This morning a fellow with whom I attended Sunday School as a teenager was executed by lethal injection in the state of Ohio. I've been pondering this today, recognizing that my opposition to the death penalty now has a personal face.
His is a sordid story of religious zealotry gone grievously awry. He was the leader of a small fanatical cult with familial and historic connections to the denomination we once shared. Sixteen years ago he murdered a family of five people, including three children, claiming God had commanded him to do so.
At that time I was on the staff of the denomination and was thereby involved in media relations around this crime, which had widespread national coverage. As a result his story intersects with mine at two points--as young teenagers in the blissful innocence of church campfires and Sunday School, and then later as adults when he was descending into the darkness of his psychological delusions.
There is plenty to be said about the cultural and theological underpinnings of a case like this. It has been examined in books and essays that attribute it to such things as twisted religious teachings, an abusive childhood, or criminal manipulation of weak people for personal gratification. Whatever the cause, Jeffrey Lundgren's crimes lead understandably to the position that if anyone deserves the death penalty he does.
I can't argue with that, which is the problem all of us who oppose capital punishment face. It is one thing to rally to the cause of someone believed to be innocent. It is quite another to generate energy on behalf of those who have butchered children or killed police officers, who have no remorse for what they have done, and who leave grieving families with a lifetime of pain and loss.
But this is an issue where one must keep an eye on the principle and not dwell on the particular. In the United States the death penalty is undeniably applied disproportionately to the poor and to people of color. Despite popular assumptions, it is far more costly to execute someone than to place them in prison for life. It is capricious and arbitrary in its implementation, there is absolutely no evidence that it is a deterrent, and there is no question that innocent people have been executed. Many useful facts can be found on the website of the Death Penalty Information Center.
All of those are compelling reasons to abolish the death penalty, but there is one more that trumps them all for me. When a state takes the life of a human being, whatever the reason, the result is to brutalize the state and by extension to brutalize each of us as individuals. I do not think we can overestimate the blot that places on the soul of our society. Revenge does not heal.
Jeffrey Lundgren was not a friend, but he and I walked in the same orbit of influence when we were young. I do not know what took him down the dark path that ended today at 10:26 a.m. His deluded mind led him to an incomprehensible and brutal act.
Now, in response, we have done the same. I feel no peace.
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