Who Would Jesus Execute? (Part Two)
Inside This Episode
When 17-year-old Arthur Medina was charged with capital murder, he was certain that his life was over. But after 15 years in solitary confinement, a strange encounter catapulted Arthur into new life in Christ, as well as a new life outside prison walls. Still, Arthur remains convinced that he deserved to die – and that he is not the only one. In this episode, Arthur’s perspective on the death penalty is accompanied by those of a retired prison chaplain who accompanied a man to his death, an innocent man who spent twenty years on death row, activist Shane Claiborne, and members of the Maybe God community.
Want to share your thoughts? Send an email to [email protected]
A special thanks to Jubilee Prison Ministry for sponsoring this episode of Maybe God!
...and also to Second Baptist Church for providing additional clips of Arthur’s story.
Read Chaplain Henry Covert’s Ministry to the Incarcerated
Read Maurice Chammah’s Let the Lord Sort Them: The Rise and Fall of the Death Penalty
Connect with Shane Claiborne: http://executinggrace.com/
Transcript
Julie Mirlicourtois: Today's episode of Maybe God is sponsored by volunteers of the Jubilee Prison Ministry. Jubilee is a cross-denominational Christian program designed to engage incarcerated men and women in what will hopefully be a life-changing encounter with the gospel.
To learn how you can volunteer with this transformative program serving inmates in Texas prisons, head to jubileeprisonministry.org.
Now before we get started, we'd like to offer a quick disclaimer that this episode contains graphic details of executions that may not be suitable for younger audiences.
Eric Huffman: On this episode of Maybe God, a Houston man who believes he deserved the death penalty after his involvement in a carjacking turned deadly.
Arthur Medina: I lost it. We took him to a golf course and I lashed out. I was in the back seat of the car after we had shot him.
Eric Huffman: Who shot him?
Arthur Medina: I'm responsible.
Eric Huffman: A police officer, turned prison chaplain, who stood next to a man as the state of Pennsylvania administered lethal injection.
Man: It was a surreal experience. I felt lightheaded. We became friends. We were fellow Christians, and here I was accompanying him to his death.
Eric Huffman: Plus, this man spent 20 years on death row for a crime he did not commit.
Derrick Jamison: I had six days of execution while I was on Ohio death row. They came to kill me six times. They asked me where I want my body sent, what did I want for my last meal six times.
Eric Huffman: What can we learn from stories like these? And what does the Bible really have to say about capital punishment? That's today on part two of Who Would Jesus Execute?.
[00:01:45] <music>
Eric Huffman: You're listening to Maybe God. I'm Eric Huffman.
Michael Sennett: Nothing happened here today is going to bring mom back. It's kind of a bittersweet day, but we're glad this day is over.
Eric Huffman: That's Michael Sennett expressing his family's relief following the death of a man named Kenneth Smith. On January 25, 2024, the state of Alabama executed Smith for murdering Sennett's 45-year-old mother, Elizabeth, in 1988.
Two years prior to his execution, Alabama had attempted to put Smith to death by lethal injection, but the medical staff were unable to locate a vein for the IV lines. After lying strapped to a gurney for four hours, Smith's execution was pushed to a later date.
Instead of risking another failed attempt at lethal injection, Alabama officials opted to do something that had never been done in American history. They executed Smith using nitrogen hypoxia. The following day, Smith's spiritual advisor, Dr. Jeff Hood, who witnessed the execution, shared what happened as the nitrogen took effect.
Dr. Jeff Hood: I think there's no doubt that the state of Alabama was desperate to get to a different type of execution, having botched multiple executions in recent years. And they thought that nitrogen hypoxia was going to be quick and painless. And there is no doubt that that is not what I saw last night, and that's not what happened.
Man: What did you see last night?
Dr. Jeff Hood: It was absolutely horrible. We entered the chamber, and Kenny and I prayed together. The execution began, and almost immediately, he began to just convulse, rock back and forth. There was snot, spit, all sorts of fluid coming from him that was hitting the front of the mask.
There have been estimates that this lasted as long as 22 minutes. It wasn't just cruel and unusual punishment, it was torture. It's unbelievable that our country that runs around the world preaching human rights could let something like this happen.
Eric Huffman: When asked if he had any last words, Smith said, "Tonight, Alabama caused humanity to take a step backwards. I'm leaving with love, peace and light. Thank you for supporting me. Love, all of you."
I asked Shane Claiborne, the anti-death penalty advocate, who we featured in part one of this episode, how often executions are being carried out today in the United States.
Shane Claiborne: So it's around 20 a year right now. And like I said, there's only a handful of states that are actively executing, about six states that are carrying out executions. Texas is usually about half of our executions nationally.
Now, Oklahoma is an anomaly in that they've set 25 execution dates in a row and they've just had a backlog of executions. So they're trying to do as many as they believe can be carried out without traumatizing the corrections officers and others. So it's like every three weeks they've been trying to carry out executions and some of those have been interrupted.
But the other thing to think about, Eric, is you zoom out of the United States, I'm almost 50, and when I was born, most of the world was carrying out executions and had the death penalty. Now you fast forward, it's almost the exact opposite. Almost the entire world has found alternatives to the death penalty, and there's only a handful of countries that continue to execute. In the United States, this is mind-boggling, but we are in the top 5 often, and we're always in the top 10.
Eric Huffman: Top 5 what exactly?
Shane Claiborne: Countries for the most executions. And the company that we keep is not good.
Eric Huffman: Yeah, I would not imagine.
Shane Claiborne: You know, China is number one, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq. So these are not countries that are known to be champions of human rights. And yet we're in that company when it comes to carrying out executions.
Eric Huffman: Shane also spoke with Kenneth Smith's spiritual advisor, Dr. Hood, shortly after his unprecedented execution.
Dr. Jeff Hood: Kenny Smith, there's no doubt about it, was a murderer. I mean, not just a murderer, but he committed a horrible, horrific crime. But, you know, like the Apostle Paul and so many in Scripture, that's not all of who he was.
I think that when you serve a God that is full of grace and full of compassion and full of redemption, the story doesn't end in our worst moments. Sometimes that's where it begins.
Shane Claiborne: I know you've been up all night, but we're bringing some fire right now.
Eric Huffman: Today in part two of this episode, we're digging into the theological and even practical reasons for and against the death penalty. We start right here in Houston, Texas, with the story of a man who, not unlike Kenneth Smith in Alabama, was locked up for something that he did in his worst moment. Even though on sentencing day it seemed as though his life was over, it was in prison that the rest of his life would soon begin.
Arthur Medina grew up in a historic neighborhood known as the Second Ward on Houston's East Side.
Arthur Medina: There was nine of us, six brothers, three sisters, and then my mom and dad. Then things changed for me around the fifth grade. While I was in school, a lady came up and asked, did I know who she was? I said, "No ma'am, I don't know who you are." And she goes, "I'm your mother." I told her, "You have the wrong kid. My mom's at home." And that's when my life got turned upside down. Come to find out, she was my mother and one of my brothers was actually my father.
Eric Huffman: So the person you thought was your brother was actually your father.
Arthur Medina: Yes. It just threw me for a loop. I wasn't mature enough to process all this. But what I did think and feel at the time was that I wasn't loved. That I was not good to the point that my own parents didn't want me. And I latched on to being lied to.
Eric Huffman: Yeah, the people closest to you had deceived you. At least that's how you processed it initially.
Arthur Medina: Yes. So I built a wall around myself. Me against the world.
Eric Huffman: After Arthur's birth mother confronted him at school, he went home and immediately told the people that he thought were his parents what had happened. Initially, they denied everything and insisted that they were Arthur's real parents. But eventually, the truth came out that his mother was only 15 years old when she became pregnant with Arthur. The couple who'd raised him were actually his grandparents.
Arthur says that learning the truth surrounding his birth and childhood set him on a different path.
Arthur Medina: I started getting in trouble right around the age of 14. The rebellious teenage stuff was just compounded by all these misbeliefs that I was having about life, that women or girls can never be trusted. These misbeliefs dominated my life to the point that I just didn't want anyone close to me.
Eric Huffman: At what age did things start to get really bad? Like the trouble you getting into started being less just mischief and more criminal?
Arthur Medina: By the age of 15 because at 15 I knew everything. I mean, why do I need to stay home? Why do I even need to be under this roof? I'm a man. So I left. I don't call it running away. I just left. I didn't want to be with anyone anymore. I felt that they weren't my family anyway. That's what enticed me to the streets. It's amazing how you'll find other people that will welcome you but for the wrong reasons.
Eric Huffman: Who were the people that welcomed you?
Arthur Medina: There were a couple of guys, they showed me how to make money. First selling cocaine, because then in the 80s, that was the new prevalent drug at the time. And then literally stealing cars and taking them to Mexico, which is where I was really making money.
I was 16 when I started all that stuff. Then I just turned 17, and at that point, I learned that my then-girlfriend was pregnant with my daughter. And I told myself, "I'm not going to be like my father. I'm going to be there for my kid." So I wanted to walk away from it-
Eric Huffman: From what?
Arthur Medina: From what I was doing, because I knew that that was a path that was going to either get me killed or sent to prison, of course. When I tried to walk away, I didn't have the maturity enough to know, "Hey, go to this church and ask them for help. You need guidance."
So I told myself, "You know what? I'm going to make one last trip because if I carjack someone that has a Porsche, I can get $10,000. Because I had negotiated a deal with one of the guys in Mexico. He says, "All you got to do is bring it all the way down here to Monterrey, Mexico, drop it off and I'll give you either $10,000 cash or $10,000 in cocaine."
Eric Huffman: Thinking that $10,000 would be exactly what he needed for a fresh start, Arthur and his buddies went out looking for a Porsche. Instead, late one night, they came across a man in a brand new Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme.
Arthur Medina: We ended up putting him in the trunk of the car. We don't know who he is. It's just a random person we just ran up against. And we were not going to kill him, we were just going to carjack somebody and go. Then he made me mad because he put his fingers through the trunk of the car.
Eric Huffman: As you're driving it?
Arthur Medina: Yes. And I just got so angry.
Eric Huffman: Because you thought he was gonna get you caught.
Arthur Medina: Yes.
Eric Huffman: Because if he gets his fingers out, people might see him.
Arthur Medina: Yes.
Eric Huffman: Okay, and so you lost it.
Arthur Medina: I lost it. We took him to a golf course and I lashed out. I was in the back seat of the car after we had shot him.
Eric Huffman: Who shot him?
Arthur Medina: I'm responsible. And stabbed him. And we threw him in the woods. As I sat in the back seat, it was like I'm just going crazy because I'm thinking to myself, I need to kill these guys. I didn't do it, of course.
Eric Huffman: Why do you think you thought that?
Arthur Medina: I just snapped, and I was just in a rage. It just seemed that I was just so mad for so many different things at one time, and I ended up taking it out on him.
We ended up going into an apartment. We hung out there, and then they said, "Hey, let's go hit another jackpot. We'll actually go finish getting this Porsche." So while we're going, the police tried to pull us over. We ended up going on a high-speed chase, crashed, and that's how we got caught.
Eric Huffman: So they run the plate, the car, they, I guess, found the guy?
Arthur Medina: They ended up finding him the next day. At that time, they had only caught us for auto theft. I guess the police had made the call, "We need to hold these guys, there's something else here."
Eric Huffman: Sure.
Arthur Medina: Because we had weapons and stuff like that, so.
Eric Huffman: Yeah, you run the plates on a stolen car, you go to the residence and ask people where the owner of the car is, and he's not there. So clearly there's a manhunt for him, and they find the body. And then you have more charges coming your way.
Arthur Medina: Yes. And that's when I was charged with capital murder.
Eric Huffman: What were you thinking at the time? How did that hit you?
Arthur Medina: My life was over. The state of Texas at the time, even though I was certified as an adult, I had just turned 17, and they sought the death penalty against me. I felt my life was over. You know, I told myself then, "I ended up being worse than my father and my mother, and was not going to be able to be there for my kid."
Eric Huffman: Because Arthur's family didn't have much money, he was assigned to a state-appointed attorney who had a reputation for falling asleep during trials. This attorney, who often represented clients who were facing the death penalty, told Arthur that his best chance of avoiding execution was by accepting a plea deal of a life sentence.
At age 17, Arthur was sent to the Jim Ferguson Unit in Midway, Texas, with an aggravated life sentence and no possibility of parole for 20 years. Friends with experience in that same prison warned Arthur about the violence that he would surely encounter. So he walked in, ready to defend himself at all costs.
Arthur Medina: I told myself, I am not going to be a victim. Then when I was challenged, I mean really challenged, I had a known predator that even the guards are scared of come to me and say that he was going to make me his girl.
Eric Huffman: He didn't say girl, did he?
Arthur Medina: No, he didn't say it that politely. He was very blunt and he was known to be a predator. You know, that's what he did.
Eric Huffman: And everybody was afraid of him.
Arthur Medina: Everybody was afraid of him. And if you fight him, just know he's going to hurt you.
Eric Huffman: What'd you do when he said that to you?
Arthur Medina: I was going to fight him. Then before even a punch was thrown, people got involved because guards were coming. And that gave me the time to go get a weapon. Because in my mind and the way the homeboys helped me understand, they said, "Look, you got a life sentence. Why are you going to fight him? Why don't you just kill him? Because what are they going to do, lock you up?"
Eric Huffman: What kind of weapon did you have?
Arthur Medina: I got a hold of a homemade knife, which was a steel rod, and I stopped him the very next day. And I said, "You disrespected me yesterday, and if you could just apologize to me, I'm willing to let this go." And he did not give me the answer I wanted. He got in my face and he says, "Oh, you're a new boot." That's what you call guys that are new in the prison.
Eric Huffman: Sure.
Arthur Medina: The knife that I had, I called it Excalibur and I pulled that out and I started stabbing him.
Eric Huffman: How many times did you stab him?
Arthur Medina: It was about five to seven times I stabbed him. And then I stopped because he was with two guys, and I was going to get them too. But they ran, and then when I turned around, he started running. And I chased them all through the hallway, and finally, I got surrounded, and they locked me up behind that. That was the first of different charges I got while in prison.
Eric Huffman: Did he make it?
Arthur Medina: He survived.
Eric Huffman: How many other altercations did you have? How many bodies did you leave in your wake over the next several years in prison?
Arthur Medina: I was charged with five different additional charges while incarcerated, and I ended up getting 119 years total.
Eric Huffman: Jeez. What are the charges? Did you kill anybody in prison?
Arthur Medina: I did not kill anyone myself. But when you get involved with these gangs, you have an influence on things that happen.
Eric Huffman: Got it. I feel like you have to be real careful when you talk. Do you feel that way?
Arthur Medina: Well, you know, there is no statute of limitations for certain crimes, and I can't...
Eric Huffman: We'll move on. I get it. I've seen enough TV shows to know when to stop asking a man about something. So there was this guy who prosecuted one of your cases, called you one of the most feared inmates in the state of Texas.
Man: We prosecuted Arthur several times. He was hated by other inmates. He was hated by prison officials. He was hated by people in my office. Certainly hated by his victims and their families. His only reputation was bad and one of being evil and violent.
When I first learned about his free world crime that brought him to prison in the first place, I believed he deserved the death penalty.
Eric Huffman: Did you know that that's what they said about you?
Arthur Medina: Yes, I knew that they had said that about me.
Eric Huffman: How did it feel at the time?
Arthur Medina: When I was in that state of mind, I had a lot of pride. I mean, that's the one thing in prison is that the more violent you are, the more respect you get. Which, by the way, I think it's important to share this with you. I am not proud of this stuff. I look back at this stuff and I just... I'm appalled. Kind of like, it's not possible. And I wish that I could undo it.
I wish I could go back to when I was in high school and decided to stop going to school. I wish I could go to that point in time and say, no, I need to work through this. But I did go down this path and I'm here and it's showing the power of God and what God can do when we take Him at His word.
Eric Huffman: Yeah, amen. As a pastor for almost 25 years, I've seen a lot of redemption stories and it never ceases to amaze me how God has a knack for taking somebody who's totally lost out of the darkness they're in and placing them into the light.
In this case, Arthur was living in literal darkness. Because of the crimes that he committed in prison, he spent 15 and a half years in solitary confinement in a six-by-nine cell. It was during that time that the same assistant prosecutor, who we just heard say that he believed Arthur deserved the death penalty, paid him a visit in prison.
The lawyer was there to discuss another one of Arthur's crimes, but as the two men sat face to face, he felt God nudging him to ask the inmate something completely different.
Arthur Medina: And he says, "I just got to ask you a personal question." In my mind, I'm thinking, "Okay, what angle is he coming at me," you know?
Eric Huffman: Plead the fifth?
Arthur Medina: He says, "do you believe in God?" "Believe in God? What does God have to do with this?"
Eric Huffman: This is a prosecutor.
Arthur Medina: Yes.
Eric Huffman: Wow.
Arthur Medina: What does God have to do with this? I mean, God was a name I used when I cussed. But I had no respect for God. I didn't know Him. Didn't care to know Him. But when He asked me that question, I don't know what made me say yes.
Eric Huffman: Yes, I believe in God?
Arthur Medina: Yes, I believe in God. I mean, I didn't know anything about Him. Nothing. And he said, "Well, if you believe in God, why don't you get to know Him?
Eric Huffman: Wow.
Arthur Medina: And that changed the trajectory of my life. That was my first encounter with God. Because that's the thing, when you have an encounter with God, you don't come away the same. Because I was about to kill somebody else during that time. And at that point in time, I became a truth seeker.
Because remember, I've got all these issues. I've got trust issues, abandonment issues, rejection issues. Who's telling the truth? So I studied Islam. I studied Jehovah Witness. I studied Mormons. I had nothing else to do. Every opportunity I got, I got books. And I hate reading, but there was nothing else to do, because there's no TV, there's no AC, there's no all these different distractions and comforts.
Eric Huffman: No AC? I'm sorry, that got me. In Texas? Really?
Arthur Medina: That's right, yeah.
Eric Huffman: Wow.
Arthur Medina: You got to create a dam on yourself, fill it up with water, and laying it just to stay cool.
Eric Huffman: Just to cool off. So you get books like... would you order them or would you go library or you just keep them?
Arthur Medina: There were organizations that gave you free books. You send them your request and then they would send you the books you asked for. And that started me on my journey. And it's in studying the Word of God, the Bible, that it jumped out at me.
Eric Huffman: The Bible did?
Arthur Medina: The Bible jumped out at me. All these other religions were focused on me doing things to get to God, whereas in Christianity I didn't have to do anything. It's already been done by our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Eric Huffman: Right. As a person who sat where you sat, somebody who's done some of the most awful things imaginable and been convicted and sitting solitary and all this, the news of grace must have been the best possible news, like the news of God coming to us regardless of our behavior.
Arthur Medina: I love the story where Jesus is on the cross and there's two others with him. We forget about the other two that were there. One of them denied Him and accosted the Lord. But the other one, He told Him, today you will be with me in paradise. I know that challenges the theology of many people because, okay, he didn't get baptized-
Eric Huffman: Pray the sinner's prayer.
Arthur Medina: He didn't pray the sinner's prayer.
Eric Huffman: Join a church.
Arthur Medina: He didn't go to Bible studies. None of that. Obviously, for Him to say, "Today you'll be with me in paradise," He didn't exonerate him. Instead, he was held accountable for his actions. God, I had even more mercy and grace in my life because while I was locked up in a prison, in an impossible situation, God, I say, took me off the cross and says, here, you're going to go and tell people about Me. And that's why I'm here today.
There was still the accountability, but now I get to walk in the newness of life and share the gospel of Jesus Christ, the good news of what He can do, because we serve an amazing God.
Eric Huffman: Amen. Was there a defining moment when you accepted Christ and became a Christian?
Arthur Medina: That defining moment was maybe around 2003, more or less. Because it's a process. I mean, we can go back to when the prosecutor asked me that question, but there were guys that were always coming to the prisons, prison ministry, "Hey, Jesus loves you, man." "Get out of my face." But that was a seed. Even though I rejected them, did I really reject them? Because that's a seed that was planted and others watered, and God gave the increase.
Eric Huffman: Wow. Now you're preaching. That's really good. That's solid. I mean, that's beautiful to remember everything that any believer has ever done to plant the gospel seed in us. Even if we rejected it, it was still grace for us from the Father.
[00:26:04] <music>
Eric Huffman: Okay, guys, this seems like a good time to take a quick break and tell you about an organization that's close to my heart. I've seen firsthand the difference that Jubilee Prison Ministry is making throughout the state of Texas in the lives of inmates who have the chance to forge new friendships with folks on the outside and also to have their lives forever changed by the hopeful message of Jesus Christ.
But inmates aren't the only ones who are transformed by Jubilee. In fact, I've also seen God move powerfully in the lives of the men and women who volunteer to make Jubilee weekends possible. I personally know guys who were pretty good men before they started serving through Jubilee. But after their first weekend volunteering inside a prison, I witnessed them be transformed by God into great men, men with fire in their eyes and a passion to change the world.
And the best part is that these guys don't just get excited for a few days before flaming out and going back to who they used to be. Because Jubilee is all about building long-term relationships, the men who serve together become lifelong friends on a mission.
Jubilee isn't just for men either. They're also looking for women to step up and serve inside women's prisons or to provide outside support for all the weekends. So if you're ready and willing to make a difference in the lives of incarcerated men and women in Texas prisons, and maybe you need to make a change in your own life as well, I hope you'll visit jubileeprisonministry.org for more information about how to volunteer.
If you're not ready to serve in person yet, just please consider making a donation through their website. Again, that's jubileeprisonministry.org. Jubilee is an ecumenical nonprofit organization, and all donations are tax-deductible.
Thank you for listening. Now let's get back to today's episode.
[00:27:41] <music>
Eric Huffman: Nearly two decades into his prison sentence, now a man in his 30s, Arthur surprised everyone at the Ferguson Unit when he renounced his gang membership and openly started following Jesus. He started going to school again for the first time in years, and everything about how he went about his life in prison just looked different. The changes in Arthur had a ripple effect on the prisoners around him.
Arthur Medina: So one guy was stabbed almost 50 times because of me, and he knows it was because of me. And years later, we're on the same pod. I was saved at that time, and I knew that I had to ask him for forgiveness, and I told him that I was sorry. And he forgave me.
Eric Huffman: Did he? On the spot?
Arthur Medina: Yeah. And he proved it because there was a fire that happened, and they had to evacuate everybody, and we ended up in the same pen. He had a history of his own, and he had said, "If I ever get a chance, I'm going to kill him." And he had his chance, but instead, we embraced.
Eric Huffman: Powerful. I mean, to even go through the process of seeking forgiveness. You didn't have to do that, but in a way you did, right?
Arthur Medina: I had to, yes. I mean, we're Recon, the ministry of reconciliation.
Eric Huffman: As his faith in God grew and matured, Arthur saw a day that he never thought would come, his first parole hearing.
Arthur Medina: I never expected to be alive to see it. I thought the state would either kill me, that my own gang would kill me, the other gangs that I messed with would kill me. I mean, I made a lot of enemies along the way.
Eric Huffman: The judge denied Arthur's request for parole and sent him back to prison. It would be another five years before he'd be eligible again.
Arthur Medina: That's when God taught me one of the hardest lessons we learn in faith and that He wasn't concerned with my freedom. He wasn't concerned with me being happy. He was concerned with His will being performed in my life and developing my character for what He had for me down the road that I had no idea.
So I took that attitude of Meshach, Shadrach, and Abednego. They told the king, "My God will deliver me, but even if He don't, I will not bow down." And that's how we got to be as Christians.
Eric Huffman: It's just so different from, unfortunately, what we're normally used to hearing from pulpits and from Christians, which is, of course, God wants me to be happy, God wants me to have the best life, and God wants me to be prosperous and out of prison for sure.
And you're saying God taught you something different and deeper, a truth that most people are never privy to, they're not ready for it, which is it's not about your happiness. It's really not from God's perspective. It's about your heart. And your heart can be with Him, whether you're in solitary or whether you're in River Oaks in Houston or wherever we are today. You know, it's like, that's just geography.
Arthur Medina: Yes.
Eric Huffman: So what happened at your next parole hearing?
Arthur Medina: Fast forward five years, at that time, God used me as an instrument of righteousness there in prison. I mean, so many different things, great things happened. I came up for parole, and I go to my interview, and she said, "Mr. Medina, from here to here, you're arguably the worst inmate in TDC, but from here to here, you're an outstanding inmate. What happened right here?"
At that moment, most people will say, "Oh, well, I got a degree in computer science, and I got these accomplishments." Because I did that in my last hearing.
Eric Huffman: Sure.
Arthur Medina: And that got me a five-year set off, right?
Eric Huffman: Let's try something different.
Arthur Medina: Didn't even... No. I just said, "You know what? I believed in Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior and repented for what I've done and I ain't been the same since."
Eric Huffman: Wow.
Arthur Medina: And she said, "I knew it. I knew it."
Eric Huffman: Really?
Arthur Medina: "I'm a Christian too."
Eric Huffman: Wow.
Arthur Medina: Seven days later, I got a unanimous decision to be released from prison.
Eric Huffman: Wow. How long ago was that that you were freed?
Arthur Medina: Going on 13 years.
Eric Huffman: Arthur spent a total of 27 years in prison. He was 44 years old when he was released. Just months after becoming a free man, he walked into Lakewood Church in Houston for a Sunday service and he met the woman that he'd soon marry, a church greeter named Sabrina.
Eric Huffman: How long after you met did you get married?
Sabrina: 10 months.
Eric Huffman: My brother, you were fast.
Sabrina: Well, no, I wanted to get married sooner. And he said, No, because we got to put our birthdays together and this date and this is what it comes up to. So it was almost a year.
Arthur Medina: It was a year.
Sabrina: Yeah.
Eric Huffman: So I have to ask you — Sabrina, this is a sensitive question — do you ever worry that your husband might snap again, or that old man might come back?
Sabrina: No. No. I prayed for a man that I would see God in every day. And I see God in him every day.
Eric Huffman: Today, Sabrina and Arthur run a successful HVAC company together. Not only has Arthur reconciled with his birth mother, but he also enjoys a close relationship with his daughter.
Arthur Medina: Every day I would communicate.
Eric Huffman: Come on.
Arthur Medina: We get the privilege of helping her raise our youngest granddaughter. Probably the best thing we've ever done in our life was teaching our youngest granddaughter to say grace. That means more to me than anything else in this world.
Eric Huffman: So beautiful. Now, one of the reasons, among others, we want to talk to you is because of your, what I would consider, a pretty unique perspective on the death penalty. I just wondered if you could unpack that for us a little bit.
Arthur Medina: Yes, sir. I go back to when Jesus was crucified and the two thieves. The Lord easily could have said to him, "You know what? He's exonerated. Let him go and go on and go and tell people about how good God is." He didn't do that.
I look at my personal situation, because I could have gotten the death penalty, and I deserved the death penalty. I believed that had I been sentenced to the death sentence, and I had not come to know the Lord as my personal Lord and Savior, then I would be going to hell.
Eric Huffman: So, I hear you're saying that you feel like at that point in your life you deserved the death penalty. Had it been your sentence, you would have deserved it. Given your closeness to your own circumstance, I can see how you could get in that frame of mind.
It can be a different thing than believing that the death penalty on principle is an okay thing. Are you saying that governments have the right to take life if the ones whose lives they're taking have also taken life? Is it an eye for an eye philosophy?
Arthur Medina: I don't necessarily think it's eye for an eye. It's case by case. If the laws of the land, if the people have said, we want the death penalty for our state, then don't commit a crime that's going to give you the death penalty. I mean, it's that simple.
Eric Huffman: I have to say I didn't see that part of Arthur's story coming. Given his redemption story as a convicted murderer who turned his life around for the better, I would have expected Arthur to be the first person to speak out against capital punishment. Whether or not you agree with his support of the death penalty, however, you really have to respect his courage in voicing it, especially given everything that he's been through.
Arthur's remarks on this topic reminded me of what I think may be the most compelling argument that I've heard Christians make in support of the death penalty. Despite what Shane Claiborne and other death penalty abolitionists might say, there really is nothing in the Bible that explicitly declares it wrong or morally evil for governments and justice systems to take a life for a life.
You might be thinking, what about that commandment that says, thou shalt not kill, right? Well, that verse explicitly condemns the act of murder, the act of the unjust taking of a human life. Now, we know this because, throughout the same legal code that's known as the Law of Moses in the Old Testament, God gave His people guidelines regarding which crimes are worthy of the death penalty and which are not.
We asked Maybe God listeners to weigh in on this topic, and there were several that were willing to speak up in defense of capital punishment. Like Mary Lee, a Maybe God listener who is also the widow of a former appellate court judge. Mary agrees with Arthur, but she believes that the death penalty should be reserved for the most heinous of all crimes.
Mary Lee: The only thing that I truly maybe support the death penalty for is for premeditated, planned murder. I might even throw in there grooming a child for either to traffic them or to sexually abuse them. I mean, it just destroys a life. And I've seen it. I've experienced it.
Eric Huffman: Another listener named Kendall agrees that we're called to obey the rules wherever we live.
Kendall: When it comes to the law of the land, Jesus tells you to obey that as well. So if a community has agreed that we will be doing the death penalty for whatever crime it may be, I think you can look to, while this specifically speaks to taxes, you know, give to Caesar what is due to Caesar. If there is no death penalty, I guess who are you to instate it? But I mean, at the same time, I think that to go against one that already is enacted, I think is also just not exactly correct either.
Eric Huffman: Christians who support capital punishment often point to Romans 13 in the New Testament, which says that God ordains and puts in place government leaders to help carry out His will. I asked Shane Claiborne how he interprets this passage in light of the capital punishment issue.
Shane Claiborne: I find it really important to use Jesus as the lens through which we understand and interpret scripture. We actually don't just have words on paper but we have the word become flesh. Now, as we look at the word fleshed out in Jesus, that helps us understand all of scripture. In fact, even Jesus says that, you know, you search the scriptures looking for life, but they point to me.
So Romans, though, you know, written by Paul, It's interesting because the same Paul who wrote that the authorities are established by God, respect the authorities, actually goes to jail and, among other things, is charged with subverting the authorities and goes on to use the exact same word that he used in Romans, in Ephesians, to say, we wrestle not against flesh and blood but against the authorities and powers in the spiritual realm, but also in the real earthly realm.
And you see that there is this tension that Paul holds, that we're to respect the authorities, but we're also to hold out our allegiance to a higher authority. We're to be loyal to God even when the governments that we live in fall short of love and God's law to love our neighbor.
That's so important because Paul not only goes to jail, the early Christians are accused of subverting the empire of pledging allegiance to another king than Caesar. I think that that has a lot to offer us. Some theologians have called this revolutionary subordination. That just because we're to respect the authorities doesn't mean we obey them all the time, or that we just fall in line with whatever they do, that our governments, as good as they are, are never going to be perfect.
So we've always got this kind of suspicion or this deeper allegiance and loyalty to God. And that's exactly what the early Christians said—we stay true to God even when our governments are not. And they went to jail for that, they were executed for that.
I take a lot of cues from the early Christians, you know, in the first few hundred years. They unilaterally stood against the death penalty. In fact, they went as far to say, for Christ we can die, but we cannot kill. Cyprian, one of the early bishops in Carthage from North Africa, Cyprian said, when an individual kills another individual, we all call it evil, and we should. But why do we sanctify it when the government does it in mass?
Eric Huffman: That's fascinating. What other biblical stories versus passages do you lean on to support your view against the death penalty?
Shane Claiborne: Well, there's lots of them, particularly I think of the woman caught in adultery. This was a capital crime. It's important to remember that murder was not the only death-worthy crime in Scripture. There's dozens and dozens of death-worthy crimes. If we're going to go back to the Old Testament death penalty, that included working on the Sabbath day, witchcraft, and sorcery, which were even death penalty crimes in the United States, right? We think of the Salem witch trial.
There's been an evolution in how we think about this. But adultery was one of those crimes that was worthy of death. This woman in the gospel is humiliated and drugged before the town square, and she's about to be killed. The men have their stones ready to execute her, and Jesus interrupts the execution. And He said to all of these armed men, "Let the one who is without sin cast the first stone."
Of course, He'll remind them and all of us, if you've looked at someone with lust in your eyes, you've committed adultery. If you've called someone a fool, you're guilty of murder in your heart. Then the men drop the stones and walk away, and the story ends with Jesus and the woman, and He says, "Where did they all go?" And then He says, "Go and sin no more."
What you get from that story, what my takeaway is, is that no one is above reproach and no one is beyond redemption. The closer we are to God, the less that we should want to throw stones at other people. Because the only one who had any right to throw a stone, Jesus, had absolutely no desire.
We see that very consistently in this idea that where sin abounds, grace abounds. That in the end, God's grace is bigger than the worst things that we've ever done. And that, I think, goes to the very heart of the gospel.
Eric Huffman: Yeah. Amen. And I don't mean to say this to stir the pot or anything. There's a lot of issues that I don't think you and I agree on. But I love the fact that as Christians, we come together and can find common ground on this issue based on Jesus.
Shane Claiborne: Yeah, absolutely, Eric. I believe the whole Bible is the Word of God, not just the Gospels, right? But also when I look at it, you see that the Bible's full of folks who did terrible things, and God's grace was bigger than their sins.
Moses killed a man in the book of Exodus. David, a man after God's own heart, I learned in Sunday school, right, he raped Bathsheba, had her husband Uriah killed, and here's the rebuke of God, goes on to write so many of the Psalms. But David was a womanizer and he was a murderer.
Saul of Tarsus tortured Christians and oversaw the execution of Stephen, the first martyr of the church. So I like how Bono, the great Irish theologian, said, you know, the singer of U2, he said, the fact that the Bible is full of messed up people used to disturb me, but now I find it a great source of comfort.
Eric Huffman: Amen.
Shane Claiborne: As I listened to Shane talk, I couldn't help but wonder how many Arthur Medinas are out there, locked up for crimes that they committed decades ago. People who know that what they did was wrong, who agree with the sentence they were given, and who, by the grace of God, are completely different now than the first day that they walked into prison.
Not all redemption stories end like Arthur's, however, as we learn from our next guest, Henry G. Covert, author of the celebrated handbook, Ministry to the Incarcerated. Before becoming a chaplain at Pennsylvania's Rockview State Prison, Henry spent nearly two decades working as a police officer. As he told the Maybe God team over the phone, his heart toward the incarcerated softened when he began working behind bars.
Henry G. Covert: I knew what a lot of them were in for, and I'm administering the sacraments to people who were in for murder, who were in for rape, who were in for drugs, armed robberies. This was my congregation, and I love them. I can honestly say that I love them.
Eric Huffman: After seven years of ministry, Henry was asked to be present at an execution that would be Pennsylvania's first since 1962. Keith Zettlemoyer had been sentenced to die for the murder of a friend who was set to testify against him in a robbery trial. Though he was undoubtedly guilty of the violent crime, 14 years in prison had changed Keith for the better.
Henry G. Covert: After about two years, he accepted Christ as his Lord and Savior. He read the Bible constantly, prayed constantly, and had a deep understanding of the teachings of Christ. Now, sometimes I would run into situations where inmates would memorize scripture passages and parrot them back at people. But they didn't really have an in-depth understanding or a faith relationship with the Lord. Zettlemoyer did.
Eric Huffman: Given that Keith only had hours to live, every minute of his time with Henry was precious.
Henry G. Covert: When I entered the holding cell, Zettlemoyer came to the front of the cell and looked at me and he said, "You don't know how important your presence is at this time." And he said, "On death row we weren't allowed to attend church. We weren't allowed to be a part of Bible studies." And he looked at me and he said, "You're going to be my pastor until I die tonight."
Keith turned down additional appeals. He wanted to die. His lawyers were telling him that by accepting the death penalty, that this was akin to committing suicide. They asked him, "Isn't suicide a sin? You know, maybe you're committing a sin." He couldn't believe that the lawyers were saying that to him, and it really upset him.
His thoughts were, "Hey, I committed the crime. I'm guilty. I have no issue with the sentence, and I know where I'm going to be tonight. I know I'm going to be with the Lord tonight." He said, "This is a strange situation I'm about to die and I'm just feeling the depth of God's grace. I'm feeling the Lord's strength, and I'm feeling the Lord's peace and the Lord's comfort." And he said, "Now I know. how Jesus felt just before he was executed."
He was so much at peace. I think one thing that needs to be brought out, he was actually concerned about the execution team, about the correctional officers. He knew that there were probably four young guys that were involved in this, and it was their first execution. He asked me how they were doing with all of what was going on and how were they emotionally. I mean, this shocked me.
Eric Huffman: After a final meal of cheeseburgers, french fries, chocolate pudding, and chocolate milk, the execution process began.
Henry G. Covert: I mean, the transition that took place from conversation and smiling and sharing the sacrament of the Holy Communion, we sang Amazing Grace. And going from that transition accompanying the gurney into the room, watching them hook up the lines, knowing that I couldn't speak to him anymore and wouldn't be able to, and knowing also that within a matter of minutes, he was going to be dead, it was devastating to me. It was devastating.
When they pushed the gurney in, I think I had my one hand on his body, and they positioned the gurney in front of a wall that had three small openings in it. And coming through those circular openings were lines, injection lines.
And supposedly, this is what I was told, that there were three individuals behind the wall. We never saw them. They were Department of Correction employees. That they all had some type of fluid content with these injection plungers, and that only one of them had the potency that would take his life. But between the three of them, they didn't know which one had it.
And I was standing there, they hooked up his IV, and he was lying there with his eyes closed. And just before they injected him, before the lines were filled, I was asked to leave. I was looking through the door, the glass window, and after they injected him, his body was just quivering, shaking for a number of minutes. I knew that during that period of time, there had to be some suffering.
When I stood there, it was a surreal experience. I felt lightheaded. I mean, stop and think, I had spent eight hours with him, talking about just about everything. You know, he shared his life with me, and I shared part of my journey with him, and we became friends. We were fellow Christians. And here I was accompanying him to his death.
After he was pronounced dead, some of the correctional officers asked me about his whole demeanor. They said, "Did you sense anything different about him?" And I told them that he had a peace that you really couldn't put into words. And then they opened up. They said, "You know, as we were attending to him, we felt a peace."
These were individuals that, one or two may have been Christians, but I'm sure there were individuals there that were not Christians, and they experienced his peace. I said to them, "All I can tell you is that God's love and God's peace reaches the darkest places in life. And what you experienced unquestionably was the presence of the Holy Spirit with a child of faith as they were approaching death."
I left there that night, the lights in a lot of the cell blocks were on. I don't know why, because typically at that hour they're off, but there were five or six of us walking out of the prison together through the main gate. And there were inmates hollering out the windows, "Killers!" They were calling us all killers. And I knew that this was a reaction to their own pain, their own shock that this actually transpired.
But you have to ask the question: even though this is a legally sanctioned execution, is it a killing? It's premeditated. This is a premeditated killing. As followers of Christ and His teachings on forgiveness, it doesn't mean that people shouldn't be held accountable. But do we have the right to take a human life, or is this totally within the realm of God?
Eric Huffman: I can't stop thinking about what might have happened if Keith Zettlemoyer hadn't been on death row. How might he have changed lives inside that prison if he'd been allowed to live out the rest of his days in the general population, telling other inmates about Jesus, and even contributing to his own livelihood by working a job inside the prison? Or what if, like Arthur, Keith was somehow given a fresh start?
We've tackled many of the theological issues surrounding the death penalty. Shane also addressed the practical ones for people who don't look at this issue from a biblical perspective.
Shane Claiborne: There's all the other questions that are really good questions. Does this really work to deter crime? Police chiefs all over the country were pulled, and this did not even make the list of things that they think deter crime. And part of the argument is when you're killing someone, you're so impassioned or so mentally unhealthy that you're not thinking, "I might get the death penalty for this. I'm actually not going to kill them." But how much it costs to execute someone versus even alternatives like life in prison.
So all of those are really, really great questions, even beyond the theological ones, that I find the more people learn about the death penalty, the more troubled they are by it. I think one of the questions is how much do we trust the state and our government, which is imperfect with the irreversible power of life and death?
We know that we've gotten it wrong over and over and over. Sadly, 200 death row exonerees. So this is like people that not just were wrongfully convicted, but were sentenced to be executed for the crime they were convicted of, that were able to prove their innocence.
This is not even people that plea bargained and said, "You know what? I don't want to die, so I pled guilty to something else." These are people that were sentenced to death, that were proved innocent. Folks like my friend Derrick Jamison, he was in Ohio and was convicted of a crime he had nothing to do with.
Derrick Jamison: It was a real high-profile case, who it was. He was a white guy. Terry Mitchell, he was like 24 years old when he met his untimely death.
Eric Huffman: Derrick Jamison was convicted and sentenced to death in 1985 for the murder of a Cincinnati bartender, even though at the time of the crime, Derrick was at his girlfriend's house in another part of town, in the presence of police officers who were investigating a domestic violence report next door. Derek also didn't fit the witnesses' description of the killer.
Derrick Jamison: The homicide detective and the prosecutor, we'd held 35 pieces of evidence in my case. They got caught. The federal judge saw what they had did, and they were pointing the finger at one another while I was in there with the death sentence.
Eric Huffman: Though many questions remained regarding Derrick's guilt, he sat on death row for 20 years and came within 90 minutes of being executed.
Derrick Jamison: I had six days of execution while I was on Ohio death row. They came and killed me six times. They asked me where I want my body sent, what did I want for my last meal six times. This is what my mom used to always tell me. She used to say, "Baby, when times get hard, things get rough, pray." And that's what I did. I did a lot of praying and God put His arms around me.
Eric Huffman: The answer to Derrick's prayers came in the form of a new legal team who pressed the government on those 35 hidden pieces of evidence. And finally, in 2005, Derrick was exonerated. He has never received an apology or any form of compensation from the state of Ohio.
Derrick Jamison: I was sent to die October the 25th of 1985, the worst day of my life. I walked down from Ohio Death Row October the 25th, 2005, exactly the same day, 20 years later. The worst day of my life became the best day of my life.
A lot of people ask me, why come I ain't angry? You know why I ain't angry? Because them guards was angry when they was taking my friends out of the cells and killing them. So why would I want to act like that? Why would I want to mistreat another human being? Because I saw what anger does, you know, and it ain't good.
Eric Huffman: Today, Derrick remains a fierce advocate in the movement to abolish capital punishment. Derrick believes the death penalty is incompatible with his Christian convictions, and it's those same convictions that have allowed Derrick to forgive the people who sought to end his life.
Derrick Jamison: All human beings are sacred, not just some of us. All human beings are sacred. We got to treat everybody like you want to be treated. And that's love. You love yourself. Love everybody else around you, you know. This ain't hard. It's easier than it is to hate. It's even easier to love.
Shane Claiborne: There are many, many stories like Derrick Jamison's. When I wrote Executing Grace, the statistic was, it's now even more disturbing, which is for every eight executions that we've carried out, there's been one exoneration from death row.
Eric Huffman: Wow.
Shane Claiborne: So if you think about that, like every nine planes that took off, if one of them crashed, we would be like, yo, we've got a problem. Let's stop flying.
Eric Huffman: Let's stop flying a while.
Shane Claiborne: That's our track record. And that's a really, really terrible track record. But this is what's really troubling as you look at the death penalty, is we kind of believe and we convince ourselves that we need this for the worst of the worst.
But as you look at it, we're not executing the worst of the worst. We're executing the poorest of the poor. And who actually gets executed in the United States are disproportionately people with low income and few resources to defend themselves, and disproportionately people of color.
So what determines who gets executed is not the atrocity of the crime, but really arbitrary things like the resources of the defendant, the zip code where the crime was committed. The race of the victim is a major factor. When the victim of murder is White, it disproportionately leads to death penalty cases, especially when the defendant is a person of color.
Just to make it plain, Jeffrey Dahmer did not get the death penalty. Charles Manson died of natural causes in prison. Harvard-educated Ted Kaczynski is still alive. So you really start to look at this, and you see kind of how broken our system is.
Coupled with that, Eric, is the fact that this really is, as my friend Bryan Stevenson says, the direct descendant of lynching in America, where African Americans were being lynched a hundred years ago is where executions are happening today. And the states that held on to slavery the longest are the same states that continue to hold on to the death penalty.
But the other thing that I want to come back to, Eric, is that it's also true that not only is it the former Confederate states, states like Texas and Florida and my home state of Tennessee, where we still have the electric chair, these are states that are led by Christian governors and Christian legislators, and over 85 percent of the executions are happening in the Bible Belt. So the Bible Belt is the death belt in our country, and literally the death penalty would not stand a chance in America if it weren't for the support of Christians.
Eric Huffman: It's hard to argue that. I think a counterpoint could be that, you know, no state has more convicted people on death row than California. You're talking about numbers of executions, not numbers of people on death row. But 5 of the top 10 states with numbers of people at a death row are not slave states. I hear the point you're making for sure.
Shane Claiborne: Where executions are actively happening. Right, yeah.
Eric Huffman: Yeah, but I hear you loud and clear. 85% is a big number. 85% of actual executions happen in the Bible Belt. We have to reckon with that. We can't run from that. I think if you're a Christian that is in support of this, it's sort of up to you to figure out how you support this with scripture, with Jesus at the center of it all.
Shane Claiborne: Yeah, man, absolutely. Here's some encouraging news, Eric, is that there's a lot of people rethinking the death penalty. Right now we have states that you're absolutely right, like California and Pennsylvania is one of those where we still have the death penalty, technically, but we are not carrying out execution. So we still have a lot of work to do to kind of fully abolish the death penalty.
Eric Huffman: Is it like a temporary stay or how's that work legally?
Shane Claiborne: Well, this is the wild thing is it's a governor-imposed moratorium in most of these states. Governor Newsom dismantled the execution chamber because he said, I don't want to see California execute anyone. In Pennsylvania, I was there when our new governor, Shapiro, announced his conviction on the death penalty. And he's a Jewish man who, until just a couple of years ago, held out the need for the death penalty, especially in light of the Tree of Life synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh. And yet, he said, it was the victims that really convinced me that more killing doesn't heal the wounds of killing. So he's now passionately against the death penalty.
There's folks like Ron McAndrew, who is still very conservative politically, but he was a prison warden that oversaw executions. It absolutely haunted him. And he's still like, If you do the crime, you should do the time, but the death penalty's altogether something different. It does something to us.
Eric Huffman: What does he say about what he saw?
Shane Claiborne: Oh, I mean, it haunted him, and it's not just him, but many of these folks that we don't always think about, but they're tasked with the work of taking someone's life. He saw an execution go wrong in Florida by electric chair, and essentially the man caught on fire. And he said, "I was done with the electric chair."
But interestingly enough, he wasn't done with the death penalty. He came to Texas to learn lethal injection and bring it back to Florida as a more sanitized way of taking life. He said, "As we began to carry out executions by lethal injection, I was still haunted."
Maurice Chammah: Over time, we've come to see that lethal injections are not nearly as painless as they had been presented. There are many accounts of people choking and writhing in agony on the gurney.
Eric Huffman: Maurice Chammah is a journalist out of Austin who wrote about the history of capital punishment in the United States in his 2021 book, Let the Lord Sort Them: The Rise and Fall of the Death Penalty.
Maurice Chammah: Part of why lethal injection has become more painful is because a lot of states have experimented with different kinds of drugs in their lethal injection process. This all started up about 10 years ago when pharmaceutical companies started realizing that their drugs were being used in executions and decided that they didn't want that anymore and that it was basically bad PR for them to be associated with executions.
So it meant that states were going to all these different little mom-and-pop pharmacies, or they were illicitly getting drugs from other countries. All this has led to many, many botched lethal injections, where people are visibly in pain and agony. It's all really dark and terrifying.
Eric Huffman: The more executions that former Florida prison warden Ron McAndrew oversaw, the more his own life started to unravel. He had many sleepless nights, often seeing the men that he'd had a hand in executing sitting at the foot of his bed. He started to drink more and more just to numb the stress.
Eventually, this law-and-order conservative started to realize that he'd never seen a single family member of a murder victim feel any better after watching their loved one's killer be put to death. Today, Ron refers to capital punishment as premeditated ceremonial political killing.
Shane Claiborne: He's become one of the most powerful expert witnesses in the country on the cruelty of the death penalty and also what it does to those who have to carry out the executions. I think all of that becomes so important.
When you look at our population, almost every year, a new state abolishes the death penalty. I believe that we'll look back at the death penalty in similar fashion to how we look back at slavery, just a generation from now going, "My gosh, that was so horrible. How did we convince ourselves it was all right? How did we use the Bible to defend such antithetical to Christ things."
So this is a real-time, I think, of moral courage. You know, it doesn't take courage to say slavery is wrong a hundred years after we abolished it. It took courage to say slavery was wrong when it was still legal and accepted by many people.
Eric Huffman: Over the years, Shane has become a de facto spokesman for the restorative justice movement. Even though in my former life as a social justice activist I used to give lip service to things like restorative justice as well, I don't think I was ever really clear about what it is or how it's supposed to work in the real world.
These days I'm admittedly skeptical about restorative justice, as I've seen very little evidence that it works to restore wrongdoers or to bring justice to victims. So I asked Shane to share a few examples of how he's seen restorative justice work better than punitive justice.
Shane Claiborne: I'll give you one that I came across as I was researching for the book. It was a case of someone that had a terrible pattern of drinking and driving and did that irresponsibly over and over, ended up driving a car under the influence of alcohol that killed a teenager.
Over many years, the parents of that young girl that was killed, they began to hear the story of the man who took that life and started thinking, Is just locking him in a cage for the rest of his life the best that we can do or could we provide him an opportunity to maybe participate in trying to prevent more harm?
So he was allowed to speak. And you think of this, right? Like, you're a high school student listening to a presentation on drunk driving. Not only are you hearing from the mom and dad that lost their teenager, but you're able to hear from the man who made this mistake over and over and what he's living with because of that.
I think it has power both to persuade and convict young people to prevent harm by not drinking and driving, but it also gives them an opportunity to do something with the pain that he inflicted and the mistake that he made, that doesn't at all ignore or try to absolve or kind of sugarcoat over it, but actually allows him to do something with that. There's all kinds of ways that that can play itself out.
The interesting thing with restorative justice is that it is nuanced. It has to center the victims. And in some ways, you need someone who is willing to face the reality of what they did, right? There's cases where there aren't many options, if someone's got serious mental health issues. But I think the point is that we put so many resources into the death penalty, punitive justice that we often don't allow for some of the most beautiful forms of justice and redemption.
Some of the things that we know to be most effective in prison are the least funded. You know, things like education and opportunities that would allow people to participate in bettering society without at all ignoring the harm that they've done in the past.
There's also people that have had horrific histories that doesn't at all justify the wrong that they did. But folks like James Coddington, who I visited on death row right before he was executed, as a baby, as a child, he had family members that put alcohol into his baby bottle. He became addicted to drugs partly because of family members that brought him into that.
He ended up killing someone as he was under the influence of these substances. It was actually a friend of his that he killed. And he said every single day, "I rehashed what I did." And he said, "I can't undo that, but I can do good in the world. I can try to change what I do."
In fact, he became an exemplary person in prison. All the prison guards, prison warden, everyone could testify to that. And then he was executed, you know? So I think that's where we go like, "Can't we do better than that?"
Eric Huffman: It's hard to argue with Shane's reasoning here. There's got to be a better way to show that killing is wrong than by killing those who kill. That being said, as someone who's followed Shane's work for years, I am concerned about what appears to be an inconsistency in his activism on behalf of the oppressed.
Shane will often point out that conservative Christians who claim to be pro-life are really just pro-birth because, according to him, we speak out more passionately against abortion than we do against, say, gun violence, or climate change, or even the death penalty. He often says that too many Christians are more Republican than they are Christian.
That might be a valid critique. But I believe that Shane commits a similar fallacy by speaking almost exclusively on the favored issues of the American political left while sidestepping things like the brutal legacy of abortion in this country. I asked him how he responds to this kind of criticism from people like me.
Shane Claiborne: I respond by saying that what I think we need is a more robust ethic of life. We need to be pro-life from womb to tomb, and we need to advocate for the sacredness of every human being, born and unborn. The early church was a great example of that. They spoke out against abortion.
That's part of why I wrote Rethinking Life, the newest book that I wrote, is to show what a consistent ethic of life can look like, so that we're not just anti-abortion or we're not just anti-death penalty, but we're actually pro-life.
Sadly, many folks, including myself for much of my life, that have said we are pro-life would be more accurate to say we're pro-birth or we're anti-abortion, because on gun violence, the death penalty, militarism, the environment, on a lot of other things we haven't always been the biggest champions of life. In fact, sometimes we've been the obstacles to things that I think would save lives.
Eric Huffman: Strictly in regard to capital punishment, I find near total agreement with Shane and others like him who argue in favor of a womb-to-tomb pro-life ethic. Even though my theology and my politics tend to lean to the right of Shane's, I share his hope that one day we'll look back on capital punishment with the same kind of disgust that we feel about slavery now.
Shane and I came to the same conclusion for some very different reasons, however. Shane sees a clear biblical mandate to end the death penalty. I don't see it. Shane believes that restorative justice is the answer. I don't believe that. Shane and others that we spoke with seem to believe that the death penalty is directly descended from America's checkered past with racism. And while I see some troubling connections between race and capital punishment in the data, I don't think that people who support capital punishment today do so because they're racist in any way.
My reasons for rejecting the death penalty are very simple. First, I believe that all human life is sacred. And if we are able to keep convicted murderers locked away for life instead of executing them, I think that is a preferable option.
Second, our forensics technologies are advancing so rapidly that in recent years courts have exonerated hundreds of innocent men and women who had been falsely condemned. Even if it's just one in a million, the possibility of somebody being put to death for crimes they didn't commit should be reason enough for us to question capital punishment.
Third, I know I'm showing my bias here, but I hope it's obvious by now that I want every human being to have every possible chance to know Jesus. And as best as I can tell, it's virtually impossible to evangelize the dead. I'm reminded how in part one of this episode, Reverend Sharon said that she hopes Dylann Roof, the young man who killed her mother and eight others, one day finds Jesus and goes to heaven.
And that, I think, should be the heart of every Christian toward every sinner, because all have sinned and fall short of God's glory. That's really what the gospel of Jesus is all about: light shining even in the darkest places, hope breaking through the deepest despair, and grace outpacing the worst of our sins.
Arthur's prison chaplain might have said it best.
Man: Art is an example of an inmate that, with the human eye, would look like he was a hopeless situation, lost in his sins with a life sentence. As you look at a person like Art, no hope beyond the bars, and yet, in the midst of all that, he was able to get out to be a free person, first in the Lord and then in society. There is hope. There's hope for every person here on this earth.
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Julie Mirlicourtois: This episode of Maybe God was produced by Adira Polite, Julie Mirlicourtois, and Eric, and Geovanna Huffman. Our talented editors are Brittany Holland and Justin Mayer, and the director of our full-length YouTube interviews is Donald Kilgore. We always love hearing what you're thinking, so please don't forget to engage with us on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube, or by emailing us at [email protected]. Thanks for listening, everyone.