Any human face is a claim on you, because you can't help but understand the singularity of it, the courage and loneliness of it. -- Gilead, Marilynne Robinson
For a time, it seemed that everywhere I went in Houston I encountered the faces of the condemned. Their pictures were taped above the desks of my coworkers at the Gulf Region Advocacy Center (GRACE), a non-profit law office dedicated to serving men and women facing the death penalty, where I worked as the office manager. Danalynn Recer, the executive director and founder of GRACE, had photographs strewn around her office, pictures of clients who had been exonerated, executed, or were awaiting their fates in the humid cells of the Huntsville correctional facility. And at Trinity Episcopal Church, where I attended services on Sunday mornings, Nuclear Jesus looked down at me from above the chapel altar.
Nuclear Jesus was the nickname given to the oil painting of the Second Coming, when Jesus Christ returns to earth to reign over humankind. In the painting Jesus is six feet tall and naked, barely covered by floating white burial clothes as he glides over the earth, an orange cloud erupting from the ground behind him like an atomic blast. The face of Jesus is that of Khristian Oliver, the artist's son, who was executed for capital murder.
The face of a human being demands something of you, forces you to grapple with its individuality and complexity. A face has a history, with scars visible and invisible. It is harder to condemn someone once you've seen their face, harder to look away from the pain in their eyes. It's easier to let someone else strap him to a gurney, push the needle into his vein.
At first I found the painting somewhat unsettling, a naked man staring at me from above the altar, but over time I came to love it. It was redemptive, expressing compassion and hope for the criminal and the convicted murderer. Many churches in Texas would not have allowed Nuclear Jesus into their chapels. Occasionally I had conversations with people who had adopted a steely religious conservatism that refused to see Christ in the criminal. One Tuesday after work I found myself in the Flying Saucer downtown having a few drinks with a friend and his church group which was made up of men in their twenties. On the wood paneled wall behind the bar were 200 beer taps, and waitresses in plaid skirts served beer to white yuppies in jeans, polo shirts and sandals. Everyone was talking loudly over the barroom racket.
The guy next to me asked me what I did. "I work at a non-profit law office," I told him.
"Non-profit law office, isn't that an oxymoron?" He thought I hadn't heard that joke before. "What kind of law?" he wanted to know.
I thought of Calvin Burdine, peering from between the bars of his cell with a patch over his left eye, his gray hair combed neatly to the left. Burdine spent seventeen years on death row, despite the fact that his attorney had slept through portions of his trial. Finally, his post-conviction attorney won him a new trial and Recer took the case pro bono, negotiating a life sentence and founding GRACE in the process. "Never another sleeping lawyer" was GRACE's unofficial slogan, never another lawyer at the defense table with his eyes closed. Though I didn't say all this.
"We provide legal defense for men and women facing the death penalty."
"Interesting."
Did he mean "interesting" as in "That's good work. Please tell me more," or "I am horrified and hope that your office burns down in the fire of God's holy wrath?" GRACE was not a religious place, but we were still offering a kind of secular salvation for the destitute and forgotten. We had a list of names of men and women we had helped, which we could recite like a litany: Thomas Miller-El, Shantia Jackson, LaRoyce Smith, Theodore Goynes, were just a few.
"I disagree with what you are doing," he said.
"Well, we just try to make sure they receive an adequate legal defense."
At GRACE, we had no illusions about our clients. We knew some of them were guilty, that they had caused others unspeakable pain, but we also refused to let them be ignored. Instead, Recer and the other staff members approached them with unflinching compassion. (Compassion, a word inextricably bound to suffering and Jesus Christ. The Passion: the sufferings of Christ, ending with his execution on a cross. Compassion: to suffer with Christ.)
He frowned. "OK. I just believe in the death penalty. The Bible condones the death penalty." I was silent. The Bible also condones killing rebellious children, non-believers, and adulterers. I thought of Nuclear Jesus, the face of Christ and the face of a criminal, Khristian Oliver. In 1998, Khristian was convicted of robbing Joe Collins, and then beating him to death with the butt of his gun. Jurors read aloud from the Bible as they decided to sentence him to death: "And if he smite him with an instrument of iron, so that he die, he is a murderer: the murderer shall surely be put to death." Khristian was 20 at the time of his crime, 32 when he was executed. "I pray for ya'll every day and every night," Khristian said to the family of the victim before he received the lethal injection. I imagined the artist, Kermit Oliver, with his paints and brushes, the tragedy in his heart failing to displace the love he had for his son.
I wanted to ask the man across from me if Jesus would choose to strap the condemned to a gurney or insert lethal needles into his arm as his mother and children watched. Instead I explained that we were helping make sure that everyone received adequate legal defense. "Even the guilty deserve a lawyer."
"We're just going to disagree on this," the man said. I sipped my beer and changed the subject. There was little point in arguing with this kind of certainty. It was a certainty unacquainted and unconcerned with human particulars, with the men and women on death row, forgetting Jesus himself, condemned to die on a cross.
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For myself, I often wonder what could be changed to make the journey more palatable for all until then?
Sadly, I believe the human ethos does not seek to change as it appears that acrimony and gall seems to be the most sought after attribute of humanity… regardless of the topic de jour.
I'm from South Carolina, a state that recently executed a man, who committed a horrific crime (theft and murder). HOWEVER, if you look at his facial features, he clearly has FAS (fetal alcohol syndrome).
Many people with FAS (or FAE; fetal alcohol effects) seem to be just like any other person. -- smart even, since many FAS or FAE people are very verbal. Yet, they suffer from an invisible disability. MRIs reveal permanent damage to whichever part of the brain was developing during the mother's alcohol consumption, be it the ability to follow instructions, stay on take, understand the consequences of their actions, or feel empathy and compassion.
So many people in our welfare and criminal justice systems are undiagnosed sufferers of FAS/FAE. In short, don't assume that a person who looks healthy and fully cognizant of his/her actions is so. This adds an entire new dimension to Jesus's injunction to "judge not."
"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. "
Most people are absolutely convinced that America has an infallible justice system, and that doesn't seem to change no matter how many wrongly-convicted people are proved innocent--before or after they were murdered by the state.
When I was young, I actually thought Christians tried to see their god in other people. Now I know they only try to see it in the members of their own tiny community.
There are many people of faith involved in this organization.
Why not? Years ago, my neighbor said he saw Jesus' face in a kumquat.
Sure, I believe him.........never.
We punish criminals! And to varying degrees depending upon their crime.
Why is it repugnant to compare the execution of Jesus with that of a murderer? An execution is an execution, guilty or not.
Compassion is not a Christian ideal. Maybe the idolized Jesus spoke of it was once, 2000-ish years ago, but few Christians have heeded those words since. I'm seeing far too much of the Judeo ideals (eye for eye mentallity), and not enough of the Christian ideals (said Compassion) from our Judeo-Christian society.
As a Buddhist - and a human being - I can't support the death penalty any more than the idolized version of Jesus would. Perhaps if it were fool proof I could learn to live with it, though I don't see how society-sanctioned "revenge killing" solves any of the problems of the society which created these individuals to begin with.
Here is a beautiful saying of St. Isaac the Syrian that illustrates the idea of compassion and mercy (where "mercy" means "loving kindness"):
"What is a merciful heart? It is a heart on fire for the whole of creation, for humanity, for the birds, for the animals, for demons, and for all that exists. By the recollection of them the eyes of a merciful person pour forth tears in abundance. By the strong and vehement mercy that grips such a person’s heart, and by such great compassion, the heart is humbled and one cannot bear to hear or to see any injury or slight sorrow in any in creation. For this reason, such a person offers up tearful prayer continually even for irrational beasts, for the enemies of the truth, and for those who harm her or him, that they be protected and receive mercy. And in like manner such a person prays for the family of reptiles because of the great compassion that burns without measure in a heart that is in... the likeness of God."
Your fellows are using your bible to justify slavery, discrimination based on sexual orientation, and capital punishment. There is no compassion in any of that. And the sooner you accept that your fellows are hypocrites, the sooner you'll realize that you're wasting your time trying to convince anyone otherwise.
I am not trying to be non-compassionate to the victims of the criminals. I want them to be healed of a grief that can't ever truly be healed. Life without any possibility of parole is reasonable to me. That life must involve learning exactly the depth of pain the murderer has caused, every single day. Reminded EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. That "You exist, and you decided that another person did not deserve to exist. You have torn a hole in the world that can never be repaired. Meditate on this for as long as you live." Not cable television, not lifting weights in the yard. Only this, contemplate the pain and horror you have inflicted on so many others, even beyond the immediate victim. If the murderer lacks the ability of empathy (which many violent criminals do), then it must be taught, however long it takes until the murderer can fully understand and appreciate the profound loss s/he has created.