Agape Community

A Testimony Before the Connecticut Judiciary Committee

Public Hearings on the Death
Penalty, Jan. 31, 2005

By Brayton Shanley

The state of Connecticut is calling for the execution of Michael Ross. I have followed the Ross case for many years now, and as his execution date nears, I ask who is responsible for this primitive sacrifice we call the death penalty? Is it Michael?s mother? By all accounts, Michael?s mother was mentally disturbed. Where did her abusive behavior originate? With her mother?

I have written to Michael Ross for the last ten years, and he has shared his painful history at his mother?s hands very frankly. A woman I know who grew up and went to school with Michael in Brooklyn, Connecticut reports that many in town knew how badly he was being treated, which included sexual abuse by an uncle who later committed suicide. Yet, no one did any thing to stop the suffering.

While in his early twenties, Michael Ross raped and killed eight women. Why on earth did he do this? Former death row inmate and dear friend Billy Neal Moore has an answer: ?Criminals are made, they are not born.?

Are the families of the victims responsible for the death penalty? I have known several families who have had loved ones murdered and who call for the execution of the offender. Satisfaction at seeing the victimizer killed is always fleeting as post-execution depression and rage inevitably seep back into their hearts.

Dr. Bundy Lee, psychiatrist and professor at Yale, at a victims of homicide press conference stated: ?Studies show that capital punishment delays or eliminates the possibility for healing or closure for the victim?s family.? This truth echoes in the words of Bud Welch, who lost a daughter at the Oklahoma City bombing: ?I was re-traumatized by the execution of Timothy McVeigh.?

Far from a healing force, capital punishment breeds contempt for life and models the illogic that homicide is the perfect antidote to homicide. In its violent wake, state-sanctioned killing re-visits trauma on both the victim and the victimizers? families.

Is it the prison system that is responsible for the death penalty? Michael Ross has been in solitary confinement for over 20 years. He eats alone, lives alone and prays alone?a solitary shut-in 23 hours of every day. Psychologists have concluded that this confinement creates a ?death row syndrome.? Prolonged solitary confinement for any inmate is a legal torture chamber, a forced isolation that adds dangerous stress onto an already beleaguered and wounded mind. Psychologists find that solitary confinement without relief can lead to a death wish.

Dr. James Gilligan, a psychiatrist of twenty-five years at Bridgewater State Hospital for the criminally insane, explains in his book Violence how and why men are driven to kill. Homicide is primarily a male-perpetrated crime and to understand it, we need to observe how men respond to their environments. When males are abused, it leads them to destructive rage because men experience abuse, physically and psychologically, as an intense form of shame and humiliation. If the humiliation is unrelenting, it inevitably leads them to an uncontrollable desire to hurt others. If this degradation continues with no significant intervention, such men are at increased risk for homicide, often in drunken or drug- addicted passion, with little regard for legal consequences.

When, after a lifetime of abuse and humiliation, lethal violence leads a man to prison, where he is treated with yet more shame and humiliation. A lengthy prison sentence ensures one thing?the punishing conditions of prison will keep inmates trapped in a dangerous rage and suicidal despair. ?Inmates respond in kind to the way they are treated,? says Ken Shoen, former Corrections Commissioner of Minnesota. ?No matter how far back you lock them, they?ll find a way to retaliate.?

Bill #6012 before the Connecticut legislature offers life in prison without parole in exchange for the abolition of capital punishment. Most who oppose the death penalty strongly favor this tradeoff. But it begs a serious question. Does life without parole give us permission to take revenge by exacting a punishment worse than death? What kind of life without parole are we willing to offer? Again, Dr. Gilligan, an authority on male criminality, has the simple truth: ?Punishment is violence.?

If you punish abused men who have become dangerous, you increase the likelihood they will continue their life of violent assault, inside and outside of prison. Inside prison, abused men turned abusers, find themselves in sensory-deprived and emotionally barren solitary confinement, or in a bleak, heartless incarceration ?in the population.? Left to their own very meager devices, inmates too often find themselves without adequate counsel and therapy, navigating through their lonely, loveless world without the healing balm of healthy human interaction. This punitive incarceration improves no one. The detached judge, harsh controlling guards, powerless and angry inmates all suffer because of this truth?punishment always breeds contempt for others and multiplies the continual threat of violence.

Sentencing offenders like Michael Ross to maximum-security death row only reveals a society’s loathing of the criminal. The body politic becomes vengeance-addled and fixated on the crimes of these violent men. The media sells the story, morbidly reminding the public of lurid details of the perpetrators? crimes, minus any other facts that would reveal their humanity. Elected officials, watching their political backs, become too cowardly to tell the truth–that the death penalty is a tragic waste of life, an irrevocable "absolute punishment" that has never deterred homicide.

Finally, the pro-death penalty argument is fully justified when the pollster calls. In their fear-weakened states, people say ?aye? to the death penalty, the ?quick fix solution." Eliminate the problem by eliminating the person. This will assure us safe streets. But when the pollster asks the question: ?Do you support capital punishment??–life in prison without parole is conveniently never posed as an alternative. Poll-driven politicians, now assured of voter support, become ?true believers? and cast their vote for the false hope that killing those who kill will end killing.

A way to achieve a justice that both increases safety and is good public policy begins with being less fixated on horrific crimes. Weaning ourselves from fear dependency, we will grow progressively less afraid of the ?criminal.? Being less outraged by the crime, we will be freer to ask ?why?? Why are men and women driven to commit such desperate crimes?

If we allow our innate compassion to slowly lead out us out of conditioned revenge, we will begin to see the ?criminal? as truly and fully human and redeemable. A healing change will inevitably follow compassion. First, compassion heals people from the pathos of fear that leads to cruel public policy. Second, it starts the process of healing murderous men and women who are tragic products of destructive families, uncaring neighborhoods and an indifferent society. Murder and violent physical assault are extreme acts, manifestations of emotional instability and mental illness. These conditions are more effectively treated as one would treat the mentally ill, with healing therapies, not with punishment.

The knowledge that men and women are driven to kill because of their tortured lives can surely begin to soften the hardest of hearts. Just as Jesus teaches that "God sends down rain on the upright and the wicked and causes the sun to rise on the bad as well as the good" (Matthew 5:23-24), we must see that true understanding and sympathy are not exclusively afforded to "the forgivable," but also to the outcast, the criminal, "the wicked one," as well. Indeed

the murderer must become a privileged object of our compassion because criminals are not born, but are made. We can help unmake them by moving beyond self-righteous outrage at their crime. This sanctimonious revulsion against the criminal is born out of self-protection. The more depraved the killers? actions, the more moral distance we need from their crimes and from them as human beings.

As the Adolf Hitlers and Saddam Husseins grow more monstrous in our minds, we, the body politic see ourselves as increasingly more righteous and innocent of wrongdoing. Like the stoners of the adulterous woman, we become the sinless, perfect executioners exacting the just punishment. When asked for his support of the death penalty, Jesus says in effect, "You may execute if you are innocent of all wrong." This is why the people take refuge in their sense of superiority. We seek to deny our complicity in evil, by heaping all of our sins onto the scapegoat, the blatant, ?monstrous killer.?

The existential fact is that those who kill are human beings born of the human community with whom we share a communal bond. If we can reject our false sense of innocence, we are free then to cooperate in a common healing process that the worst criminals both need and deserve.

If as a society based on compassion, we can hope for a true rehabilitation for Michael Ross and people like him, we will create sanctuaries of healing for even the worst of society’s anti-social behavior. In this radically new endeavor we will cure ourselves from the need to project our own self- righteous justifications and hatreds.

An inspired model of incarceration is derived from the Quaker understanding of the criminal’s need for rehabilitation. The Quaker prison is called a "penitentiary," taken from the word, penitential, which encourages the wrongdoer to repent, to see the error of his/her ways, to do penance, and to make amends for their crime.

The penitentiary is a community consisting of four buildings in a quadrangle. In the first building, the inmate learns spiritual practice and prayer, and begins a process of reconciliation with their victims. In the second building, proper socialization, a process of building healthy relationships is initiated. In the third, the inmate receives therapy, drug rehabilitation, and practices regular physical exercise, along with learning wholesome dietary habits. In the fourth, inmates are trained in vocational skills as a means of livelihood with which they can serve society and support themselves.

If the people of Connecticut (or any other state) wish to be rescued from the fear of criminally dangerous men, such rescue emerges from a faith in compassion and healing therapy. A powerful outcome accrues when the perpetrator of crime, free of the fear of punishment seeks a change of mind and heart which brings reconciliation, victim to offender, and offender to community, resulting in a true healing for victim, offender and society alike.

In this situation, everyone can move beyond the trauma of violence to a reconciled peace and justice which will roll down like a mighty stream as the people no longer have to live in the self righteous prison of fear.

Instead of scapegoating criminals, we can begin to accept responsibility for their crimes by committing ourselves to protecting children from abuse. Crime statistics reveal that the real danger to society is not recidivist violence from known mass murderers, but from the next generation of the desperate poor, people of color, the abused, neglected, and forgotten. They will be the next major statistics of violent crime. If we don’t care for them, we all are collectively or individually responsible. Abolishing the death penalty will make available desperately needed resources that will rescue people at risk from a life of crime, prison and execution.

Albert Camus said, "we are simply asking for a society where murder is no longer legal." Capital punishment improves no one. It squanders precious resources in a cruel torture. It is legalized killing, which is a worse offense than capital murder precisely because it is "legal."

In all human cultures, a consensus exists that illegal killing, murder–is the gravest of criminal wrongs. But because capital punishment is legal, it possesses the authority of being legally and morally correct. It isn’t. It is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, evil masquerading as good. This evil trick is worse than "murder" because the death penalty is wanton killing, masquerading as good, credible public policy.

Although no one wants to admit to the motivation of revenge, with the death penalty we effectively have legislated revenge. Killing now has legal authority and a majority vote, a falsehood difficult to expose and overturn. But, God willing, if we can move out of the prison of revenge into the abode of compassion, we will be led back to trust in God, trust in people, trust in the goodness of life. The demon of fear will diminish within us. Then our passion will be to protect all life as sacred–all the beautiful, the broken– all of us unmistakably in need of the mercy that heals.

by Mu Seong

My fellow Americans, as I stand before you today to begin a second term in office, I a see a new morning in America. An opportunity comes but rarely for a person or a generation to change the world. Today is such an opportunity. You have given me a sweeping mandate to bring about far-reaching changes in America and the world. I accept that responsibility with humility. Today I pledge to you all my abilities to put us back on the road to reclaiming America as a Christian nation.
During the election campaign, we had a healthy debate about the values of America rooted in our Christian identity. You have spoken, and I pledge to use the power of the federal government to enforce those values. Our actions must speak louder than our words.

For the last seventy years, an oppressive legal system has gripped American politics in which the entrepreneurial class that founded this great country of ours has been shackled and rendered helpless. The liberals call it public ethics. They have created regulatory laws that have played havoc with our original entrepreneurial spirit. These laws dare to put corporate executives on trial when all they are doing is participating in the stock market with enthusiasm and creativity. These laws must be rolled back. With your help, I plan to do just that.

To roll back these laws is to recover a muscular Christianity and a muscular nation that still throbs with the vitality of the frontier spirit. This spirit is embodied today not only by the business entrepreneurs but also by those brave Christian missionaries who carry the message of the Lord to far off places like Iraq and Syria and North Korea. We must do all we can as a nation to support these brave people.

The teachings of the Bible are pretty straightforward and simple:an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and more power to those who dare to grab it. They have nothing to do with complexity and nuances that the liberals like to bring to every issue. America is an unfolding of God?s Divine Vision on earth to fulfill His Divine Mission. Those who truly follow the God and Bible are the only ones entitled to gather the grain and land so they may sow God?s promise on the earth.

I have said again and again that I believe in the apocalyptic vision of the Bible, that we are locked in an eternal struggle between good and evil. I believe that the Day of Judgment will soon be upon us, and only those who believe in the God of the Bible will be saved. I said of our fight against terrorism that those who are not with us are against us. Those who do not believe in the God of Bible are against us. They belong to evil and it becomes my sacred duty and America?s mission to oppose this evil at every turn and pay every price. Those who give themselves fully are martyrs to this cause. I am willing to sacrifice the lives of millions if necessary to fight evil, which has many forms.

Those who oppose my policy in Iraq are evil personified. My decision to go to war was made for me by God Who showed me that it is not I, George Bush, who speaks to you but God Himself who speaks through George Bush. I tell you that Saddam Hussein was a bad man who gassed his own people. In His mercy, God tells us that it was part of His plan that America supplied the gas that Saddam used on the Kurds. This was God?s way of setting up the stage of history for Saddam Hussein to be punished. Those who look at America?s supplying of poison gas to Saddam Hussein and argue it is proof of our complicity in his murderous regime don?t understand is that it?s all part of God?s plan for punishing Saddam Hussein.

Furthermore, those who don?t understand God?s design point to pictures of Donald Rumsfeld shaking Saddam?s hand but they don?t understand that Rumsfeld is a good man. He was only doing God?s work.

My foreign policy is clear-eyed and resolute. We want to save and prepare the lands of Israel for the Second Coming of the Messiah. Tin-pot dictators like Saddam Hussein or seriously misguided mullahs in Teheran are not going to stand in the way of our protection of Israel. Even many of the Jews in Israel don?t understand their place in the scheme of the Divine Purpose. The peaceniks in Israel are only interfering with God?s work. Saving Israel is paramount for America?s own participation in the Divine Mission. Israel is our birthplace. Saddam Hussein was a threat to Israel. He was financing the families of suicide bombers. He had to go.

I have always supported Israel?s right to rule all those lands mentioned in the Bible. The Palestinians just have to understand that reality. They must be willing to give up those Biblical lands that are rightfully Israel?s. Otherwise there will be no peace in the Middle East. All the Arab nations must understand this. It is a cornerstone of our policy in the Middle East.

The security of Israel is as critical to our national security as the oil in the Middle East. The evil rulers of Iraq and Iran must not hamper America?s ability to buy oil in the open market and have unfettered access to the oil in the Middle East. Saddam Hussein was threatening to control its supply by invading his neighbors and threatening others, so he had to be eliminated.

In my personal life I am not a vengeful person. But the God of the Bible is a God of justice who tells us that evil cannot be fought with nice words and showed me that Saddam Hussein must be punished for trying to kill my earthly father, the forty-first president of the United States. My manhood was on the line and God blessed me in this noble adventure. Those who nitpick about the weapons of mass destruction as a rationale for punishing Saddam Hussein just don?t get the larger picture. Saddam tried to kill my daddy.Avenging the attempt on the life of my biological father, safeguarding the supply of oil to America, and protecting Israel for the Second Coming of the Messiah in our own lifetime are all part of God?s commands to me.

In the last few days, the members of the United State Senate have been simply disgraceful in their treatment of Condoleeza Rice, my nominee for the Secretary of State. Dr. Rice has stood by me firmly and resolutely during the difficult hours of our attempt to drive Saddam Hussein out of power and believes with me that there is nothing nobler in America?s foreign policy than to spread democracy all over the world. She believes, as I do, that democracy will flower and prosper only when entire populations embrace the Word of God, when they accept Jesus as their Savior.

I feel especially proud that as a member of the privileged class, the most aristocratic of America?s aristocracy, that my family and I have been able to advance the cause of the children of slaves to prominent positions in America. To their credit, they have learned to do what?s right. This is how America works.

My critics have brought equally petty and shameful politics to the confirmation hearings of Alberto Gonzales, my nominee for the Attorney General of the United States. Some have gone to the extent of saying that all Americans become complicit as torturers by having a torturer as their Attorney General. I have always been supportive of free speech and General Gonzales will make sure that free speech is available to our citizens within the confines of the Patriot Act. But the right to free speech must conform to our Christian values.

But when people call me a torturer because I authorized Judge Gonzales to write those memos and change the rules of engagement, that?s just plain wrong. This is not free speech. This is treason. This kind of speech goes against the moral values I hold so deeply. The people who use this kind of speech are bad people. I repeat?bad people. They are not Christian. They do not understand that in a time of war collateral damage happens.

The God of the Bible is a just but stern God. He believes in the punishment of bad people. We did not choose this war. Bad people imposed this war on us. If collateral damage happens to bad people, it is God?s wish. It is not for us to question His wish.
Our friends and our enemies should know that this new, muscular America that will not repeat the mistakes of wimpy liberals. If we have to go to multiple wars on unilateral basis, we will do so without hesitation. We are all God?s creatures and if it is God?s wish that we all perish in our struggle against evil we will gladly pay that price.

A Christian America has been foreordained by God to embrace capitalistic systems to spread democracy and God?s word in a seamless whole. In a muscular America, the weak and timid must have a place, but at the bottom end. They can and must depend on the generosity and benevolence of those at the top. They can be good soldiers in the good fight. This is the glorious promise of America.

I close this sermon with the promise that during the next four years of my presidency and during the coming permanent Republican Majority, we will rewrite the laws of the land to favor those who are adventurous and who are willing to explore new frontiers and exploit natural and man-made resources wherever they may exist.
I commit the might of America?s military to make the word safe for our adventures. I commit this might to make the word safe for our Christian missionaries so that they may bring the Word of God to distant lands. Our businessmen will bring prosperity to these distant corners through their exploitation of natural resources wherever they may be found. Our military will be resolute enough to protect our missionaries and our businessmen in the good fight.

So help me God.

Mu Seong, who conceived this piece after an informal dialogue on Buddhism and Christianity with Agape and other peacemakers, lives in Barre, MA.

by Paul Rockwell

The U.S. election is simply unacceptable. No president, no matter how large the vote, has any authority to commit war crimes, to destroy cities from the air, to create inhuman prison systems beyond the rule of law, to violate the sovereignty of states. No franchise anywhere entitles any leader to subjugate foreign peoples, or to violate international law. Far from being a democratic "mandate" for Bush, the election is a mandate for world-wide resistance.

Notwithstanding the consensus of defiance, questions of strategy remain to be addressed. How and where and by what means do we carry on the fight for peace? Do we continue to work within deformed, money-drenched elections? Or do we move into a new phase of direct, economic actions?

At the turn of the 20th century, when imperialism was in its ascendancy, British economist J.A. Hobson, wrote: "Consumption alone vitalizes capital and makes it capable of yielding profits…It is idle to attack Imperialism or Militarism as political expedients or policies unless the axe is laid at the economic root of the tree."

No country is more market-driven, more intertwined with foreign commerce and trade, more dependent on the good will of workers and consumers, than the United States. Its war machine depends on parts produced in foreign countries, and there is growing feeling throughout the world that farmers,entrepreneurs, workers and consumers should do unto the U.S. what the U.S. does unto others.

All over the world, peace and anti-globalization movements are calling for a new kind of strategy to end the occupation of Iraq. The theme of the boycott, unencumbered by riders or secondary demands, is clear and simple: end the heinous occupation of Iraq. The boycott will not subside until all U.S. and British troops are withdrawn from the sovereign soil of Iraq; until all U.S. military bases are dismantled; until all U.S. corporations on Iraqi soil are closed down.

Boycotts have often changed the world. The American Revolution began with the Boston Tea Party. The non-violent movement that brought down the British Empire included Gandhi’s boycott against British textiles. The Montgomery bus boycott launched the civil rights movement. The United Farm Workers in the U.S., led by Caesar Chavez, were unionized through laborious national boycotts of lettuce and grapes. And of course, the international boycott of South Africa played a vital role in bringing down the system of apartheid.

Sporadic and spontaneous boycotts, local in form, have been taking place in cities throughout the globe. National Public Radio (U.S.) reports that thousands of Europeans, repulsed by the election of Bush, are refusing to buy American goods. One placard in a Paris window says: "Promote peace. Don’t buy American." According to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh, Europe is simmering. "You’re going to see American profits disappear. American corporations are going to be in big trouble. It’s going to be a mantra not to buy American. All our major manufacturers are reporting major slowdowns in Europe. You’re going to see the dollar disappear."

The boycott is spreading. Greenpeace is already involved in a boycott against Exxon-Esso and Mobil Oil. Fermiamo La Guerre, a coalition of peace groups in Italy, called for a boycott of Esso when the U.S. invasion commenced. Sales of Pepsi and Coca Cola have plummeted in the Mideast during the occupation, and Islamic nations are creating alternative cola drinks called Zam Zam and Mecca Cola. Iran banned ads for U.S.-manufactured goods. South African protesters in Cape Town demanded that Denel, a South African contractor, cancel all its contracts to supply military components to the U.S. war machine. The people of South Africa are well aware of the power of boycotts. As South Africa Indymedia put it: We must "take aim at the only thing that can bring Bush to his knees?the American economy."

But all of its nuclear weapons, all of its attack helicopters and B-52s, its power to turn mosques, hospitals and cities into rubble; all of its tanks, cluster bombs, computers and depleted uranium, cannot protect the U.S. empire from the ubiquity and power of non-cooperation. The U.S. may post soldiers at its foreign bases. It may continue to bribe foreign officials, to blackmail foreign governments. But its economic outposts, from Starbucks to Disneyland, from Hollywood films to corporations that advertise on Fox "News," are open and vulnerable. It is the U.S. that depends on the people of the world?on their land, their oil, their skills and labor, their buying power and good will?not the people of the world who depend on the U.S. That is the key insight for peace strategists of our time.

The U.S. empire is weaker than its neo-cons dare admit. Laborers and farmers and entrepreneurs are stronger than they realize.

Let the boycott begin.
Paul Rockwell is a columnist for In Motion Magazine, among other journals. )
AGAPE CONTINUES TO NON-COOPERATE WITH OIL?JOIN US!

Agape is still on its five-year plan to wean our community off of dependence on oil. As the war in Iraq grinds on and four more years of George Bush?s reign is a fact of life, we look for ways outside of electoral politics to register our opposition to his imperial foreign policy. The economic power the American empire wields contributes to suffering and death throughout the world.

At this point in American history, our opposition must move beyond protest. Attendance en masse at peace rallies only to return home to a lifestyle that perpetuates oil dependency and US economic power simply will not do anymore.

We are putting out the call to defect in place, stay the course, while overcoming our dependency on corporations and oil companies. George W. gush?s policies will be defeated, not at the polls, but by non-cooperating with his policies and the oil companies they represent. Please join us in this cause for peace.