Download or read book Death Row Chaplain written by Earl Smith and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2016-04-19 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A riveting, behind-the-bars look at one of America's most feared prisons: San Quentin-- by a minister to the lost souls sitting on death row. Himself a former criminal, Smith shares the most important lessons he's learned from years of helping inmates discover God's plan for them. Their stories show us that it is still possible to find God's grace and mercy from behind bars, and that it's never too late to turn our lives around.

Download or read book Now I Walk on Death Row written by Dale S. Recinella and published by Chosen Books. This book was released on 2011-05-01 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As one of the most influential finance lawyers in the country, Dale Recinella was living the American dream. With prestige, power, and unthinkable paychecks at his fingertips, his life was perfect... at least on paper. But on the heels of closing a huge deal for the Miami Dolphins, Dale's life took an unfathomable turn. He heard--and heeded--Jesus's call to sell everything he owned and follow him. Thus began a radical quest to live out the words of Jesus--no matter what the cost. In this quick-paced, well-written story, Recinella shares his amazing journey from growing up in the slums of Detroit to racing through "the good life" on Wall Street to finally walking the humble path of God--the path of ministry on death row.

Download or read book Death Row Chaplain written by Byron E. Eshelman and published by Englewood Cliffs, N.J. : Prentice Hall. This book was released on 1962 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "An eyewitness account of life on Death Row, executions of the condemned, and a searching analysis of capital punishment by the chaplain at San Quentin State Prison."--Cover.

Download or read book Within These Walls written by Rev. Carroll Pickett and published by Crossroad Press. This book was released on 2017-02-27 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: FORMER TEXAS PRISON CHAPLAIN REV. CARROLL PICKETT, WORKING WITH TWO-TIME EDGAR AWARD WINNER AND NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR CARLTON STOWERS, PROVIDES THIS ELOQUENT, UNFLINCHING LOOK AT CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. Within These Walls is the powerful memoir of Rev. Carroll Pickett, who spent fifteen years as the death house chaplain at “The Walls,” the Huntsville unit of the Texas prison system. In that capacity, Reverend Pickett ministered to ninety-five men before they were put to death by lethal injection. They came with sinister nicknames like “The Candy Man” and “The Good Samaritan Killer,” some contrite, some angry—a few who might even have been innocent. All of them found in Reverend Pickett their last chance for an unbiased confessor who would look at them only as fellow humans, not simply as the convicted criminals the rest of society had already dismissed them as. This firsthand experience gave Reverend Pickett the unique insight needed to write an impassioned statement on the realities of capital punishment in America. The result is a thought-provoking and compelling book that takes the reader inside the criminal mind, inside the execution chamber, and inside the heart of a remarkable man who shares his thoughts and observations not only about capital punishment, but about the dark world of prison society

Download or read book God s Feet are in My Sandbox written by Rick Anderson and published by Tate Publishing. This book was released on 2011-04 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: God's Feet are in My Sandbox is one of the most powerful and captivating first-hand accounts of God's movement in our world to affirm life, love, forgiveness and hope. Rick's story will rock your world! Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking and The Death of Innocents Having spent 16 years as chaplain for a unit of 2200 men, and ministering to 95 men on their last day in the Death House, I am totally committed to the fact that this is an important ministry and that these are people. Rev. Anderson writes greatly of how important it is to see them as people and to understand the fact that restorative justice is possible. He still has to face the system. Rev. Carroll Pickett, author of Within These Walls Dare to enter one man's Spirit-filled world that overflows with the rejuvenating power of Almighty God. Join him as he ministers to condemned men in their dungeons and testifies to God's unbridled love poured out. Walk beside him as he risks it all to reach out to the most hated man on Texas' Death Row.

Download or read book Crossing the River Styx written by Russ Ford and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2023-03-01 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Reverend Russ Ford, who served as the head chaplain on Virginia’s death row for eighteen years, raged against the inequities of the death penalty—now outlawed in Virginia—while ministering to the men condemned to die in the 1980s and 1990s. Ford stood watch with twenty-eight men, sitting with them in the squalid death house during the final days and hours of their lives. In July 1990 he accidentally almost became the 245th person killed by Virginia’s electric chair as he comforted Ricky Boggs in his last moments, a vivid episode that opens this haunting book. Many chaplains get to know the condemned men only in these final moments. Ford, however, spent years working with the men of Virginia’s death row, forging close bonds with the condemned and developing a nuanced understanding of their crimes, their early struggles, and their challenges behind bars. His unusual ministry makes this memoir a unique and compelling read, a moving and unflinching portrait of Virginia’s death row inmates. Revealing the cruelties of the state-sanctioned violence that has until recently prevailed in our backyard, Crossing the River Styx serves as a cautionary tale for those who still support capital punishment.

Download or read book Let the Lord Sort Them written by Maurice Chammah and published by Crown. This book was released on 2021-01-26 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE • A deeply reported, searingly honest portrait of the death penalty in Texas—and what it tells us about crime and punishment in America “If you’re one of those people who despair that nothing changes, and dream that something can, this is a story of how it does.”—Anand Giridharadas, The New York Times Book Review WINNER OF THE J. ANTHONY LUKAS AWARD In 1972, the United States Supreme Court made a surprising ruling: the country’s death penalty system violated the Constitution. The backlash was swift, especially in Texas, where executions were considered part of the cultural fabric, and a dark history of lynching was masked by gauzy visions of a tough-on-crime frontier. When executions resumed, Texas quickly became the nationwide leader in carrying out the punishment. Then, amid a larger wave of criminal justice reform, came the death penalty’s decline, a trend so durable that even in Texas the punishment appears again close to extinction. In Let the Lord Sort Them, Maurice Chammah charts the rise and fall of capital punishment through the eyes of those it touched. We meet Elsa Alcala, the orphaned daughter of a Mexican American family who found her calling as a prosecutor in the nation’s death penalty capital, before becoming a judge on the state’s highest court. We meet Danalynn Recer, a lawyer who became obsessively devoted to unearthing the life stories of men who committed terrible crimes, and fought for mercy in courtrooms across the state. We meet death row prisoners—many of them once-famous figures like Henry Lee Lucas, Gary Graham, and Karla Faye Tucker—along with their families and the families of their victims. And we meet the executioners, who struggle openly with what society has asked them to do. In tracing these interconnected lives against the rise of mass incarceration in Texas and the country as a whole, Chammah explores what the persistence of the death penalty tells us about forgiveness and retribution, fairness and justice, history and myth. Written with intimacy and grace, Let the Lord Sort Them is the definitive portrait of a particularly American institution.

Download or read book Death Row Chaplain written by and published by . This book was released on 1962 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Death Row Chaplain written by Brenda Jackson and published by Signet. This book was released on 1972-06-01 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Death Row Texas written by Michelle Lyons and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2018-11-27 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Tells the story of a traumatic life spent witnessing hundreds of people being executed in Texas’ most infamous prison.” —Daily Beast “I can’t remember his name or his crime. What I remember is the nothingness. No family members, no friends, no comfort. Maybe he didn’t want them to come, maybe they didn’t care, maybe he didn’t have any in the first place. It was just a prison official and two reporters, including me, looking through the glass at this man strapped fast to the gurney, needles in both arms, staring hard at the ceiling. When the warden stepped forward and asked if he wanted to make a last statement, the man barely shook his head, said nothing and started blinking. That’s when I saw it: a single tear at the corner of his right eye. A tear he desperately wanted to blink away, a tear he didn’t want us to see. It pooled there for a moment before running down his cheek. The warden gave his signal, the chemicals started flowing, the man coughed, sputtered and exhaled. A doctor entered the room, pronounced the man dead and pulled a sheet over his head.” —Michelle Lyons, from the Prologue Michelle Lyons witnessed nearly 300 executions at the Texas State penitentiary. This “haunting, dark and hard to put down” behind-the-scenes look at those final moments of life relates shocking true stories of the inmate, his/her family members, prison officials, the death-row chaplain and the victim’s loved ones—all of whom come together in the death chamber (Houston Chronicle).

Download or read book The Voices We Carry written by J. S. Park and published by Moody Publishers. This book was released on 2020-05-05 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reclaim Your Headspace and Find Your One True Voice As a hospital chaplain, J.S. Park encountered hundreds of patients at the edge of life and death, listening as they urgently shared their stories, confessions, and final words. J.S. began to identify patterns in his patients’ lives—patterns he also saw in his own life. He began to see that the events and traumas we experience throughout life become deafening voices that remain within us, even when the events are far in the past. He was surprised to find that in hearing the voices of his patients, he began to identify his own voices and all the ways they could both harm and heal. In The Voices We Carry, J.S. draws from his experiences as a hospital chaplain to present the Voices Model. This model explores the four internal voices of self-doubt, pride, people-pleasing, and judgment, and the four external voices of trauma, guilt, grief, and family dynamics. He also draws from his Asian-American upbringing to examine the challenges of identity and feeling “other.” J.S. outlines how to wrestle with our voices, and even befriend them, how to find our authentic voice in a world of mixed messages, and how to empower those who are voiceless. Filled with evidence-based research, spiritual and psychological insights, and stories of patient encounters, The Voices We Carry is an inspiring memoir of unexpected growth, humor, and what matters most. For those wading through a world of clamor and noise, this is a guide to find your clear, steady voice.

Download or read book Writing for Their Lives written by Marie Mulvey Roberts and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A powerful anthology documenting the thoughts and experiences of those waiting to die

Download or read book The Biblical Truth about America s Death Penalty written by Dale S. Recinella and published by Northeastern University Press. This book was released on 2015-12-01 with total page 463 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While secular support for capital punishment in America seems to be waning, religious conservatives, particularly in the "Bible belt," remain staunch advocates of the death penalty, citing biblical law and practice to defend government-sanctioned killing. Dale S. Recinella compares biblical teaching about the death penalty, including such passages as "eye for eye, tooth for tooth, life for life," with the nation's current system of capital punishment, and offers persuasive arguments for a faith-based moratorium on -- and eventual abolition of -- executions. Framing his careful and incisive analysis as a legal brief to those who believe the Bible mandates the ultimate punishment, the author addresses two critical areas of inquiry: what do the scriptures tell us about who is deserving of death and who has the authority to kill, and what do they tell us about the required standards for execution and the plight of victims' families. Recinella's examination of the Hebrew Torah, or Christian Pentateuch, and the Talmud reveals that the biblical death penalty was not a simple system of swift retribution, but a complex and practical set of laws that guided capital courts established under the Sanhedrin. His scrutiny of these texts, the Christian doctrine of atonement, and Romans 13 in the Pauline Epistles, draws parallels between the traditional biblical arguments used in favor of capital punishment and those used as the basis for pro-slavery positions in the nineteenth century. Demonstrating that both approaches are unsubstantiated in biblical terms, Recinella debunks the accepted religious reasoning for support of the death penalty and shows instead that the Bible's strict conditions for sanctioning execution are at odds with the arbitrary ways in which capital punishment is administered in the United States. He provides convincing evidence that a sentence of death in today's criminal justice system in fact fails to meet both the Bible's exacting procedural requirements and its strict limitations on judicial authority. By providing actual scriptural language and foundation to counter the position that biblical truth justifies a pro-death penalty stance, this thoughtful, solidly researched, and well-reasoned work will give pause to religious fundamentalists and challenge them to rethink their strongly held views on capital punishment.

Download or read book Karma and Punishment written by Adam J. Lyons and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2021 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A groundbreaking study of prison religion, Karma and Punishment introduces a form of chaplaincy rooted in the Buddhist concept of doctrinal admonition. Through research and fieldwork, Adam Lyons uncovers a dimension of Buddhist modernism that developed as Japan's religious organizations carved out a niche as defenders of society by fighting crime.

Download or read book 13 Ways of Looking at the Death Penalty written by Mario Marazziti and published by Seven Stories Press. This book was released on 2015-03-24 with total page 167 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nation states and communities throughout the world have reached certain decisions about capital punishment: It is the destruction of human life. It is ineffective as a deterrent for crime. It is an instrument the state uses to contain or eliminate its political adversaries. It is a tool of “justice” that disproportionality affects religious, social, and racial minorities. It is a sanction that cannot be fixed if unjustly applied. Yet the United States—along with countries notorious for human rights abuse—remains an advocate for the death penalty. In these thirteen pieces, Mario Marazziti exposes the profound inhumanity and irrationality of the death penalty in this country, and urges us to join virtually every other industrialized democracy in rendering capital punishment an abandoned practice belonging to a crueler time in human history. A polemical book, yes, yet one that brings together a wide range of stories to compel the heart as well the mind.

Download or read book A Good Day to Die written by Carina Bergfeldt and published by . This book was released on 2024-05-29 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: He is the last person to touch them before they die.His face is the last they see before they are executed.He stands there with one last goal: to get them to heaven. 276 TIMES CHAPLAIN Jim Brazzil has sat in death's waiting room. He has listened to confessions in the eleventh hour. The last moment of the condemned, when everything bubbles up to the surface and they have to share. Now Jim is the one dying, ready for his last confession. THE AWARD WINNING Swedish journalist Carina Bergfeldt and the American prison pastor starts a conversation that end up changing both their lives. He is older, patient and wise. She is young, restless and angry. IN HIS HOUSE in the Texan countryside their discussions about death and sorrow, hope, atonement and love create a magical journey. How are we supposed to live our lives? Can one always be forgiving? And what day is actually a good day to die?

Download or read book Right Here Right Now written by Lynden Harris and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2021-03-22 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Upon receiving his execution date, one of the thousands of men living on death row in the United States had an epiphany: “All there ever is, is this moment. You, me, all of us, right here, right now, this minute, that's love.” Right Here, Right Now collects the powerful, first-person stories of dozens of men on death rows across the country. From childhood experiences living with poverty, hunger, and violence to mental illness and police misconduct to coming to terms with their executions, these men outline their struggle to maintain their connection to society and sustain the humanity that incarceration and its daily insults attempt to extinguish. By offering their hopes, dreams, aspirations, fears, failures, and wounds, the men challenge us to reconsider whether our current justice system offers actual justice or simply perpetuates the social injustices that obscure our shared humanity.