NO to the Death Penalty The "Moratorium 2000" - International Campaign

TESTIMONIALS

We report  the letter that Sr. Helen sent us right after the execution of Dobie Williams, for whom many throughout the world, like ourselves, prayed and organized prayer vigils, hoping that his life would be spared. 

Thu, 21 Jan 1999

Last night at 6:30pm Dobie's body was strapped to the cruciform guerney and he was killed. I was with him, standing where he could see me, and he would keep turning his head toward me, and he smiled and moved his lips and I couldn't read what his lips were saying but I knew that they were words of love and thanks. He died bravely and well. He walked to the place of execution on his crippled arthritic legs. He walked and refused to be pushed in a wheelchair. He walked and I read to him from the Gospel of John: "my peace I give to you, not as the world gives..." The last hours were an indescribable mixture of prayer, reading letters, talking, laughing, remembering, eating chocolate ice cream (30 minutes before he died). Dealing with fear was the big thing for him. He wore his "Fear Not" hat (Isaiah 41:10) for the last three weeks. We talked about the fear, acknowledged it, faced it. I kept saying to him, "Jesus has been through this. He will help you. He will give you everything you need." We took the time in small increments, not dealing with what lay ahead, just the present moment, and the peace was there and the strength, unfolding moment by moment. Two wonderful lawyers and friends, Paula Montoya and Carol Kolinchak, were there. The "Three Muses" were with him, we told him, but he didn't know anything about muses. But he knew people who loved him were with him. And the other lawyers who had worked so hard these 11 years to save his life were calling on the phone - the Minnesota lawyers and Nick Trenticosta, the point man, in tears there at the end, having to face the ultimate failure that was costing their client, Dobie, his life. Dobie thanked them for all they had done. The Minnesota guys told him it had been an "honor" to work on his behalf. "They said it was an honor," Dobie told us when he got off the phone. When Dobie stood before the microphone in the execution chamber to say his last words I felt a quick stab of anxiety, realizing I hadn't talked to him about this to help him get his words, something I have always done with the others I have accompanied to execution. I needn't have worried. He hesitated, thought, then said, "I just want to say I don't have hard feelings toward anyone. God bless everyone. God bless," and he was already turning toward the guerney, the last physical act of his life. I had told him to look at my face from the guerney, and he did. He took charge of his own death, and once again I was surprised by God's grace, by God's strengththat flooded his heart and mine, and I can't stop the tears as I write this to you, the experience being so fresh, just yesterday, this death - again - of a human being whom I cherished and whose life was taken there in front of my eyes. "They can't take your dignity from you, Dobie," I told him over and over again. "And your freedom. They can't touch you." It was his third close encounter with death. Twice before, in June and November, he had come within an hour of death only to be spared. But this time he met death itself and he met it with his eyes wide open and, thank God, with his heart open, knowing that he was loved and cherished on this earth, that his life mattered. In his name and at his request I want to thank all of you who showed love and tenderness to him with your prayers, your letters and cards, your phone calls. For the first time I believe I befriended a truly innocent man on death row. Innocence or guilt does not matter to me in struggling against the death penalty. I do not believe the state should be torturing and killing people, even guilty people. But this man, Dobie Williams, a 38-year-old indigent black man, I believe, was railroaded to death for the death of a white victim in a small, racist Southern town. He fit the death row profile perfectly, especially in the South: a poor black man accused of killing a white woman with an all-white jury as the constitutionally guaranteed "jury of his peers." He had a terrible defense - no defense. The prosecution got everything they asked for - including Dobie's death last night - after 14 years and 12 death dates and stays of execution. But inside the crucible of this terrible ordeal Dobie grew. He grew in faith, in love, in his ability to communicate and feel tenderness, to give of himself to family and friends, to know and love Christ,who became his rock and his protector and friend even as he climbed onto the guerney and was able to forgive those who had wronged him. Before we separated, my last words to him were "Thank you, Dobie, for the great gift of being your friend." I got his shy smile. "Thank you, Sister Helen," words he had said to me so many times. He was always grateful for love when he met it, for visits, for the fidelity shown him, a love he knew wouldn't go away and would stand by him over the years. It was part of my peace as I watched him die that I knew I had loved him well. Later, after his death, as I left the prison and walked into the waiting arms of Sisters and friends, Sister Julie Sheatzley said it best: "What you have done -it's a privilege, isn't it?." Yes, a privilege, always and forever a privilege to be with the Dobie Williamses of the world, the "least of these" and to find such treasure and such grace. I'm taking it easy today - praying, talking to friends who call to comfort me, writing in my journal to record all the precious details of words and feelings of yesterday's events. Mozart's "Requiem" is now in full volume as I write, a composition full of life and resurrection and hope. We'll bury Dobie in Many, Louisiana, on Thursday, Jan. 14. I know that Sister Margaret's presence and mine will not only honor Dobie but also give dignity to his family. Truly the families of the executed ones are the unseen victims' families. They suffer the shame and humiliation of a loved one condemned to death and killed by the state, with so many treating them with scorn, finding them "guilty by association." They, too, are the "least of these." Love to all of you across these many miles who loved Dobie and who support me in my life and in my work. Special thanks to the members of St Egidio in Italy who kept vigil with us in the last hours even though it was the middle of the night. Jake Heggie, our composer of the opera of Dead Man Walking, told me that he was weaving Dobie's spirit into the music. I told Dobie this about the opera and he just smiled. I'm not sure he ever heard an opera in his life, but he knew it was something very special that this composer was doing for him. Dobie said, "Tell my family and everybody to remember me happy." See him now with his shy smile, see him with his "Fear Not" cap, see him walking to the guerney and laying down on it, see him now with eyes of faith in the heart of the universe, in the heart of God. And see all of us, not paralyzed and defeated by his death, but empowered and deepened in our quest to abolish the death penalty from the face of the earth. It is the best way I know to honor Dobie's memory. I invite you to be an active participant in the struggle. Of the 3,500 souls on death row in the U.S., many are utterly alone. To become a pen pal to someone on death row, email the Pen Pal Project at bgross@igc.org I encourage you to join us in the Moratorium Campaign, which will introduce a resolution for a moratorium on the death penalty in the U.N. sometime next year. Signatures in the U.S. will be presented to Congress and state legislatures as well as to the U.N. In the U.S. we badly need to make visible citizen opposition to the death penalty. I especially encourage those who are part of church communities to gather signatures from the congregations to which you belong.
A blessed New Year.
With a grateful heart
Helen