On November 10, 2009, John Allen Muhammad is scheduled to be executed by the Commonwealth of Virginia. Muhammad, better known as the “D.C. Sniper,” was convicted (along with accomplice Lee Malvo) of the terrifying killing spree that left ten dead and injured three in the greater Washington, D.C. area in October, 2002. In upholding Muhammad’s death sentence, the Virginia Supreme Court said that “The evidence of vileness and future dangerousness in support of the jury’s verdict justifies its sanction of death.”[1]

On February 17, 2004, Cameron Todd Willingham was executed by the state of Texas. He was convicted of intentionally setting a 1991 house fire that killed his three young children. But a 16,000-word New Yorker article in September has sparked renewed national interest in Willingham’s case, because of the emerging consensus among forensic experts that the fire was not, in fact, arson, and that Willingham was innocent.[2] The Texas Forensic Science Commission will soon review an independent report into the arson evidence from the case; if they find the report to be reliable, they will become the first modern governmental agency to acknowledge the wrongful execution of an innocent person in the United States.[3]

While the Willingham case has become a cause célèbre among anti-death penalty activists, there has been very little public notice of Muhammad’s pending execution. A serial killer’s death seems natural and appropriate to our society; it is Willingham’s death that abhors us, and drives us to introspection. As David Grann, the reporter of the New Yorker story, wrote, the confirmed execution of an innocent person “has become a kind of grisly Holy Grail among opponents of capital punishment.”[4]

The fact that death penalty opponents are talking about Willingham and not Muhammad reflects the abolition movement’s pragmatism and opportunism. Most people who oppose the death penalty do so on absolute moral grounds: 59% of death penalty opponents in a 2003 Gallup survey indicated that their primary reason was either “Wrong to take a life” or “Punishment should be left to God”.[5] Nevertheless, they recognize that they will be most persuasive as advocates in the public square if they set aside their personal moral contentions in favor of more objective and universally accessible arguments about the fairness and effectiveness of the death penalty. Convincing legislators to spare the life of a serial killer seems impossible; by contrast, any rational person can see that a system that kills the innocent must be reformed.

The church’s witness against the death penalty has been largely indistinguishable from that of secular activists. Our ecclesiastical statements generally begin by invoking the divine command against all killing, including penal executions. Then, recognizing that biblical injunctions carry little or no weight in a pluralist society, they proceed to rehearse the standard critiques of the death penalty in its present application: that guilt cannot be assured, that the death penalty is uneven and racist in its application, that it has no deterrent effect, et cetera.[6]

I do not intend here to defend the anti-death penalty position, which I hold. Rather, I wish to point out that the theological problem embedded in the anti-death penalty movement is that it aims entirely at exposing flaws in our application of capital punishment, without challenging society to consider the fundamental morality of such killing. These consequentialist arguments have led to temporary or effective moratoria in numerous states (as well as Gov. George Ryan’s commutation of all Illinois death sentences in 2003). These are assuredly positive developments. But if the death penalty is abolished in our lifetime, it will not be because of a determination that killing criminals is wrong. It will be because killing criminals has turned out to be too hard.

Advances in forensic science provide an instructive example. The advent of DNA technology is a double-edged sword for death penalty opponents. While DNA evidence has led to the exoneration of numerous death row inmates-bolstering abolitionists’ calls for a death penalty moratorium-it will eventually lead to the establishment of greater certainty of guilt within the judicial system, thereby ensuring that those executed are truly guilty. The abolitionists’ argument that we must avoid executing an innocent person has done nothing to unseat the widely held assumption that it is permissible to execute a guilty person. They will have saved Cameron Todd Willingham, while conceding John Allen Muhammad’s fate.

The prophet Jeremiah endured persecutions for speaking the word of the Lord in Jerusalem. He did not relish his role as the perpetual bearer of bad news, but silence was not an option: if he refrained from mentioning the Lord, “then within me there is something like a burning fire shut up in my bones; I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot.”[7] Like Jeremiah, the church needs to resist the temptation of remaining silent during what seem like less advantageous times to proclaim the word we’ve been given. In the present context, this means that we must do more than clamor over the wrongful execution of Cameron Todd Willingham.

If we are true witnesses to the love of God and the redemption wrought in Christ’s death and resurrection, we must be so bold as to cry out for John Allen Muhammad. Cry out against the execution of someone whose guilt is unquestioned, whose crimes are horrendous, and whose conscience seems unrepentant. True, some will call Christians naïve and impractical. But those with eyes to see, and ears to hear, will discover in the church’s opposition to Muhammad’s execution a profound affirmation of God’s power to redeem the worst evil of this world.

David J. Allen is a United Methodist, 3rd year M.Div student at Duke Divinity School.

[2] David Grann, “Trial by Fire”. The New Yorker, September 7, 2009, pp. 42-63.

[3] Report accessible at http://camerontoddwillingham.com/?page_id=79

[4] Grann 54.

[5] Gallup poll, May 2003. http://www.gallup.com/poll/1606/Death-Penalty.aspx

[6] For examples, see American Friends Service Committee, “The Death Penalty: The Religious Community Calls for Abolition.” Philadelphia: AFSC, January 2000.

[7] Jeremiah 20:7-9