Today's Scripture Reading (August 11, 2026): Ezekiel 18
Clayton Lockett was not a "good" man. His
life had been horrible, almost from the beginning. He was raised by his father,
who regularly abused him and began forcing him to take drugs at the age of
three. Dad also taught him how to steal without being caught. The talent for
theft was something that Locket was able to put into practice.
Lockett was sixteen when he pleaded no contest to
charges of intimidating state witnesses. That same year, he was arrested and
pleaded guilty to burglary and knowingly concealing stolen property. He
received a seven-year prison sentence for the crime.
The sixteen-year-old Lockett was incarcerated at the
Oklahoma State Penitentiary, an adult prison. There he was gang raped by three
adult male prisoners. When Lockett emerged from prison, his criminal way of
life continued. Everything came to a head when he kidnapped and shot
nineteen-year-old Stephanie Neiman. By the time he was finally arrested, he was
charged and convicted of a long list of crimes: first-degree murder, seven
counts of rape, four counts of kidnapping, two counts of robbery, first-degree
burglary, two counts of assault with a dangerous weapon, assault and battery,
and conspiracy.
On October 5, 2000, Lockett was sentenced to death
plus 2,285 years. Some of us take a look at the life of Clayton Lockett, and we
see someone who never had a chance. We don't know everything. But from the time
of his birth, it seems that Lockett was trained in how to be someone so evil
that the death penalty was almost assured.
Clayton Lockett died on April 29, 2014. I use the
word died instead of executed because Lockett's execution matched his life; it
was botched from the very beginning. Lockett was to be executed by lethal
injection. An untried cocktail of drugs was used. Lockett fought the execution,
so getting the drugs into him was a problem. Finally, he was sedated, and the
execution of Clayton Lockett began. But three minutes after the execution
began, Lockett seemed to wake up and said, "Something's wrong." He
attempted to get up from the table. His lawyer said it looked like torture. For
the next half hour, Lockett fought the drugs in obvious pain. Finally, the life
of Clayton Lockett came to an end with a heart attack. No lifesaving measures
were used to revive him. It took forty-three minutes for Clayton Lockett to
die.
Should Lockett have died? I am
not a proponent of Capital Punishment, but in the case of Clayton Lockett, part
of me thinks that we eventually put a man out of the misery that life had been
since the beginning of his existence. However, I am disturbed by the racial
differences in how the decision to execute is made (Clayton Lockett was an
African American). Add to that a report from The Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), which proclaims
that out of every 1000 executions, forty-one of the executed criminals are
actually innocent. One innocent man condemned to death is too many, 4.1%
becomes immoral. There simply has to be another way.
Sometimes I wonder if it is we,
the ones who are doing the executing, who are emotionally stunted. Too many
people seem to live for payback and vengeance. But the problem is that even
when payback comes, we find it unsatisfying. The pain inside of us remains -
the only difference is that now we get to spread it around.
God speaks of this. He says, "I
take no pleasure in the death of anyone." Maybe we need to stress "anyone."
In fact, God is so repelled by death that, as far as he is concerned,
repentance is enough to stop it. He seems to be telling the exiles through
Ezekiel that it is not too late. Even with all of the sins that they had
committed and the magnitude of their crimes, God desperately wanted to find
another way out of the situation, so that death would not be involved.
And I hope that that is where
our culture finds itself one day. I love the pictures of the protestors
carrying signs that say "Don't kill for me." I think the message
reflects God's deep purposes. So let me join them by saying, don't kill for me,
either.
Tomorrow's
Scripture Reading: Ezekiel 19
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