Episode Notes

Lemuel: I am Lemuel Gonzalez, repentant sinner, and along with Amity Armstrong, your heavenly host, I invite you to find a place in the pew for today’s painless Sunday School lesson. Without Works.

Amity: Marcellus Williams is dead. He was the third person executed in the state of Missouri, and the fifteenth person executed in the nation this year. As of this recording, the national total has risen to 20 people.

He was convicted in 2001 of the murder of Felicia Gayle, a former journalist, stabbed to death in her home in 1998.

The Innocence Project released the following statement:

Mr. Williams’ story echoes that of too many others caught in our country’s broken criminal legal system. A Black man convicted of killing a white woman, Mr. Williams maintained his innocence until the very end. His conviction was based on the testimony of two eyewitnesses who were paid for their testimony. No DNA evidence linked him to the crime. And the current St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney acknowledged that errors made by the trial prosecutors – including mishandling the murder weapon and intentionally excluding Black prospective jurors in violation of the Constitution – contributed to a wrongful conviction.

Nonetheless, the Missouri Attorney General’s Office relentlessly pursued Mr. Williams’ execution and opposed clemency. The Attorney General and Missouri Governor Mike Parson – who ultimately denied the request for clemency – ignored the wishes of the victim’s husband who has consistently made clear that he opposed the death penalty for Mr. Williams.

Lemuel: The Bible expresses conflicting opinions about the death penalty, as is to be expected of a book compiled and edited over such a long period of time. Capital punishment is a part of Old Testament teaching, and death, probably by stoning, is the penalty for various, ‘crimes,’ which to ancient peoples included things like idolatry, false witness, rape of a virgin, male homosexual practice, and child sacrifice.

Still, Cain was not killed for the murder of his brother. Moses, despite killing an Egyptian overseer who was beating a Hebrew slave to death, was allowed to flee into the desert rather than face Egyptian justice.

In the New Testament, we are presented with the death, by capital punishment, of Jesus Christ and nearly all of his original disciples.

Saint Stephen, the first Christian martyr, was stoned to death. Saint Peter, the founder of the Church (rather than the faith ) was crucified. James the Younger was stoned and having survived this, was beaten to death with clubs. Of the original twelve only one survived to old age, John, and he, according to extra biblical tradition, survived his death sentence, which was being boiled alive.

These executions were legal. In the case of Jesus, the execution was sanctioned by the religious authorities at the time, that is to say, the Church, and both Herod and Pilate, the secular authorities. I bring this up to explain that Jesus’ torture and execution were legal in both the eyes of Church and State.

Given this history, its impact on nearly all of the founders of the faith, why would a Christian support the death penalty?

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