“This way!” From the point that I arrived at Oklahoma State Penitentiary to the moment I left, I was surrounded by officers. For someone aware of the many videos of police brutality, such attention is everything but comforting. I guess I should’ve expected it. After all, I was the wildly dangerous pastor seeking entrance into Oklahoma’s Execution Chamber. For over a week, I’d been fighting to arrive at this point. From filing a federal lawsuit to pushing back on various slanderous comments released by the Department of Corrections’ spin machine, I did not back down. Scott Eizember asked me to accompany him to the execution chamber and that was precisely what I intended to do…no matter how long it took. Time was on our side. Lawsuits move at a glacial pace in this country. Even those that are emergency petitions. In the end, the Department of Corrections backed down. Not because it was the right thing to do. Hardly. In fact, I have no doubt that but for the outstanding work of lawyer Greg Gardner and the assistance of Randall Coyne such a victory would have never happened. When you talking about the prize being watching someone die, victory is a funny word. Yet, I do think a victory for religious liberty was won. Before this moment the Department of Corrections seemed to know so little about the long history of spiritual activism in this country that the Department would have even excluded Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. from the execution chamber. I mean, he had a variety of protest arrests and incendiary comments attached to his ministry as well. Such a realization goes far to speak to just how ignorant this whole process has been. Nobody should be surprised, violating religious liberty is always ignorant. The indignity of it all didn’t stop there. Don’t forget that I watched a perfectly healthy human be executed before my eyes. How many other pastors can say that? Not many. I’m still trying to find some life.
“Only cowards kill in a closet.” That was my reply when somebody asked me what I thought about the execution taking place in such a remote space at such an odd time of the day. I’ll never forget the coldness of the day. It was cold inside. It was cold outside. No jacket could ever have protected me against it. I watched a man’s face turn every color of the rainbow right before my eyes. I wasn’t alone. In what was perhaps the most bizarre part, dozens of Oklahomans had gathered to witness the execution live. I felt like I was part of some sort of dystopian climax of a bad film. Yet, it was real. I kept telling Scott I loved him. I hope it brought some comfort. That’s what I’d fought so hard to give. I felt no comfort. I felt like an accessory to murder. I felt like I’d emotionally held someone down while the gathered killed him. Maybe I’m being too harsh? Maybe I’m not being harsh enough? Ultimately, I’m no different than you. Like it or not, we were all perpetrators of this atrocity. That’s the reality of the death penalty…it turns all of us into killers. I thought I was bringing God to Scott in those moments…but I think in all actuality he was bringing a chance at salvation to me…to us. The very body of Scott Eizember calls out for repentance. Stop the madness. Embrace hope. Believe in Love. Until then, we remain murderers condemned by a lie, that there is life to be found in executions.
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