An Eye for an Eye?

What shall I write about this week? A fluffy piece about watching language development, as the delightful Elizabeth Holiday strings words together in sentences, 90% of which I can’t understand? A column exploring the concept of truth, which I’ve written half a dozen times in my head as I’ve tried to determine the one “lie” in a list of ten concerts a Facebook friend has attended? Or should I pay attention to the nudge, the whisper of the Muse in my ear, whose persistence is likely to land me in hot water before the week is over?

Behind Door Number Three . . . It began with the purchase of a murder mystery at the recently opened Ashland Books, the fictional tale of the death of teen-age girls on the streets of New Orleans. I’ve been a mystery addict for as long as I can remember, getting hooked early on Nancy Drew and still relishing a good “who-dun-it” in lieu of more cerebral volumes. The book recounts the execution of a young African-American man for the murder of a white, female victim. Author Penelope Williamson paints a gruesome picture of the newfangled electric chair, with a blood-thirsty crowd, a gin-soaked mother, a praying grandmother, and a botched execution – of a man later determined to be not guilty.

Reading the description of the death chamber, my mind slipped back more than half a century to the afternoon when I somehow managed to watch a horrific movie showing the execution of a woman in the electric chair. I thought it might have been “I Want to Live!” with Susan Hayward, but Wikipedia tells me she got the gas chamber, not the chair. I don’t think I was older than seven or eight, and we only had one television, so I have no idea how I was able to watch the scene (maybe my mother was napping with my new baby sister)? But what I do know is that I was terribly shaken by it, but because I’d been forbidden to watch, I couldn’t admit the source of my on-going nightmares to my mother.

A fictional passage, a hazy memory – and then a repeated invitation to hear Shane Claiborne speak this week here in Ashland. His topic? The death penalty. I was present when he spoke on the topic of community development at the university a few years ago, and didn’t want to miss the opportunity to hear him again. But the death penalty? I’ve thrown my hat over the wall on social issues a time or two on these pages, getting labeled by some as Ashland’s own bleeding heart liberal, but even I know enough to stay clear of this topic to avoid being bludgeoned in the T-G’s on-line comments.

But here’s the issue as I see it. How do we engage in meaningful dialogue regarding the polarizing topics of our day? I’ve read of the rush to execution in Arkansas before the death-inducing drugs expire, and the postponement of execution orders here in Ohio. I grieve for the families of the victims, for the families of those languishing on death row. What about the technician who inserts the IV, the doctor who pronounces the time of death, the judges who say “yea” or “nay” on a last-minute request for a reprieve. What of the human beings who wait, day after day, year after year, for the sentence of death to be enacted?

Don’t touch this subject, JoAnn. They’re only fictional words on a page, reports from a state hundreds of miles away. Let it go. Yet this hits home. If Shawn Grate, alleged to have brutally killed women right here in Ashland, Ohio, is convicted of murder, what should his punishment be? Will twelve of us, you, me, our neighbors, be forced to decide? As Shane Claiborne says, “Ultimately, we are not talking about an issue. We are talking about people.”

An eye for an eye? A tooth for a tooth? “Let the one who is without sin cast the first stone”? How can we possibly talk about this? Not yet two, little Elizabeth Holiday doesn’t know enough words to even start the conversation. Do we?