
          A View from Death Row.
          Reviewed by Finlator, W.W.W.W. Finlator
          Vol. 12, No. 4, 1990, pp. 16-17
          
          Last Rights by Joseph
B. Ingle (Abingdon Press, 1990).
          Seldom do I have the honor to review a book written by a personal
friend and respected colleague, and I welcome the opportunity to
identify myself with the prison ministry of Joseph Ingle and his
eloquent presentation of it in Last Rights.
          Dr. Frank Porter Graham, former president of the University of
North_Carolina, U.S. Senator, and U.N. Ambassador, used to tell us
that when a person, born and bred in the South, steeped in and loyal
to the best in its traditions, yet possessing the capacity for
transcendence, emerges with an open mind and a heart of compassion,
you have the true, the authentic liberal. In Joe Ingle, behold the
man! The brief account of his spiritual pilgrimage in the first two
chapters is worth the price of the book. Southern Presbyterian
background; graduate of St. Andrews College in Laurinburg,
N.C. (religion and philosophy); the wretched and anguished stint at
Union Theological Seminary in Richmond, which has long been a solid
institution to prepare solid ministers to serve the solid South and
during the years of the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War, no
fit place for the likes of Joe Ingle; Union Theological Seminary in
New_York where at last he could breathe a freer air and indulge his
social conscience; the assignment to the Bronx House of Detention
where he came to the realization that his "call" was not to the parish
but to the prison ministry; and, finally, his growing conviction that
it was in Dixie Land that he must take his stand and hence his return
"home," to take part in the founding of the Southern Coalition of
Jails and Prisons. Quite a pilgrimage.
          The jacket of the book describes the author's involvement with
twelve men and one woman who have been executed since 1976 as "13
fatal encounters." The phrase is on the mark. There is a sad
inevitability in each story, for the reader is painfully aware that in
spite of all the heartaches and hopes and heroism the curtain of doom
will fall at last and that in no case will there be an "and they lived
happily ever after." Knowing too well the tragic endings, I don't want
to see King Lear or Othello again, and though Joe's friends on Death
Row show genuine character development through his loving ministry,
their tragic ends don't bring cleansing to my soul, as such dramas are
reputed to do.
          But there are unforgettable services Last Rights offers. The state
refers to capital punishment as execution. Joe Ingle always terms it
"killing," and he calls governors, judges, and D.A.s murderers--in our
name. However legal the case, no matter the quantity of due process
and exhaustion of appeals, the governor who will not grant clemency,
the judge who will not set aside, the D A. who will not relent, is a
killer.
          This hard ball stance by a tender hearted man can only be
understood in light of the life affirming nature of Joe
Ingle. Throughout the hectic, frenetic pace of the narratives there is
time to notice the laughter of little children, to hear the song of
identified birds at morn or eve, to admire the lush produce of the
fertile soil of eastern North_Carolina, to listen to, smell and feel a
Mississippi night, to remember to carry two roses to Velma Barfield
during her last hours on Death Row. Just the man to affirm with a
passion the lives of those who have been condemned to die.
          Without exception he demonstrates in each fatal en-

counter the
humaneness of his approach and wins the love and confidence of every
prisoner by embracing their full humanity. Our government, whether in
war with the Vietnamese, or combating drug lords, or dealing with
unfriendly dictators, or executing the men and women on Death Row must
first strip these people of their humanity. He and his colleagues,
standing almost alone, force the world out there to see these victims,
as he would call them, as human beings, as God's children who,
regardless of the heinousness and atrocity of their crimes, which he
neither denies nor dwells upon, have come from backgrounds of
emotional disorders and faced daily deprivations with which they were
unable to cope. Yet, despite their sad and sordid histories, they can
and do change and mature and love and forgive. Joe Ingle is a man of
simple Christian faith and the grace of God is in his book. As a
subtitle I would suggest "The Humanization of Death Row."
          I am uncomfortable, however, when he uses the Christian faith to
pressure judges and governors, reminding them of Jesus and the woman
taken in adultery or of their Presbyterian backgrounds, etc. In the
first place it's ineffective. These "Christian" magistrates are far
more aware of votes and constituents and their political futures than
they are of the Bible. In the second place such a practice can be
counter productive.
          If I were Catholic, I would deeply resent the threats Cardinal
O'Connor would visit upon me if I failed to vote "Christian" on the
abortion issue. And should the Fundamentalists some day come to
outnumber the rest of us may Heaven and the Constitution preserve us
from a "Christian America." I dare not presume to counsel Joseph Ingle
in his prophetic and courageous ministry, but I hope he will put a
major emphasis upon justice and equity and due process and, yes,
outrage.
          And indeed the author could counter my reservations by pointing to
those frequent passages in his book that tell me that 90 percent of
all people on Death Row are too poor to hire lawyers to defend them,
that court-appointed lawyers are not given to hot pursuit and often
tend to incompetence and neglect, that blacks who kill whites are
eight times more likely to be executed than whites who kill blacks,
that the number of executions is disproportionately high in the South,
and that the majority of those on Death Row are poor, unschooled, and
have serious emotional disorders--figures to suggest that the death
penalty is used as a method of social control.
          Some day the pendulum will swing. Some day America will reclaim its
conscience and refuse to stay in company with South_Africa and Iran as
the nations with the largest number of executions. Some day we shall
live under a government that refuses to kill its citizens. And a major
factor in this return to sanity and humanity could be these 13 souls
who were put to death by the state and who Joe Ingle has here kept
alive.
          
            W.W. Finlator, preacher, prophet, man of justice,  lives
as he long has in Raleigh, North_Carolina.
          
        
