Is The Death Penalty a Christian Act?

It was either yesterday or today. I can never remember. I think it was 1983, but it might have been 1982. That part doesn't come back either. July 2nd or July 3rd, does it really matter? It translates to July 4th. A day of quiet mourning.

My sister Marty took her daughter Jenny to the store to buy dinner. She was 23 and Jenny was 5 and it was either July 2nd or July 3rd, back in either 1982 or 1983. Since she lived in Tampa, I guess it must have been pretty hot and muggy.

When she was a kid, Marty would walk up to the stores on Penn Avenue between 54th and 55th streets. There was a National T grocery, a hardware, a dry cleaner, a Chinese restaurant, a convenience store, a barber shop, and a drug store with a lunch counter, plus one or two others I guess. What was amazing was that Marty knew everyone who lived between our house and those stores. Or so it seemed at the time, because when you walked to the store with her, people would say "Hi, Marty," and they would wave and smile, and Marty would smile and then stop and pass some time with them. I was five years older than Marty and I didn't know these people from Adam. Marty was the friendly one in our family. She had this smile that was radiant the way sun reflects off a lake. It could blind you. There was nothing but love in her smile. I've never known another person I could say that about.

I guess you've probably read enough stories and news articles to know Marty never came home with dinner that night. A man named William Ferry walked into that Winn Dixie store with a five gallon pail of gasoline, threw it on several people, and then flicked his bic.

The last time I saw my sister, was on television in a Tampa hotel room; her feet were sticking out past an amazingly white sheet and they were as black as the lump charcoal I used to cook the pork chops for dinner last night. Jenny lived for a few days in the hospital dying slowly from her extensive burns; we sat downstairs in a room the hospital provided for all the families involved, and the pain in that room...well it's pain no one should ever suffer.

The Purpose Of Studio Apartments

I lived in a studio apartment in St. Paul, Minnesota that was build to house factory workers during World War I, and was about the same size as a prison cell. The Murphy Bed had been removed, so I put a mattress and box spring on the floor where the Murphy Bed would have been when folded down. I had a desk and a chair and a typewriter and a couple hundred books. There were two windows on the same wall which were fairly small and didn't really help because when it's hot and muggy you need cross ventilation; you need a window on another wall. There was a cupboard kitchen, a bathroom, and a fairly big closet.

Most of the girls I went to college with looked at me funny if they came into my "apartment." I'm sure they wondered why this man was bringing them into a room with only a bed and a desk. At the time that never occurred to me because I didn't have any ulterior motives in mind. My dad raised me to be a gentleman. In other words, the woman had to make it obvious to me before the bed even came into play. But that Summer I didn't bring women there. The Summer of 1982 or 1983. Mostly I came home from work and read The Bible. What I read were the Psalms because of this guy on the stoop named Rodney.

How The Bible Works

Rodney had gotten out of the joint and sat on the stoop with the other brothers. I was one of two white guys who lived in the building. I walked past the men on the stoop the first couple of nights in the Spring, on my way home from work, and then realized that was silly. So on the third night, after my dinner, I grabbed a quart of Miller High Life and went down to the stoop. Rodney and I ended up playing chess until well after midnight. He asked "what's that clickety clack I hear coming from your crib?" I told him I was a writer and he told me to read the Psalms. "The Psalms are hip, man. They'll explain your life."

One horribly desperate night that Summer, after my sister and niece had been burnt to death, I remembered what Rodney said. So I picked up The Bible which was on my floor and I read the Psalms. Damn if they didn't calm me down. You see, when you sit in a sweltering apartment about the size of an average prison cell, and you think about nothing but the animal that killed your sister and her child, you imagine things and you get pretty wound up. By "sweltering" I mean that it can be 98 degrees and 98 percent humidity at 2:00 a.m.; it never cools down; not for a couple of weeks and the things that you imagine are beyond vile and violent. Rage is pure evil. All of us are capable of pure evil. You'll find out for yourself at some point if you haven't already. And if you don't, Jesus must owe you money.

Consider that people have asked me "What was that like? To have your sister murdered? Didn't you want to kill the guy?" Very human questions and very messed up to ask that. Do they think I enjoy bringing those memories back? Do they think the pain of them actually dims with time?

I know you're probably curious so here's what it was like -- only I tamed it down because the real lanauge would offend you. One night I imagined being able to nail his hands and feet to the floor so he was face down and completely naked. Then I would nail his tongue to the floor. And then I would shove a red-hot poker right up his hole that doesn't have a tongue.

You can't live with thoughts like those for very long or your soul goes south permanently. You have to find a way out.

The U.S. Is Not A Christan Nation

It's harder than you think to forgive something like your sister and niece being burnt to death for no reason at all. There's not a lot going on in our society, especially today, that will help you find forgiveness. And you can't get there on Sundays only. There is only one real way to forgive something that big. And it takes a lot of very long, tortured nights with just yourself and your version of God.

When William Ferry came up for trial in Tampa, it was a year or so later. Florida doesn't buy "crazy." They regulate the person with drugs until they understand what is going on and then they haul them into a courtroom. I paid attention because Florida is a death-penalty state. And when he got the death sentence, I wrote to then-Governor Bob Graham and asked him to commute William Ferry's sentence to life without parole.

You see, that day they nailed those three guys to the cross, it was because they had been given the death penalty. One of them was innocent. The other two were thieves. They had stolen something. And one of the thieves repented on the cross. You read that story and you have to wonder if they had given the third guy more time, would he have figured out how to save his soul? The honest answer? Maybe.

Seems like a "Christian" nation wouldn't even start down the road to execution in the first place, let alone put you in a position where you'd end up asking that question.

While I sat in that sweltering apartment the size of a prison cell, reading The Old Testament, I came across the Ten Commandments. If you really spend some time thinking about them, they all boil down to "Do Not Steal." William Ferry stole Marty's Life, he stole Jenny's life, and I think three other lives that night in Tampa. If we gave him more time would he be able to find a way to save his soul? Maybe.

Would the innocent man on the cross say William Ferry's soul was worth saving?