May 13, 2003
by David Skidmore

It could be a hospital emergency room. Bright recessed flood lamps, stainless steel stands for hanging IV bags and tubes, a portable stand and tray for other medical tools, a privacy curtain and, bathed in the yellow-green light - an empty hospital gurney.

But no lives have been saved here. This is a killing room.

Its most recent occupant - Kevin Lee Hough - was admitted May 1 around the dinner hour, and, with a physician and prison chaplain present, strapped to the gurney and attached to an IV feed line. Shortly after midnight May 2, after Indiana State Prison officials confirmed that the U.S. Supreme Court had denied his final appeal, Houck received a saline solution through the IV tube. A minute later, after the reading of the execution order, the first of five syringes containing sodium pentothal - an anesthetic - was injected into the IV line. As eight witnesses watched, among them Houck's mother and daughter, four more doses were administered, the final being the heart-stopping drug potassium chloride.

At 12:25 a.m. the physician confirmed his heart had stopped and brain function had ceased. The 43-year-old was the 849th person put to death in U.S. prisons since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, and Indiana's 81st execution since Harry Jones was killed by hanging in 1897.

But not the last. On June 13, Joseph Trueblood of Lafayette, Indiana, has a date with the gurney.

Profound irony

In the room where witnesses watched Houck's final moments, the Episcopal Church's presiding bishop, Frank Griswold, viewed the empty death chamber apparatus, the final stop of a half-day tour of death row facilities in Michigan City, Indiana, April 2. In his first visit to a death chamber, and in fact to a state prison, the presiding bishop said he was moved by the "profound irony" of seeing life-saving equipment being used as the instruments of an execution.

"It struck me looking through the window at a hospital gurney how an execution now parodies hospital procedures. Intravenous tubes and all the rest of it are an effort to help heal someone, when what is really happening there is just the opposite," he said.

Earlier in the tour Griswold spoke with three death row inmates temporarily housed at the Maximum Control Facility in nearby Westville. His conversations - conducted by phone in a booth divided by bulletproof glass - confirmed for him how much capital punishment is at odds with his understanding of the gospel. In each of those short exchanges he said he was struck by the "deep sense of prayer" emanating from the three men, how each considered himself "all right with God, acknowledging that God is in charge," and holding "a deep sense of being forgiven by God."

In his conversation with Keith Canaan, a 44-year-old inmate on death row since December 1986, and later talking with death row guards, Griswold said he learned that popular perceptions of those condemned to die can be misleading. They are not all hardened and defiant towards the society that enables their death. "He [Canaan] said, You know we change here. We are not the same people we were when we came here,'" recalled Griswold. Unfortunately for Canaan and the other 38 residents of Indiana's death row, there is no way for the justice system to acknowledge or accommodate that change of mind and spirit, said Griswold.

Grace operates on death row

The personal encounters with inmates also reinforced the views of other members of Griswold's party on the death row visit: Bishop George Packard, bishop suffragan for the Episcopal Church's chaplains in the armed services, healthcare services and prison ministry; Bishop Edward Little of Northern Indiana; Bishop Catherine Waynick of Indianapolis; Barbara Braver, communications assistant for the presiding bishop; and the Rev. Jacqueline Means, director of prison ministries for the Episcopal Church.

Waynick said that her opposition to the death penalty has deepened as a result of meeting the men living under its cloud. "These are human beings who in extraordinarily difficult circumstances manage to make the very best of it for themselves," she said. "There is really grace operative here. And my opinions and perceptions about whether the death penalty is a valuable part of our social structure have not changed. I think it is abhorrent."

In her testimony before the Indiana state senate committee looking into the death penalty, Waynick has focused on the moral arguments in Scripture, whereas other religious leaders have concentrated on sociological factors, such as apparent racial bias in death sentences and the higher cost of running death row as opposed to lifetime incarceration. Scripture permits capital punishment, she said, but only under strict guidelines requiring the eyewitness testimony of two persons, and that the execution be carried out by those bringing the charges. "We don't have any of those provisions in our statutes about the death penalty," she said, "and I think we need to play that up more. We need to be honest about that."

Church members favor death penalty

There is little ambiguity on the issue for Means. "I am completely against it," she said. "When we kill somebody legally what we are saying is that God cannot change a person's life. And I don't believe in that. God can do what God wants to do. And even the worst person in the world doesn't deserve to be executed."

Means, who organized the visit to the Michigan City prisons, acknowledged that her view is not shared by the majority of Episcopalians, who see inmates on a different plane than other social service recipients. She estimates that up to 70 percent of the people sitting in church pews on Sunday support capital punishment. The prevailing view for them, she said, appears to be that taking a life should be paid through the forfeiture of life. Even in the church she serves as vicar in West Terre Haute, Indiana, the sentiment runs in favor of the death penalty.

Despite reluctance in the pews, the Episcopal Church has long been on record as opposed to capital punishment. Beginning in 1958, and reaffirmed several times since, the church's General Convention has adopted resolutions calling for the abolition of the death penalty. The most recent statements have been made in an Executive Council resolution in June 2001 calling for an immediate moratorium and eventual abolition of capital punishment in all state and federal prisons, and in a letter last January from the presiding bishop to Illinois' former Governor George Ryan, who made headlines last year for placing a moratorium on all executions in the state and commuting over 100 death sentences in the final weeks of his term.

"It is my hope that, with your bold action as witness and example, each state and this country as a whole will reconsider the use of the death penalty and cease this practice," wrote Griswold.

Education could make the difference

Resolutions alone are not enough to make capital punishment, and prison ministry itself, a concern of the average Episcopalian, maintained Means. Education is the key, and the most effective teacher is the presiding bishop, she said.

"People need to be educated. We need to talk about this instead of sweeping it under the rug," said Means. With the presiding bishop's statement and now his visit to a death row, "it is going to bring it out from under the rug now, and we are going to have to start talking about some things," she said.

The presiding bishop's visit is a powerful catalyst, agreed Bishop Little, but high profile events and pronouncements must be followed up with local engagement. One approach is for parishes to explore the death penalty issue in adult forums and Bible study groups, allowing "the Scriptures to do the slow work of changing hearts," said Little.

It is telling, he noted, that the church has invested more effort in the theology of "just war" theory, dating back to St. Augustine, than in issues dealing with the life's beginning and end. "It is more sloganeering than anything else," he said of the resolutions and statements produced by the church around life issues.

In the case of the death penalty, which has been part of American culture since Plymouth Rock, "we have never approached that with the same theological seriousness with which we have approached war," said Little. "Maybe we need to do a parallel Christian reflection on the death penalty."

Starting points, he said, could be the House of Bishops Theology Committee, or even an Anglican Communion commission, much like the Eames Commission of the 1988 Lambeth Conference which addressed a process of reception on women's ordination.

Given Christ's injunction in Matthew 25 - "when was it we saw you sick and in prison and visited you?" - it is hard to imagine people not engaging this issue and getting involved in prison ministry, he said.

Need for more prison chaplains

In some dioceses, the issue is taking hold. Means notes that all four Michigan dioceses have made prison ministry a priority. The Diocese of Northern Michigan operates a camp for kids whose parents are incarcerated at the state prison in Marquette, she said, and invites family members to stay in an apartment above the diocesan offices while visiting inmates in Marquette. In the state prison in Angola, Louisiana, the Diocese of Louisiana helps support the Church of the Transfiguration, an Episcopal congregation operating within the prison. Similar prison churches have been started by Episcopalians in Pennsylvania and Florida.

Another promising sign is a growing interest in chaplaincy work. Means is in conversation with Seabury-Western Theological Seminary in Evanston, Ilinois, on sponsoring a school for chaplains. The seminary, she noted, has a student outreach to St. Leonard's House, an Episcopal Charities agency on Chicago's West Side that operates a residential program for ex-offenders reentering society.

While the church has over 300 health services chaplains, it has few prison chaplains compared with other mainline denominations. Just three Episcopal chaplains serve in federal prisons, and around two dozen in state prisons. One problem is the age requirement for chaplains serving in the federal bureau of prisons. They have to be under age 37 and have two years parish experience, said Means. Episcopalian candidates are few, given that the average age of our clergy is in the upper 40s, she said.

"If I had ten Episcopal priests that had the experience and education," she said "they could probably go to work in the next 60 days."

Restorative justice offers healing

Beyond the moral issue of legally sanctioning someone's death is a concept that has been incorporated into the General Convention theme this summer: restorative justice. Endorsed by the 2000 General Convention, restorative justice as applied to prison ministry moves debate from fault-finding and retribution to truth-telling and reconciliation.

Patterned after the process used so successfully by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the South Africa Truth and Reconciliation Commission, restorative justice involves those most directly affected by a crime - the victim, the perpetrator, and the community - in deciding accountability and appropriate restitution. The key concepts it promotes are an understanding of crime as a violation of a person rather than primarily an infraction of a law or statute; an emphasis on the roles of community, victim and violator in determining the response to a crime; face-to-face dialogue of the primary stakeholders as opposed to adversarial court proceedings; and understanding an offender's accountability as involving restitution to the victim, participating in treatment for behavioral disorders, and community service.

Inspired by the biblical principle of Jubilee - which links justice and economics through the call for freeing slaves, forgiveness of debt, and leaving the land fallow - restorative justice does not mean the church or society excuses or overlooks the crime, but that all those affected are ministered to equally: the victims, the offender, and their respective families, said Griswold.

"Clearly we are not called about being mediators of death to one another," he said. "We are called to be about transformation, restoration, healing."

If a restorative justice program could be implemented throughout the country, the prison population could be reduced by up to 40 percent, said Means. The process used within the walls - talking with inmates about their actions and how they can go about restoration - would be equally effective as a prevention tool in their communities. "You take it into the community where it belongs, where the damage is done, and deal with it in the community," she said.

The church also needs to be involved in the political arena, she said, pushing for states to abolish the death penalty or at least enact reforms on eligibility for the death penalty. A moratorium would be "wonderful," said Means, but noted "there are not that many Governor Ryans in the world. The church needs to be advocating and being present for those who can't be present for themselves."

For more information about the death penalty

The Episcopal Church on capital punishment: http://www.deathpenaltyreligious.org/education/statements/episcopal.html

Death Penalty Information Center: http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/index.php

National Coalition Against the Death Penalty: http://www.ncadp.org/

More about Indiana's Death Row: http://www.clarkprosecutor.org/html/death/rownew.html

More about Keith Canaan's case: http://ccadp.org/keithcanaan.html

Episcopal News Service
David Skidmore is director of communication for the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago.