On Tuesday night, a Black man named Marcellus Williams was executed in Missouri for a 1998 murder that he claimed he did not commit. DNA evidence did not point to him, witnesses were unreliable, and even the prosecutors "admitted they were wrong." But the U.S. Supreme Court refused to stay his execution. So last night poison was injected into his veins and he died.
Reading this news left me recalling my tour of San Quentin prison back when I worked with inmates in California. We walked around a cell block, we peered into the yards, we went through the building that contained the execution chamber. I remember feeling that I might throw up.
I have always found the death penalty profoundly chilling and hypocritical. Is life sacred? Is killing wrong? Is every person a child of God? Why are so many poor people and people of color on death row? What are we doing?!
As we see images of state-sanctioned killing happening all over the world: Gaza, Lebanon, Sudan, Ukraine... faceless hundreds and thousands dying by bombs and bullets and hunger... for me it makes the face of one man in Missouri seem even more devastating. His death was so calculated. So chosen. So deliberate.
Let us look up and breathe. And breathe. And pray. And breathe. And know that God is with us, urging us all towards wholeness and peace.
