Five times the execution of Luther Dunphy had been scheduled and four times it had been “stayed” by a judiciary order sent to the Ohio Department of Corrections. The first execution date had been in August 2000 and it was now February 2006 and it was not uncommon (Luther’s lawyer had told him) that an inmate might wait on Death Row for ten, twelve, even fifteen and (in a rare case) twenty years before being executed; and in this lengthy period of time there was always the possibility of an appeal being granted, or clemency, or commutation of sentence. We will not give up, Luther!—the young lawyer had promised.
In some states there had been no executions since the mid-1970s—though condemned inmates waited on Death Row.
Waited, grew old. Eventually died. On Death Row.
Soon after Luther Dunphy’s arrest, even before the trials in the Muskegee Falls courthouse, several right-to-life organizations had expressed support for him even as they took care—publicly—to oppose violence. After the death sentence it was “outrage” these organizations expressed to the media, that Luther Dunphy had been sentenced to death. Churches allied with the St. Paul Missionary Church of Jesus expressed “solidarity” with Luther. There were several Ohio congressmen sympathetic with the pro-life movement in the state who had condemned the “harsh sentence” and had called for “clemency.” It was Luther’s assumption that such protests had resulted in the stays of execution though (as Edna Mae had inadvertently allowed him to know) the protests had abated over a period of time, and other right-to-life martyrs had taken Luther Dunphy’s place. Yet, Luther saw no reason to anticipate that this time would be different though it was the first he’d heard that strangers were organizing to protest his execution as an execution.
Who were these people?—Luther asked his lawyer; and was told that they were opponents of the death penalty generally, who demonstrated against impending executions at various prisons.
Some had religious objections. Some demanded a reform of the penal code. Many were lawyers, law students, social workers, teachers who objected to capital punishment as barbaric and discriminatory as most individuals executed in the United States were either black or very poor or both black and very poor.
Luther was not convinced about this. For it seemed clear in the Bible, and Jesus had never repudiated it in any of his teachings—“‘An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.’”
“Yes, but Luther—‘Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.’”
Luther’s lawyer smiled like one of the bright show-offy seminary students Luther had wanted to murder at the Toledo Bible school.
As the date of the execution approached, the young man continued, there would be demonstrators outside the prison. Very likely, some of these would be right-to-life protesters bearing picket signs showing Luther Dunphy’s face and some of these would be opponents of the death penalty on principle.
“Individuals who don’t ordinarily find themselves on the same side. But in Luther Dunphy, they will find a common cause.”
Luther didn’t want to think about this—common cause. He wasn’t sure what it meant but he didn’t like the sound of it.
He had never known anyone who opposed legitimate executions. He had never known anyone who opposed war. Vaguely he thought of these persons as foreign, “Socialist” and atheist. He did not want common cause with such persons.
Sometimes in the presence of lawyers while Luther appeared to be attentively listening to the cascade of words that flowed from their mouths like water out of a faucet Luther was in fact flexing certain of his muscles (in secret) and counting to one hundred in groups of tens calmly and steadily and with one part of his brain only as his soul floated free and soared like a cloud skimming the surface of a sea in reflection.
“Are you listening, Luther? Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“The execution will become an issue in the media. There’s a strong anti-death penalty movement gathering in the state, as there has been in Illinois since the Innocence Project reversed the verdicts of several men on Death Row. That is why it isn’t a good idea—I mean, it isn’t a helpful idea—for you to release your statement asking people not to protest for your sake. You see, if—”
Luther’s eyelids had shut. Luther was awake but elsewhere. He knew himself safe, serene. His soul was secure within him like the liquid bubble in a carpenter’s level and his soul was impervious to earthly harm.
“LUTHER, THANK YOU! Bless you.”
The Death Row chaplain Reverend Davey was a large man: three hundred pounds at least. His face was a heavy moon-shaped face with bulbous cheeks, lips. His small eyes were deep-set in the fatty ridges of his face yet alert, shrewd as the eyes of a bird. He was too heavy now to kneel in prayer with the inmates whose cells he visited never less than weekly though Luther could recall when, years before, Reverend Davey had knelt beside him on the floor of his cell. The two had prayed earnestly side by side like equals.
With the warden’s permission Reverend Davey was bringing copies of the New Testament for Luther Dunphy to sign. On an inside, tissue-thin page, in bright blue ink, Luther signed his name—
Luther Amos Dunphy
Each signature was fastidiously wrought. Reverend Davey supplied the fountain pen, about which he was particular. Warmly Reverend Davey said: