Over the past few weeks, my mind has never been far from death. Last Friday, I delivered a letter from local clergy condemning Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins’ consistent pursuit of death sentences and then walked from Dallas to Fort Worth in protest and prayer. Last Saturday, I stood before the hundreds of persons gathered in Fort Worth for the annual conference of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty to remark in part, “the politicians all start coming to church around election time…well I think it is time to take the church to the politicians.” Last Wednesday, I did just that. I confronted Dallas DA Craig Watkins with a question at an Innocence Project event and pushed for clarification on his consistent pursuit of the death penalty. Yesterday, as I got in my car to head to Livingston to visit Will Speer on Texas’ Death Row, I begin to wonder why I continue to expend so much energy and push so hard against the death penalty? This morning as I talked to Will and we commiserated about the status of his appeals, I was reminded that the death penalty creates the most hopeless of hopeless of situations and that is exactly where Jesus will always be.
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