak directly to the people in our worship places—the people need to hear it there.

Marshall: In Texas, executions are taking place at the rate of two a week. I am convinced this will be happening across the United States within the next two years.

I am terrified that the Jewish community, and indeed all people of faith, are going to wake up one day and say, "My God, what are we doing!?" And it may be too late—it’ll certainly be too late for those who have been killed.

Kobutsu: I think we have to ask, "Does punishment work—in any form?" That’s a challenge—because it’s not just a problem of our justice system, it’s also the way we deal with our kids. It is a fundamental question that we have to raise.

Marshall: There’s another question the abolitionist movement needs to confront. Herbert Haines, in his recent book Against Capital Punishment, notes that the abolitionist community has always pushed the moral imperative—arguing "We must end the death penalty because it’s wrong"—rather than focusing on practical problems with the death penalty. But Haines believes people’s fears about crime, and their identification with those who have lost loved ones to crime, are such that this moral argument will never convince the majority of people.

Abolitionists really need to push the question of whether the death penalty "works"—does it do what its proponents want it to do? The answer is no. It doesn’t deter crime—studies show that. It incapacitates a particular individual, but no more than does incarceration.

Jennifer: Unfortunately, many people now recognize that the death penalty doesn’t deter crime and actually costs more, yet they still favor it.

Marshall: But studies have proven that, when presented with the option of a life sentence without possibility of parole, a majority of Americans will support that over the death penalty. The question is whether we are willing to accept life without parole as an alternative.

This is a huge issue that could split the movement. Many abolitionists view life without parole as no different from the death penalty, and will never find it acceptable. But others will say, if life without parole will stop the killing, let’s move in that direction.

As much as I long for a restorative approach to justice, if life without parole will get rid of the death penalty, I’m willing to take that incremental step.

Kobutsu: I’m working with someone on the row right now, and I’d die myself to get his sentence changed to life without parole. I think we need to do all we can to stop this horrendous evil of the death penalty immediately, and then work on the other issues.

Jennifer: As long as there is life, there is hope. When I first met John Evans on death row in Alabama, he was an extremely angry and arrogant young man who wanted to drop all his appeals and be executed immediately. But he and his mom made a deal. She would file an appeal on his behalf. If she won, then he would believe there was some purpose in his life, even on death row. If the appeal failed and he was executed, he wanted her to be at peace.

Six hours before he was to be executed, Justice Rehnquist granted him a stay. And John had a tremendous conversion experience and began to turn his life around. He took G.E.D. tests, he started teaching other guys on the row, he started reading the Bible. He made videotapes to help out other "punks," as he used to describe himself.

By the time he was executed six years later, John was corresponding with more than six hundred people. His execution at that point seemed so futile, when he was helping so many others turn their lives around. But he had six good years.

Marshall: Most of the folks who end up on death row were abandoned and thrown on the scrap heap long before they got into the criminal system. I certainly have not represented anyone in my twelve years of death penalty work who wasn’t abandoned, abused, or neglected as a child. And this kind of behavior recurs in the lives of my clients.

Mandy Welch, a death penalty lawyer in Texas, once pointed out that we who do post-conviction work are in a position to really care about clients and get to know them. I often feel like we teach clients about love—and some of them have never felt loved before. And they actually begin to heal. They begin to understand what love is about. Unfortunately, as Mandy pointed out, it’s usually just about the time when they start to heal that the state kills them.

Reprinted with permission from The Other Side. Please visit The Other Side at: http://www.theotherside.org.