What may Tennessee do in our name?
Since the attempted execution of Christa Pike, I have been thinking a great deal about the concept of habeas corpus, literally “you have the body.” From a legal perspective, a writ of habeas corpus requires a government authority to bring an imprisoned person to court and prove the legal basis for their detainment. Once the legal basis for detainment is proved, what then may be done to the body in our name, in the name of justice, in the name of retribution?
After Christa Pike’s body was strapped down, the Tennessee Department of Correction spent more than an hour torturing her in an attempt to kill her. You have the body, what then may you do? In Tennessee you may ignore all arguments by medical experts that the state determined method of execution will likely result in torture and a prolonged death. You may take a woman who poses no threat and offers no resistance to her death and inject her over and over and over again, resulting in horrible and visible injuries. You have the body, what else may you do? You may tell emergency services, once called to intervene after the spectacle of prolonged torture for over an hour, that emergency services are not needed and deny any need for life saving first responders, and even deny that the calls were real — not once, twice, but three times. You have the body, what else may you do? Send her unrecovered injured body back to prison still under a sentence of death.
One result of this nightmare is that Gov. Bill Lee issued a temporary halt to executions until the end of the year, stating: “Carrying out a lawfully imposed sentence is among the State’s most serious responsibilities, and the people of Tennessee expect it to be done in a manner that is not only legal and constitutional, but is effective.” The statement should chill us to the bone. No mention of cruelty, torture or inhumane acts; no, just the statement that the people of Tennessee have the right to expect the execution to be effective. We live in a time of such government violence that our government systems do not even attempt to appeal to the humane because there is no longer a scandal attached to torture, and no shame in multiple attempts at state sanctioned homicide that fail. Only a promise to get it right the next time.
This culture of death and sanctification of cruelty is fostered by our federal government, a government betting that after years of wholesale destruction of immigrant families, murder, and extraordinary rendition we will have become so desensitized to cruelty, so inured to death, that we will line up to witness the televised murder of a paraplegic prisoner in a wheelchair.
And if we are willing to tolerate, and for some to gleefully embrace, this fallen state of our humanity, who will bother trying to stop the millions of silent deaths that result from the continued and increased closings of rural hospitals, reduction or elimination of SNAP benefits, the shrinking and even elimination of Medicaid, and the growing numbers of homeless neighbors? As the atrocities mount by the stroke of a pen and by the hands of professed Christian politicians, the question begs to be asked, from what hellscape of a world does such a Christianity proceed? What sort of antichrist messiah are they worshipping that makes targets out of those the Beatitudes would lift up?
You may ask, what of the victims and their families? Christa Pike is guilty of a heinous torturous murder, and Nidal Hasan is guilty of the mass murder of 13 soldiers. These actions were wrong, indeed evil, but we cannot allow murder to become the means through which we have no response to severe harm but retribution. Retribution is always a rush towards our worst selves, and any legal system predicated upon it is void of moral authority. Indeed, such a system revictimizes victims when it holds up their pain as a means to legalize and fetishize torture. Almost no one ever speaks of the trauma inflicted upon the employees of the prison system who are made to participate in these homicides. Employees who often know and even have positive relationships with the people they are charged to kill. And what of the trauma inflicted upon the spiritual advisors present during executions, and the lawyers and journalists who must witness these horrors — such actions are the stuff of war crimes. Politicians who render redemption meaningless and choose to worship instead at the altar of retribution all while proclaiming their Christianity, do in fact have a role in the Christian story — they are sons and daughters of hell, and they make their converts to Christian nationalism twice as much a child of hell as they are.
I know more than most and less than some about the costs of a system in which violence is legalized and trauma is perpetuated on a daily basis. I am the former head chaplain of Riverbend Maximum Security Institution where Christa Pike’s attempted execution took place on Sept. 30, and where 11 executions have taken place since 2018.
I entered the prison in 2009 as a volunteer chaplain specifically to facilitate groups and work with the residents of death row. In 2011 I was hired as the head institutional chaplain. I applied for the position reluctantly, and only after strong encouragement by the men I served on death row. God’s ways are queer. I entered that prison as a known quantity. From the moment I set foot on prison grounds I was clear about the fact that I was a death penalty abolitionist. My experiences on the inside only confirmed my theological and moral convictions that God as revealed through Jesus condemns state sanctioned murder.
There are instances where the gospel message is layered and sly as a fox, and other times when the message is as clear as a sacred well. When it comes to the death penalty, the message rings clear. The synoptic gospels tell the story of a Jesus who is on the move, always slipping out of town at the last minute and struggling to keep one step ahead of the authorities who constantly scheme to arrest him. Jesus knew the cost of announcing the Kingdom of God, knew the cost of resistance. His cousin was imprisoned and executed through beheading. And we know that after Jesus is arrested, tried and publicly tortured and executed, his friends and followers will face the same. Such a narrative is not essentializing, it is revealing of the fact that arrest, torture and execution are a throughline of the gospel narrative.
It is no objection to this understanding of the gospel message, or a defense of the death penalty, to argue innocence on Jesus’ behalf. Jesus, his cousin and his followers were all guilty of apocalyptic messaging and outright resistance in proclaiming the fall of the powerful, and the reordering of society from the bottom up. The Kingdom of God breaking in on the world wasn’t good news for Caesar or the Sanhedrin, and it’s certainly not good news for oligarchs, tech bros or authoritarians. Given the opportunity, Jesus comforts those experiencing execution alongside him. When asked for his opinion regarding stoning a woman caught in the act of adultery — when asked for his opinion on the death penalty — Jesus looks at the ground, writes in the dirt, and finally stands upright and invites those who have not sinned to cast the first stone. He goes back to dirt scrawling, giving an opportunity for the accusers to fall away, and when he looks up he and the woman are all who remain. Arguably from a theological perspective Jesus had the right to cast the stone, but very specifically he does not condemn her. Simply tells her to sin no more. From antiquity St. Jerome speculates that Jesus is writing the names and sins of the accusers in the sand.
The stones are too heavy for any of us to lift, and the sins of those who choose to cast them will be written and laid bare. The entire state government of Tennessee should take notice, and Governor Lee, you are ultimately responsible. Twice, the State’s attempts to carry out an execution have failed. Twice Governor Lee has been given a second chance to choose another way. If ever I have witnessed an angel with a flaming sword barring the way moment, this is it. You have the body. What will you do?
The Reverend Mother Jeannie Alexander lives and works at Earthfire Abbey, an interfaith abbey and farm in southern Vermont. She can be reached at jeannie.earthfireabbey@gmail.com
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