Minister brings mission to death's door

by Ray Waddle

The Rev. Stacy Rector has a confession to make: she is a murderer. But so are the rest of us.

As she sees it, anyone paying taxes to a state that embraces the death penalty is an accomplice to homicide.

"The death penalty makes me a murderer," she says.

"On the death certificate of an executed prisoner it says 'homicide'. There's nothing else to call it."

TCASK Executive Director Stacy Rector

Rector, 35, finds the situation so intolerable that she recently left her steady work at a prominent Nashville congregation (Second Presbyterian Church) to lead a small organization dedicated to end capital punishment in Tennessee, where 103 people currently wait on death row. The Tennessee Coalition to Abolish State Killing (TCASK) is part of a surging national trend of protest against the death penalty, which was reinstated 30 years ago.

She faces a steep climb, with resistance from politicians and citizens who assume the death penalty is necessary to protect society and exact revenge.

But Rector, the daughter of public-spirited school-teaching parents in West Tennessee, grew up with a heart for underdogs. She believes her cause will prevail because Christian faith, common sense and fair play demand it.

"The sad fact is the system is so broken," she says.

A person on death row is more likely to be an ethnic minority and poor than white or rich. No one on death row in Tennessee could afford an attorney.

A prisoner is more likely to be on death row for killing a white person than for killing a person of color. Some death-row inmates, it turns out, are innocent — victims of careless or prejudicial justice systems, depending on the county or state. Rector says 123 people on death row in American prisons have been exonerated since 1977, often because improved DNA testing cleared them of the crime.

Keeping the status quo is expensive. It costs U.S. taxpayers about $2 million per execution, including appeals and prison maintenance.

"That money could go to victim compensation funds and more policing," she says.

"People are afraid in our culture. I realize there are individuals who are dangerous. But we can protect ourselves from them without becoming murderers."

Her organization's immediate goal is to persuade the Tennessee legislature next year (2007) to place a moratorium on state killings until a panel can be assembled to study the fairness of the system. This has succeeded in a handful of other states. Rector believes the death penalty would collapse and fall out of public favor if citizens learned how flawed and inefficient capital punishment is. She points to surveys that show more Americans would reject the death penalty if they were assured that convicted killers instead received prison terms of life without parole.

In her work, Rector focuses on building coalitions, fundraising and speaking to groups, often churches, hoping to make converts. (A succession of General Assemblies has opposed the death penalty since 1959.) She realizes she is fighting against traditional cultural acceptance of capital punishment, especially in the South, home to a high proportion of the nation's death rows.

Perhaps the region's religion plays a role in reinforcing judicial attitudes: a recent survey by Baylor University revealed that the predominant image of God in the South is a Lord of stern judgment.

"That notion of a punishment-oriented God filters down to the way people look at the death penalty — blood-for-blood. But no one ever talks about Jesus when they talk about state killing. They quote the Old Testament or occasionally Paul. But I always go straight there (to the Jesus of the Gospels). He was clearly a non-violent resistor of evil. He was so specific about the way we must treat the enemy. And the fact is, he was executed by the state. He was caught up in the death penalty system."

Rector is not oblivious to the pain of victims, the imperative to respect their ordeal, their need for healing. But she says she feels called to this work as a test of Christian discipleship. She's not convinced that the death penalty solves anything other than satisfying the lust for brute revenge.

For years, she has visited a death row inmate in Tennessee, and corresponded with others, learning that there's a broken human being behind every murder conviction, every tragedy, every debate about the vexing issue of capital punishment.

"This is where the rubber meets the road. Do we really believe we are made in God's image? Do we really believe in God's ability to love and redeem any of us? These people are literally the least of these. I feel this is where Jesus calls me — to people who are utterly dependent on the mercy of other people. We are called to be merciful even when we don't feel they deserve it."