Perspective Moon rises as Ralphs scarred days
end
By PATTY McCARTY
A few weeks ago my neighbor Jean
left a message on my answering machine asking for prayers. She and her husband,
Randy, would be gone a few days. They were going to Jefferson City, the state
capital, and to Potosi, where Missouris maximum security prison is
located. She said Ralph Davis was scheduled to die just after midnight.
Jean and Randy have a pretty cottage garden with old-fashioned
flowers -- columbines, coral bells and poppies -- growing among fieldstone from
the farm where Jean grew up. On one of our front yard visits about flowers,
books and religion, Jean had asked me to pray for Ralph.
I had never before prayed for someone on death row but I wrote
Ralphs name on a small sheet of note paper, folded it into a tent and put
it next to the tall candle in a glass jar next to my computer at work.
Its a reminder to pray for the people and causes my coworkers and I care
about.
Randy, a criminal defense lawyer who works long hours, has
represented many people who, like Ralph, have been charged with murder. Randy
was appointed by a federal judge to prepare the habeas corpus petition for
Ralph after he was convicted in state court and sentenced to death.
Randy spent a year investigating Ralphs life. He talked for
hours by phone with people close to Ralph. He traveled to the South to meet
with Ralphs mother, look at family photos, listen to the family history.
In another town Randy sat on a cool concrete porch and heard Ralphs aged
father describe how the bullet wounds and knife scars that mark his body were
not from the war from which he came home a hero but were inflicted by
Ralphs mother. In a Southern prison, Randy met Ralphs brother, like
Ralph, doing time for murder. The brother spoke of the horrors and humiliations
he and Ralph had endured as children. You have a long time to think in
prison, the brother said.
When Randy and Jean got back from their trip to Potosi, they
talked with me in the front yard on one of Missouris gracious early
summer evenings.
On Ralphs last day, while last-minute appeals were being
filed by attorneys in Kansas City, Mo., Randy sat in the high-ceilinged office
of the governor in Jefferson City with three other lawyers and tried to find
words to persuade the man at the head of the conference table, the
governors counsel, to prevail upon the governor to extend clemency. They
hit a road block. Earlier this year the governor had listened to the plea of
Pope John Paul II on behalf of a man scheduled to die while the pope visited
St. Louis. The governor, in that instance, granted clemency to a man convicted
of murder -- a decision that was widely perceived as a blunder for a
politically ambitious governor. There would be no such blunders this day.
Are you depressed? I asked Randy.
No, he answered. I know how Ralph spent his last
day, and he spent it well.
In the days before his death, Ralph was confined in a small
holding cell just paces away from the room in which he would be executed. The
cell is diagonally divided by a floor-to-ceiling steel mesh screen.
I was horrified when I walked into that room for the first
time, Randy said. The steel mesh was so heavy, you could see only
bits and pieces of Ralphs face.
Ralph had several visitors that day -- the prison chaplain and the
minister from the church in Columbia, Mo., where Ralph and his wife had
worshiped, Ralphs 21-year-old son and his wife, and Randy and Jean.
The telephone rang continually. The guard at a desk on the
visitors side of the room screened the calls. Everyone in the
holding cell heard the guards voice break when he announced the call from
Ralphs mother, Randy said.
At one point the guard announced a call from Ralphs lawyers
in Kansas City. They had the governors counsel on their line. The news
was not good, but the lawyers wanted the governors counsel to speak to
Ralph. What can I say to him? Ralph asked.
Ralph spoke calmly, Randy recalled. He talked about the
hundred nations that have abolished the penalty of human death. He stated his
own case, articulating the legal arguments as well as any lawyer. He listened
to the replies and closed the conversation with, I am sorry that we see
things differently.
Randy said he had wondered whether it was right to take Jean to
witness the execution, but he said he was glad she was there. I wanted
Ralph to know people cared, that his life meant something.
Weeks later Jean was still troubled by the thought of the metal
screen and the red line on the floor on the visitors side about a foot in
front of the screen. She told me, I know Ralph didnt get a chance
to hug his son goodbye. I just know it.
In the small room for those who would witness the execution, there
were nine chairs. Jean and Randy sat behind Ralphs son and his wife. The
two chaplains were there, too. When the metal blind opened, the witnesses could
see Ralph on a gurney covered with a sheet. No tubes or monitoring apparatus
were visible. Ralph mouthed, I love you, to his son and
daughter-in-law. They answered, We love you, and, Well
see you again. Ralph said, Im going to sleep now.
Ralph was convicted of murdering his wife, the mother of his son
and a daughter. The woman had said she was going to divorce him and take the
children. She went to work that day and never returned. They found her car but
not her body. Ralph said he didnt remember.
The psychologist who assisted Randy in understanding the mystery
of Ralph said that the painful events of Ralphs childhood prevented him
from integrating his personality. There were two Ralphs, the psychologist said,
the adult modeled on his father and, in the background, the hurt and angry
child, ready to explode.
Ralphs son, who was about 9 when his mother disappeared,
said he loved both his mother and his father. Several hours later in the day
that began with Ralphs execution, Randy and Jean spent time with
Ralphs son and his wife.
Then Randy and Jean drove to the farm where Jean grew up. They
found a few stones to bring back to the city for their garden. They watched a
full moon rise over a small lake.
Its hard for me to see how Ralphs death makes life in
Missouri better or safer, how it rebalanced the scales of justice even for a
moment. It seems important that there were people -- if only a few -- who were
willing to be there for him his last day and for each other.
Patty McCarty is NCR copyeditor.
National Catholic Reporter, July 2,
1999
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