On death row, living the long Good Friday

SOMETIMES, the liturgy draws you thru, and the community of religion carries those for whom Easter doesn’t come — or doesn’t come on time, and never on demand.

This 12 months, 1000’s have experienced Good Friday within the wars fought out within the Middle East, Ukraine, Sudan, and beyond, where we’re all complicit, and the innocent carry the results. Whether in death by violence, sudden or long drawn out, in maiming and grieving, or in traumatising for all times, the pain is so vast that it blurs the human mind. Sometimes, it’s the mystery of the person which brings us back to the cross.

IN HOLY WEEK, James Hitchcock, a prisoner on death row in Florida for 49 years, and my penfriend for nine, heard the van coming. No one knows whom it comes for until their cell is approached they usually are swiftly taken. Farewells are forbidden by the system. But the remaining men shouted their take care of him through the bars. He was taken to the death cell within the old prison, to be held until his execution date on 30 April.

The news got here to me on Holy Saturday: that quiet day once we reflect on our own deceased, but additionally on a world without God incarnate — by which prayer has no meaning, we’ve got killed the mystery at the center of the world, and we’re on our own.

The imagery is of Good Friday. The three death cells are full, emptying as their occupants are led to their deaths near by or, in rare and troubling cases, to a stay of execution which can only delay the torture. This is a state that James had known for greater than 30 years. Last time he was within the death cells, in 1984, he gained a stay. On the morning of his last presumed day on earth, he was returned to his former cell, not knowing that one other 42 years lay before him or that his seventieth birthday — on Easter Day — can be marked in the identical death cell.

THEY don’t crucify people in Florida, although the gurney that the condemned are strapped to is cruciform, the higher to get on the veins with the intention to inject the drugs which might be forbidden to be used on animals. By all accounts, the killing is agonisingly physically painful — and sometimes lengthy, although the plan is for it to be over in minutes, because physical pain at the top is taken into account unseemly. The death cells, unlike the death-row cages, even provide air-conditioning for the last 4 weeks of life.

James can be blessed by onlookers, whereas many don’t have any one. It is not going to be his sisters who will grieve, Mary and Elizabeth, who stood by him all of the years — Betty died at Christmas. Others, younger and likewise powerless, will mark his death and can beseech the authorities for the body for burial 14 hours’ travel away, beside that sister.

THERE are, after all, the distant ones who sit in judgment, with power of life and death, and the capability for handwashing. Both the Governor of Florida and the state attorney are Roman Catholics, although they’re at variance with Catholics who’ve condemned the death penalty for many years. The three death cells are often occupied, but there may be even a Barabbas, who has been granted a stay, making James’s execution still more likely. The “good thief” known to James for 30 years was there until he was killed on 21 April.

I understand that the prison governor absents himself at the top. For the uncleanness of killing, there are prison officers. Some are compassionate, and, while they can not offer low-cost wine, they might be certain that final letters and phone calls get out — and in. I received certainly one of each last week, stuffed with concern for his friend. For others, there was a farewell of peace.

JAMES was not Christ, nor were his companions, and, little question, like us all, they weren’t guiltless. But they weren’t necessarily guilty as charged, and none deserves the obscenity of execution. Each was created uniquely, to enter life in a certain time and place, with certain roles to undertake, ways to experience the fullness of life and to be of service to others. The hour of our death is planned by God. I feel that to shorten it — whether through mass bombings or authorised individual homicides — is to violate God’s will.

On a practical level, it might probably do no good, but does much evil in further brutalising society, denying the creation of everybody out of affection, nevertheless distorted the form could also be. It is rare that an individual is so dangerous that they have to be held away from the community. Even then, compassion and respect for what everybody might have been is unquestionably the duty of the remaining of us.

A CONDEMNATION to death on this society, separated by the Atlantic and yet so just like our own, signifies that there may be one other someone whose life was taken, whose right to life was denied, and whose story may wander away. In this case, she was little older than Jesus was when he was lost in Jerusalem, or Jairus’s daughter, even though it seems likely that she lacked the love and protection that they received.

St Matthew’s Gospel requires us to go to prisoners, no matter why they’re there. Some of those on death row are guilty of vile murders; some were bystanders or accomplices; some are innocent. For 50 years, James has maintained his innocence of the crime for which he was, at 19, sentenced to death.

Perhaps it is that this declaration that has kept him sane down the years. In a spot of no hope, no stimulation, and against the chances, he studied for and passed his school examinations in his twenties. Since then, he has read, thought, written about, and commented on concerns for the world, its wars, the climate crisis, and more. He wrote of his bereaved, impoverished but free-roaming childhood, of troubles that got here early. As the opposite inmates showed of their parting shouts, relatively than flee reality, he gave kindness and, perhaps, courage to others. There is camaraderie amongst those the world has discounted.

THE first time within the death cell, he was, to start with, afraid. It was slowly, within the torturous month of waiting, that calmness got here — and ultimately, peace. If this was his portion, he wouldn’t be dragged to death, but would face it. He had a faith in God and in a future, less hellish life. There, he would meet friends executed before him.

His last hour can be accompanied by a vigil of strangers, outside the gates and online, following him to the sting. Because he was fortunate, one or two relations would make the long journey to face behind the glass, watching.

The killings of 1000’s are too vast for us to hold. God resides in each individual and within the relationships we form. James himself was not lessened as he approached violent, scheduled, death, though others are.

Rosemary Power is a author and editor. Her latest volume of poetry, Across the Narrow Straits: Place and pilgrimage, is published by Wild Goose Publications: ionabooks.com/product/across-the-narrow-straits.

The charity founded to supply correspondents for prisoners on death row within the United States is LifeLines. lifelines-uk.org.uk