Post by sclcookie on Jun 5, 2006 0:20:41 GMT -5
Friend to the condemned
It's not as if Dorothy King thinks about the deaths of her 4 friends a
lot. Just the opposite, in fact: She works hard to keep the topic from her
mind. She knows her friends will die eventually. Everyone does. But King's
friends, murderers all, could depart this life at the collective hand of
the community.
Those friends, all of whom are women, are not people most of us would
choose as pals. They have done horrible things, which is why they are on
death row.
Their world has been reduced to a single common room where they spend
their days and the cells that surround that space. Their visitors tend to
be family members or attorneys. Friends -- that is, people who enjoy their
company and will devote hours to conversation -- hardly exist. Killers
don't usually have friends, at least not in the way the word is normally
defined.
But these 4 do. They have Dot King.
Every Tuesday for the past 14 years, King has visited death row. She
passes through eight locked gates and doors to reach it, but when she gets
there, no glass barrier separates King and the inmates. A feeling of
kitchen-table intimacy warms that common room when King makes her weekly
visit. They talk about the Bible -- the official reason for King's
presence -- but about other things, too: kids, family, current events,
etc.
"They laugh. They listen to a lot of radio," King says. "They get the
paper, so they're cognizant about the news. They'll bring up topics,
especially about the criminal justice system."
After an hour or so of visiting, King makes her way back to her car,
through the eight gates and across the prison complex. It can be a long
walk for an 82-year-old woman. King's husband, Eddie -- who sometimes
accompanies her -- thinks the weekly visits are a strain on her. "I wish
you would [stop]," he tells her. "It takes a lot out of you."
But King doesn't want to quit. The four death row inmates "have done a lot
more for me than I ever have done for them," she says. "They've taught me
how to really love somebody unconditionally."
Who they are
Let's talk about unconditional love for a moment -- specifically, the
objects of that love.
* Patricia Jennings was a 44-year-old nursing home employee in Wilson in
1983 when she met and later married an elderly, retired businessman. Six
years later, after the couple had arranged to have half of the man's
assets transferred to his wife, paramedics called to a Wilson hotel room
found the husband nude on the floor. Jennings was also there, wearing a
nightgown and cowboy boots. A pathologist later determined that the
husband had died of internal injuries consistent with a kick to the
abdomen. The pathologist also said that he'd apparently been sexually
tortured and assaulted.
* Blanche Moore was a preacher's wife in 1989 when her husband fell ill
from arsenic poisoning. He survived, but an investigation eventually led
to the exhumation of the bodies of Moore's father, her first husband and a
former boyfriend. Evidence of arsenic poisoning turned up in all three.
Moore was charged with the death of Raymond Reid, the boyfriend. Reid
became sick after spending a New Year's Eve with Moore. Over the course of
the following months, Reid was treated at two hospitals while Moore often
brought him meals from home. After months of agony, he died. Moore refused
an autopsy, declaring that "he has been through too much. He wouldn't want
to be cut on like this."
* Carlette Parker was a health-care worker serving the elderly. In 1998,
she kidnapped an 86-year-old Raleigh woman from a grocery store parking
lot and drove her to the drive-up window of a Smithfield bank, where
$2,500 was withdrawn from the elderly woman's account. Later that day,
Parker took the woman to her home in Angier and drowned her in a bathtub.
Testimony at the trial showed that Parker was $4,000 behind in restitution
payments she was making for stealing money from another elderly woman. She
had worried out loud to her parole officer about coming up with the money.
* Christina Walters, of Fayetteville, was a member of the Crips in 1998
when 3 gang members kidnapped a fast-food manager and drove her to
Walters' home, where Walters shot her eight times. (The woman survived,
miraculously.) Then, the gang stole another vehicle and kidnapped the pair
of women driving it. The 2 victims were executed by a bullet to the head.
The bullets had been coated with blue fingernail polish -- blue being the
Crips' color.
There's an unmistakable conclusion to be drawn here: Obviously, some love
has to be unconditional.
How mission began
King didn't set out to be friends with the four women. At first, she only
wanted to help them get right with God.
She made her 1st visit to a jail 30 years ago while living in Washington,
D.C., where Eddie King was serving in the U.S. Army as a command sergeant
major. Their church volunteered to do a Bible study program at the
municipal lockup, "and when we were ready to leave the jail, the matron
asked if anyone would be interested in coming back," King says. "No one
said anything, so I said, 'Well, I think I would.'"
She didn't know it at the time, but that momentary discomfort with silence
would evolve into a life's work.
King went back to the jail the next week, and every week thereafter for
the remaining year they lived in Washington. When Dot and Eddie King
returned home to North Carolina -- both are Kinston natives -- she joined
another group that made weekly visits to inmates. In 1980, King began
making a weekly trip to the N.C. Correctional Institution for Women in
Southeast Raleigh, ministering to the prison's general population.
In 1992, the prison chaplain approached King about visiting death row. "I
asked her if I was being promoted," King says. "She said she didn't think
so, but I said I was ready to give it a try. I've been doing it ever
since."
Because she's a volunteer on the chaplain's staff, King's task is to
conduct a Bible class. The aim, says prison warden Annie Harvey, is to
teach the 4 death row inmates "how to live each day to the fullest in
their circumstance."
It's a special challenge. As King points out, "Nobody writes material for
people on death row. It's written for Sunday school classes, that sort of
thing." Furthermore, the four women range in age from mid-20s to 70s,
which means there are no one-size-fits-all cultural references that King
can invoke. Finally, there is the weight of Harvey's seemingly simple
instruction: How full can a life on death row be?
And as the families of the victims might ask: How full should it be?
At the prison
The Correctional Institution for Women is shady and unobtrusive, 192 acres
occupied by 2 dozen low-rise buildings and numerous old-growth trees. Were
it not for the fence that surrounds 35 of those acres, as well as most of
the buildings, any passer-by might mistake it for a medical complex gone
slightly to seed.
It was originally a Cool Hand Luke-style prison camp for male inmates,
until 1938, when it became a full-fledged women's prison. These days,
every woman who serves time after a felony conviction in North Carolina
passes through NCCIW or stays there to serve her time. A few of them end
up in a separate cell block in a remote corner of the compound, where
death row is.
King has made the walk to that cell block something in the neighborhood of
700 times. She says she'll continue to make that walk as long as she can.
"They have become very dear people to me," King says. "They are my
friends. They really are."
That's a startling thing to hear, until you acknowledge the several layers
of that friendship. One is the simple familiarity that comes with seeing
the same person on a regular schedule. If you visit, say, the same grocery
store every week for years and see the same clerk every time, you'll end
up asking about each other's children, health, recent vacations, etc. In
short, you'll become friends, in a limited,
pals-only-while-we're-here-each-week kind of way.
Another layer is the fundamental human impulse to befriend the friendless.
Warden Harvey says almost all the other visitors to death row are either
family members or lawyers involved with the inmates' appeals -- in other
words, people with an obligation to honor blood ties or serve the legal
system. A volunteer to the prison chaplain is, almost by definition, meant
to be a friendly presence in a bleak place.
Finally, there is the fact that while the law allows society to execute
these four women for their crimes, it doesn't also demand that they die
friendless. "One of the things Miz King has figured out is that the
punishment is being sentenced to death, and it's not for her to judge,"
Harvey says. "That's already been done."
Perhaps the most remarkable thing is that "Miz King" has done exactly
that: not judged.
Loving the sinner
That refusal to judge is a tough thing, sometimes even for death-penalty
opponents. That most famous of activists -- Sister Helen Prejean, who
chronicled her relationship with death-row killers in the book "Dead Man
Walking" -- found herself shaken by the brutality of the crimes that
condemned the men to death. One of the victims, a young woman who was
raped and viciously murdered, "was all alone in the darkness of the woods
with these two savage people, who were not acting in a human way," Prejean
once told a television interviewer. "Who were completely unresponsive in a
human way. It must have been so terrifying."
John Strange, communications director for Carrboro-based People of Faith
Against the Death Penalty, which gave King its 2005 Community Service
Award, also understands the challenge in loving the sinner in such
horrific cases. The less you know about the specifics of a crime, the less
likely it is that your opposition to the death penalty will waver.
"Forgiveness is one of the most difficult things that humans are called to
do," he says. Knowing details only makes it harder.
Strange, long an opponent of the death penalty, only recently started
writing to a death-row inmate.
In King's case, the topic just doesn't come up. "We don't ever talk about
their crimes," she says. The events that sent the four women to death row
are between them and the juries; between them and the appeals court; and
between them and God. King feels no need to insert herself into the legal
and moral algebra of the equation. Justice and divine forgiveness are
wrought by others. King brings acceptance to the table.
"You can't love somebody and minister to somebody, then say, 'I won't go
beyond this point,'" King says.
She wants only one thing out of this deal: She wants to die first.
"If God is truly good and gracious, I will go before them," she says.
(source: News & Observer)
It's not as if Dorothy King thinks about the deaths of her 4 friends a
lot. Just the opposite, in fact: She works hard to keep the topic from her
mind. She knows her friends will die eventually. Everyone does. But King's
friends, murderers all, could depart this life at the collective hand of
the community.
Those friends, all of whom are women, are not people most of us would
choose as pals. They have done horrible things, which is why they are on
death row.
Their world has been reduced to a single common room where they spend
their days and the cells that surround that space. Their visitors tend to
be family members or attorneys. Friends -- that is, people who enjoy their
company and will devote hours to conversation -- hardly exist. Killers
don't usually have friends, at least not in the way the word is normally
defined.
But these 4 do. They have Dot King.
Every Tuesday for the past 14 years, King has visited death row. She
passes through eight locked gates and doors to reach it, but when she gets
there, no glass barrier separates King and the inmates. A feeling of
kitchen-table intimacy warms that common room when King makes her weekly
visit. They talk about the Bible -- the official reason for King's
presence -- but about other things, too: kids, family, current events,
etc.
"They laugh. They listen to a lot of radio," King says. "They get the
paper, so they're cognizant about the news. They'll bring up topics,
especially about the criminal justice system."
After an hour or so of visiting, King makes her way back to her car,
through the eight gates and across the prison complex. It can be a long
walk for an 82-year-old woman. King's husband, Eddie -- who sometimes
accompanies her -- thinks the weekly visits are a strain on her. "I wish
you would [stop]," he tells her. "It takes a lot out of you."
But King doesn't want to quit. The four death row inmates "have done a lot
more for me than I ever have done for them," she says. "They've taught me
how to really love somebody unconditionally."
Who they are
Let's talk about unconditional love for a moment -- specifically, the
objects of that love.
* Patricia Jennings was a 44-year-old nursing home employee in Wilson in
1983 when she met and later married an elderly, retired businessman. Six
years later, after the couple had arranged to have half of the man's
assets transferred to his wife, paramedics called to a Wilson hotel room
found the husband nude on the floor. Jennings was also there, wearing a
nightgown and cowboy boots. A pathologist later determined that the
husband had died of internal injuries consistent with a kick to the
abdomen. The pathologist also said that he'd apparently been sexually
tortured and assaulted.
* Blanche Moore was a preacher's wife in 1989 when her husband fell ill
from arsenic poisoning. He survived, but an investigation eventually led
to the exhumation of the bodies of Moore's father, her first husband and a
former boyfriend. Evidence of arsenic poisoning turned up in all three.
Moore was charged with the death of Raymond Reid, the boyfriend. Reid
became sick after spending a New Year's Eve with Moore. Over the course of
the following months, Reid was treated at two hospitals while Moore often
brought him meals from home. After months of agony, he died. Moore refused
an autopsy, declaring that "he has been through too much. He wouldn't want
to be cut on like this."
* Carlette Parker was a health-care worker serving the elderly. In 1998,
she kidnapped an 86-year-old Raleigh woman from a grocery store parking
lot and drove her to the drive-up window of a Smithfield bank, where
$2,500 was withdrawn from the elderly woman's account. Later that day,
Parker took the woman to her home in Angier and drowned her in a bathtub.
Testimony at the trial showed that Parker was $4,000 behind in restitution
payments she was making for stealing money from another elderly woman. She
had worried out loud to her parole officer about coming up with the money.
* Christina Walters, of Fayetteville, was a member of the Crips in 1998
when 3 gang members kidnapped a fast-food manager and drove her to
Walters' home, where Walters shot her eight times. (The woman survived,
miraculously.) Then, the gang stole another vehicle and kidnapped the pair
of women driving it. The 2 victims were executed by a bullet to the head.
The bullets had been coated with blue fingernail polish -- blue being the
Crips' color.
There's an unmistakable conclusion to be drawn here: Obviously, some love
has to be unconditional.
How mission began
King didn't set out to be friends with the four women. At first, she only
wanted to help them get right with God.
She made her 1st visit to a jail 30 years ago while living in Washington,
D.C., where Eddie King was serving in the U.S. Army as a command sergeant
major. Their church volunteered to do a Bible study program at the
municipal lockup, "and when we were ready to leave the jail, the matron
asked if anyone would be interested in coming back," King says. "No one
said anything, so I said, 'Well, I think I would.'"
She didn't know it at the time, but that momentary discomfort with silence
would evolve into a life's work.
King went back to the jail the next week, and every week thereafter for
the remaining year they lived in Washington. When Dot and Eddie King
returned home to North Carolina -- both are Kinston natives -- she joined
another group that made weekly visits to inmates. In 1980, King began
making a weekly trip to the N.C. Correctional Institution for Women in
Southeast Raleigh, ministering to the prison's general population.
In 1992, the prison chaplain approached King about visiting death row. "I
asked her if I was being promoted," King says. "She said she didn't think
so, but I said I was ready to give it a try. I've been doing it ever
since."
Because she's a volunteer on the chaplain's staff, King's task is to
conduct a Bible class. The aim, says prison warden Annie Harvey, is to
teach the 4 death row inmates "how to live each day to the fullest in
their circumstance."
It's a special challenge. As King points out, "Nobody writes material for
people on death row. It's written for Sunday school classes, that sort of
thing." Furthermore, the four women range in age from mid-20s to 70s,
which means there are no one-size-fits-all cultural references that King
can invoke. Finally, there is the weight of Harvey's seemingly simple
instruction: How full can a life on death row be?
And as the families of the victims might ask: How full should it be?
At the prison
The Correctional Institution for Women is shady and unobtrusive, 192 acres
occupied by 2 dozen low-rise buildings and numerous old-growth trees. Were
it not for the fence that surrounds 35 of those acres, as well as most of
the buildings, any passer-by might mistake it for a medical complex gone
slightly to seed.
It was originally a Cool Hand Luke-style prison camp for male inmates,
until 1938, when it became a full-fledged women's prison. These days,
every woman who serves time after a felony conviction in North Carolina
passes through NCCIW or stays there to serve her time. A few of them end
up in a separate cell block in a remote corner of the compound, where
death row is.
King has made the walk to that cell block something in the neighborhood of
700 times. She says she'll continue to make that walk as long as she can.
"They have become very dear people to me," King says. "They are my
friends. They really are."
That's a startling thing to hear, until you acknowledge the several layers
of that friendship. One is the simple familiarity that comes with seeing
the same person on a regular schedule. If you visit, say, the same grocery
store every week for years and see the same clerk every time, you'll end
up asking about each other's children, health, recent vacations, etc. In
short, you'll become friends, in a limited,
pals-only-while-we're-here-each-week kind of way.
Another layer is the fundamental human impulse to befriend the friendless.
Warden Harvey says almost all the other visitors to death row are either
family members or lawyers involved with the inmates' appeals -- in other
words, people with an obligation to honor blood ties or serve the legal
system. A volunteer to the prison chaplain is, almost by definition, meant
to be a friendly presence in a bleak place.
Finally, there is the fact that while the law allows society to execute
these four women for their crimes, it doesn't also demand that they die
friendless. "One of the things Miz King has figured out is that the
punishment is being sentenced to death, and it's not for her to judge,"
Harvey says. "That's already been done."
Perhaps the most remarkable thing is that "Miz King" has done exactly
that: not judged.
Loving the sinner
That refusal to judge is a tough thing, sometimes even for death-penalty
opponents. That most famous of activists -- Sister Helen Prejean, who
chronicled her relationship with death-row killers in the book "Dead Man
Walking" -- found herself shaken by the brutality of the crimes that
condemned the men to death. One of the victims, a young woman who was
raped and viciously murdered, "was all alone in the darkness of the woods
with these two savage people, who were not acting in a human way," Prejean
once told a television interviewer. "Who were completely unresponsive in a
human way. It must have been so terrifying."
John Strange, communications director for Carrboro-based People of Faith
Against the Death Penalty, which gave King its 2005 Community Service
Award, also understands the challenge in loving the sinner in such
horrific cases. The less you know about the specifics of a crime, the less
likely it is that your opposition to the death penalty will waver.
"Forgiveness is one of the most difficult things that humans are called to
do," he says. Knowing details only makes it harder.
Strange, long an opponent of the death penalty, only recently started
writing to a death-row inmate.
In King's case, the topic just doesn't come up. "We don't ever talk about
their crimes," she says. The events that sent the four women to death row
are between them and the juries; between them and the appeals court; and
between them and God. King feels no need to insert herself into the legal
and moral algebra of the equation. Justice and divine forgiveness are
wrought by others. King brings acceptance to the table.
"You can't love somebody and minister to somebody, then say, 'I won't go
beyond this point,'" King says.
She wants only one thing out of this deal: She wants to die first.
"If God is truly good and gracious, I will go before them," she says.
(source: News & Observer)