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Scene One: Conference Room 5, Indiana Government Center South, meeting of the Criminal Law Study Commission. In order to drain all the emotion out of a discussion of the death penalty, here’s the recipe: Begin with the overwhelming beige-ness of the Indiana Government Center on a Thursday morning. Add in a dozen or so white guys in navy blue suits (go heavy on judges and state legislators), sift out any participation by the public. Prevent any heat from entering the discourse; instead, conduct a tepid discussion of the technicalities of the Indiana death penalty statute and the history of Criminal Procedure Rule 24. Have the governor and the state senator who chair the committee separate the study from the question of abolishing Indiana’s death penalty. Keep that question off the table. Now you are ready to nibble around the edges of the moral question, and you can proceed to lengthy discussions of financing capital trials and how such cases affect court calendars.

Scene Two: Chapel of the Indianapolis Hebrew Congregation, forum on religion and the death penalty. One by one, local religious leaders take the podium in front of a stained-glass window and discuss the death penalty. A rabbi, a priest, a Muslim minister, and leaders from Presbyterian, Episcopalian, Methodist and Disciples of Christ churches all say that their religious tradition opposes capital punishment, at least in the racially biased way its administered in the United States. They invoke the Torah, the Sermon on the Mount, the Koran. Minister Damon Muhammad of the Nation of Islam Mosque #74 uses call-and-response preaching to stir up the crowd.

"Men are not qualified to execute judgment on life because they are not the author of that life!"

"Tell it!"

The balding, middle-aged Protestant ministers that follow even seem to pick up a bit of Minister Muhammad’s cadence. The 100 people in attendance seem pleased. But after the speeches end, a death penalty opponent stands up. "If all you religious leaders say your church teaches against the death penalty, and the majority of Americans must belong to these denominations, why do an overwhelming majority of people support the death penalty?" There is no answer.

Scene Three: Indiana State Prison, Michigan City, special visiting cell for condemned inmates. The smell is that of soured sweat. Visitors give up keys, wallets and shoes and get frisked before passing through five locked doors to get to this cell. A half-dozen guards watch the conversation.

Language matters: Jailers call Obadyah Ben-Yisrayl’s area "X Row." He prefers the more direct Death Row. Jailers call Ben-Yisrayl’s home a cell, he calls it a cage. Jailers call the inmates "offenders," assigning blame. Ben-Yisrayl calls himself and others "prisoners," allowing for unjust incarceration.

He has passed a polygraph examination denying involvement in the killings he’s sentenced to die for, and another man with access to the murder weapon seems to better fit the description of the killer ("Innocent on Death Row?" NUVO, August 3, 2000). He talks about the need to "get up on out of here." But he has lost every appeal.

Ben-Yisrayl discusses Plato, religion, his mother, his daughter, and a sense of community built behind three rows of razor wire. Ben-Yisrayl has taught himself philosophy and theology, but he’s ineligible to take college courses here. He explains the jailer’s rationale: No point educating a dead man.

Ben-Yisrayl is not invited to Criminal Law Study Commission meetings. He’s not even allowed to go to the arguments of his own case in front of the Indiana Supreme Court. He thinks he knows why: "This is easier to do if they don’t see the person they’re doing it to."

fquigley@nuvo.net
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