A Gift of Dignity

He found Jesus in a Georgia jail. His death-row friend, Billy Neal Moore, first opened up the good news of the gospel to him. And from then on, he was known as a peacemaker. He intervened when arguments heated toward violence, and he was the one everybody came to when they needed a calming word. Even the prison staff were grateful to him, because they knew their own lives were a lot safer because of the way Warren McCleskey lived.

"His faith meant everything in life," says Murphy Davis, Georgia director of the Southern Prison Ministry and a member of the Open Door Community in Atlanta, who knew McCleskey for 10 years while he was on death row. "He came out of a life in chaos and ordered everything around his commitment to faith."

That chaos included a mother who sold bootleg corn liquor to help support her seven children, and an abusing stepfather who operated an illegal gambling casino in their home in the "Skid Row" area of Marietta, Georgia. In 1963--a year before Warren graduated from high school--his mother shot his stepfather; the killing was ruled an act of self-defense.

Fifteen years later, on the morning of May 13, 1978, Warren McCleskey, Ben Wright Jr., Bernard Dupree, and David Burney robbed the Dixie Furniture Store in Atlanta. Atlanta police officer Frank Schlatt responded to a silent alarm. Evidence suggests that two bullets from the gun of Ben Wright killed Schlatt.

Wright left behind a leather jacket with a laundry ticket stapled inside one sleeve, which led to his arrest. Wright's girlfriend told police the names of the other three men. McCleskey and Burney both confessed to robbing the furniture store but denied killing Schlatt. Wright, assuming from his arrest that the others had told on him, devised statements against his three accomplices and told police that Warren McCleskey was the "triggerman." Offie Evans, a prisoner in the cell next to McCleskey in the Fulton County Jail, testified that McCleskey had confessed to him that he killed Schlatt.

David Burney and Bernard Dupree are serving life prison sentences. Ben Wright was released from prison in 1987; he committed several more crimes and was subsequently sentenced to life plus 20 years. Warren McCleskey was sentenced to death on October 12, 1978.

APPEALS OF McCLESKEY'S CASE in the 13 years since his sentencing included two hearings before the U.S. Supreme Court. The first, in 1987, came in the wake of studies showing overwhelming evidence of racial bias in the imposition of the death penalty.

The most well-known study, by Prof. David Baldus of the University of Iowa Law School, concluded that a Georgia defendant's odds of receiving a death sentence were 4.3 times greater if the victim was white than if the victim was black. Other studies confirmed that black defendants are more likely to receive the death penalty than white defendants. (Officer Schlatt was white, McCleskey black).

The evidence of racial discrimination presented by McCleskey's attorneys was clear; the response of the Supreme Court justices was stunning. They accepted the evidence as valid, but nonetheless ruled, 5 to 4, against McCleskey. Writing for the majority, Justice Lewis Powell stated, "Apparent disparities in sentencing are an inevitable part of our criminal justice system."

The second appeal to the Supreme Court, in April 1991, was based on the revelation of new and shocking evidence in McCleskey's case. Five days before his scheduled execution date, while poring over prosecution documents made available to them for the first time, McCleskey's attorneys uncovered evidence that the prosecution had made a deal with Offie Evans. Evans had, in fact, been used as an informant in other cases tagged "difficult to get a conviction." The prosecution's notes revealed that Evans had been placed intentionally in the cell next to McCleskey's, that he had been coached in his testimony, and that he was offered leniency in his own case in exchange for that testimony.

In a 6-to-3 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that McCleskey should have raised his claim during his first habeas corpus petition. It was too late, said the court, for justice to be done.

Two jurors in McCleskey's trial said unequivocally that they would not have assented to the death penalty had they known that Evans was an informant. Just 24 hours before the rescheduled execution, the two appeared before the Georgia Board of Pardons and Parole, adding their voices to the chorus pleading for the life of Warren McCleskey. But it was all in vain. Racism and official misconduct sent Warren McCleskey to the chair.

AT 3:13 A.M. ON SEPTEMBER 25, 1991, more than the life of one man was snuffed out. Warren McCleskey's case is seen by many as an indicator of the times--and the times are clamoring for death.

Those who dwell in the halls of Congress, mirroring the harshness of the Bush administration and the right-wing swing of the court, are elbowing one another in the race to be "tough on crime." Defendants and the Constitution are being trampled in the process.

A month after Warren McCleskey's execution, the U.S. House of Representatives put teeth into the harshness by overwhelmingly passing an "anti-crime" bill. Among its provisions are the addition of more than 50 crimes to the list of those punishable by death; expansion of the use of evidence illegally seized by police if the police acted "in good faith"; and a drastic curtailment of rights of appeal for death-row prisoners. Most crushing for civil rights groups was the defeat of the "Fairness in Sentencing Act," a provision that would have allowed death-sentence appeals on the basis of racial bias. The Senate version of the anti-crime bill is even more severe, limiting death-penalty defendants to a single habeas corpus petition.

The execution of Warren McCleskey was itself a tragic parody of a process gone awry. McCleskey was scheduled for execution at 7:00 p.m. on September 24. In the next eight hours, he was granted several stays of execution. At one point he was strapped into the electric chair, then released, and strapped back in again. In the words of his attorney, Jack Boger, "His case from beginning to end illustrates the fallibility of the death penalty system."

Warren McCleskey was a man who prayed every day for the family of Officer Frank Schlatt. He and Billy Neal Moore set up what they called a "poor fund" with the $20 and two books of stamps that arrived each month from the Open Door Community, modeling themselves after the early Christian community they read about in their Bibles, making sure everyone on their cellblock shared in their modest bonanza.

McCleskey lived with the agonizing torture of death pronounced and then revoked several times over the years. "But right up to the second he died," says Murphy Davis, "he knew that death had no power over him. He learned to hold life lightly, to know that his was in God's hands." He had experienced a conversion to Jesus in his early years on death row so profound that 13 years later he faced his death without bitterness or agitation.

"The gift that Warren gave all of us was his dignity and inner peace," says Davis. "He taught me about a level of faith that I have not seen anywhere else." Speaking of his death, she added, "I've never gone through this simultaneous experience of a broken heart and deep encouragement. Warren was very clear that he didn't want to die. But he had a conviction that if he had to die, some good would come of it--that his death would contribute to ending the death penalty. That hope gave him a lot of sustenance in his last days."

Glimpses of his hope were realized in the outpouring of anti-death penalty sentiment following his execution. In his dissent from the first Supreme Court ruling on McCleskey's case, then-Justice William Brennan wrote, "It is tempting to pretend that minorities on death row share a fate in no way connected to our own, that our treatment of them sounds no echoes beyond the chambers in which they die....[But] the reverberations of injustice are not so easily confined....The way in which we choose those who will die reveals the depth of moral commitment among the living." Those reverberations became shock waves when Warren McCleskey was put to death.

Among those who grieved hardest was Billy Neal Moore. But his story has a different ending. In August 1990, a day before he was scheduled to be electrocuted in the same chair that killed Warren McCleskey, Moore was granted clemency. The mercy came in large part due to the efforts of his victim's family, who accepted his remorse, trusted his Christian conversion, and knew that killing another man would not bring theirs back. Just six weeks after his friend's execution, beyond anyone's wildest hopes, Billy Neal Moore walked out of prison on November 8, 1991.

His friend was not so lucky. But, in Warren McCleskey's own last words, he viewed death as "just a threshold which one must cross in order to reach over to eternal blessing." We can trust that Warren McCleskey's soul is at rest. He found Jesus in a Georgia jail.

Sidebar: The Peace That Passes Understanding

The following is the final statement of Warren McCleskey, offered in the moments before he was executed. Walter Zant is warden at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Center, site of Georgia's death row and electric chair.

Warren McCleskey: First of all, I would like to say to the Schlatt family, I am deeply sorry and repentant for the suffering, hurt, and pain that you have endured over the years....I pray that you would find in your heart to forgive me for the participation in crime that caused the loss of your loved one. I realize that the words that I am sharing with you now offer very little comfort; nevertheless, I want you to know that I have asked God to forgive me and pray in my heart that you will forgive me....

Also I would like to say to all my attorneys and the defense team, thank you for a job well done. Do not believe in your heart that you did not give your best efforts. You are all champions; you are all victors. I am deeply grateful for all that you have done to try to save my life. I pray that you will continue on and struggle to try to fight against the death penalty and injustice which we have incurred in the recent days....

Also, I want to say to my family--be strong, courageous, and remember the things I share with you today. Do not hold any bitterness toward anyone....This is my request for you, that you be forgiving to all. And I pray that you will go on with your lives, and that you will keep God at the center....

And to all the fellow men and brothers whom I leave behind, I pray that you will...not forsake the faith for what is about to occur to me....Focus in God's Word and on God. Continue to fight and keep your hope alive and know that this is not the end for me. This is only the beginning to all blessed hope for eternal life. To all my brothers, take care, I love you all.

Walter Zant: ...Are all the witnesses present?....Be advised that the condemned is being escorted to the execution chamber; he entered without any resistance, he sat down in the chair; execution team members are now in the process of securing restraint.

[To McCleskey] Do you want to add anything to your final statement?

McCleskey: Yes, I do. I would like to say to the Schlatt family....I pray that they will find in their hearts to forgive me not so much for me, but that they should be free--free of the spiritual weight of unforgiveness that continues to hold their lives in bondage [and] keeps destroying the happiness and peace that they desire....

I want to thank God for mercy, love, and grace extending to me....

Zant: Mr. McCleskey, let me interrupt you. I have been advised that there has been a stay entered for 15 minutes. [To execution team] Remove him from the chair at this time. [McCleskey was removed and then restrapped into the chair after the expiration of the stay.] You may continue with your final statement.

McCleskey: Again, I would like to address the Schlatt family....I pray that you will come to know the Lord Jesus Christ and receive the peace that passes all understanding. I know that is the peace that you are looking for, I know that is the peace you desire. I wish that this execution could give it to you, but I know it won't. It will give you temporary satisfaction, but...the only peace you will forever have, that is lasting, that will never depart, is standing in the light of God with Jesus Christ....

I pray that one day this country, supposedly a civilized society, would...abolish barbaric acts such as the death penalty....

Minister: Let us pray now. Eternal and gracious God, we thank you for the testimony of this life. We pray...that this child of yours, this servant of yours, has prophesied his own destiny. We come together to say amen and bid him farewell in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord.

Zant: [Reading the court order] "Superior Court of Fulton County, State of Georgia vs. Warren McCleskey, the court having sentenced the defendant Warren McCleskey on the 12th day of October 1978 to be executed by the Department of Corrections at such penal institution as may be designated by said Department in accordance with the laws of Georgia--it is ordered, considered, and adjudged by this court that within a time period, commencing at noon on the 24th day of September 1991 and ending seven days later at noon on the first day of October 1991, the defendant Warren McCleskey shall be executed....

[At 3:13 a.m. on September 25, 1991, Warren McCleskey was electrocuted.]

Joyce Hollyday was associate editor of Sojourners when this article appeared.