I’m a Death Row Pastor. They’re Just Ordinary Folks

In the early 1970s I was a North Carolinian, white boy from the South attending Union Theological Seminary in New York City, and working in East Harlem as part of a program.

In my senior year, I visited men at the Bronx House of Detention. I had never been in a prison or jail, but people in East Harlem were dealing with these places and the police all the time. This experience truly turned my life around.

After that, I came back south to Nashville, to work with the Southern Prison Ministry. I started at the Tennessee State Prison in 1974; we set up a visitation program on death row and recruited from the religious communities in Nashville. This is how it all began for me.

I share many of my memorable encounters with people on death row in my book, due out May 2024, titled Too Close to the Flame: With the Condemned Inside the Southern Killing Machine.

One story I share is about John Spenkelink, down in Florida. John should never have been on death row. He was convicted in north Florida for a crime that wouldn’t have been prosecuted as a capital offense if he had been in Miami.

John had the misfortune of looking funny; he had premature grey hair with a white streak running through it. He had an unusual last name, and no roots in Florida (he was from California). And he had a terrible lawyer…

John was involved in killing someone in self-defense. But that’s one of the truths about the death penalty that you soon realize: It’s not committing the worst crime that gets you to death row. It’s having the worst lawyer.

Most folks on death row can’t afford to hire an attorney and are assigned court-appointed lawyers. So, the quality of lawyering is not that good.

We went on a roller coaster ride with John. I, and some other folks, met with Florida’s then-Governor Bob Graham in the spring of 1979 to pursue clemency. But the governor signed John’s death warrant, and he was executed.

After that, and for the next 10 years, I visited John’s colleague on Florida’s death row, Willie Darden.

Willie was an African-American from Green County, North Carolina. I’m from the adjacent Pitt County. I grew up in a segregated white world, he grew up in a segregated Black world.

Willie maintained his innocence throughout his time on death row. But it was the same story as with John: Bad lawyering. We later found evidence to support him, and tried to get it into court. But seven death warrants were signed on Willie, and he was executed.

As Willie said, when he went into that courtroom in rural Florida, looked around, and saw he was the only black person there: “I was like a raisin and a bowl of milk.”

He had no chance at all.

Then, there was Philip Workman in Tennessee who went through six death warrants. I believe the evidence proves he was framed by Memphis Police and prosecutors.

They said he was a cop-killer and that carried the day—even though the ballistics evidence suggests he was not the person who killed the Memphis officer.

It was very likely that another policeman accidentally shot him while trying to apprehend Philip after he robbed a Wendy’s. But Philip was executed on May 9, 2007.

I also knew Alvin Ford, convicted of murdering a cop in 1974, who I saw go stark raving mad on Florida’s death row.

Talking with Alvin was difficult. You’d ask how he was and get incoherent babble back, like: “R2 Pope 156 Destiny.” Yet, the State of Florida found him competent to be executed.

On the verge of his execution, the U.S. Supreme Court stopped it, and I went with Margaret Vandiver and Gail Rowling, who were also supporting Alvin, to tell him he had a stay of execution.

Alvin was on death watch and hadn’t eaten in 30 days. He was emaciated, and though we tried to help him understand that he was going to live, he kept repeating this incoherent code.

Finally, about 11 A.M., the prisoners who served the trays came around with lunch. I was outside just stretching my arms, trying to figure out how to communicate the news to Alvin.

I looked at those trays and said: “Why don’t you give one to Alvin?”

The prisoner looked at me and said: “Are you crazy man? He hasn’t eaten in 30 days!”

I said: “I know, just put the tray in there.”

So, he put the tray at Alvin’s feet inside the little room. Alvin looked at Margaret, Gail and me, and I said: “We’re going to have a prayer.”

We all held hands and prayed. I prayed to God to let Alvin know he wasn’t going to be killed; that he was safe, and that we loved him, and that God loved him.

When we finished that prayer, Alvin leaned over, picked up the tray, put it on his lap, and ate like the starving man he was. We knew we had communicated somehow; he knew he was going to live.

We wept and wept. We just couldn’t believe it. We staggered out of there into the Florida sunshine, weeping and laughing, overwhelmed.

His case went on to become the U.S Supreme Court’s Ford v. Wainwright decision to uphold that you cannot execute the insane. In 1991, Alvin died in prison of natural causes aged 37.

I know some people struggle with the idea of connecting with death row prisoners because of their crimes.

But what’s important to recognize—and this happened to me in my year at the Bronx House of Detention—is taking such a position denotes you being righteous yourself.

And that’s not true—we’ve all done things we’ve regretted, by which we don’t want to be judged. Once you drop that attitude, you realize people on death row have done things they regret, and don’t want to spend their life being judged by those things.

We’re all just brothers and sisters; children of God. Our society’s problem is we’ve forgotten that. We’ve put some people, like those on death row, into non-human categories so that we can exterminate them.

When I talk to these individuals on death row, I have conversations as I would with anyone. They’re just ordinary folks.

As one of these condemned men, Donald Middlebrooks, who is on death row in Tennessee, said to me: “Joe, I have changed tremendously since I’ve committed that crime, but the DAs want a freeze me around that crime, and say that’s who I am.

“That’s the worst thing I did. I am terribly sorry about it. I would never do that again, but that’s where they want to freeze me.”

As a cardinal rule, I would never go to watch the execution of condemned men I knew. In this work, you come to love these people, and you fight to keep them alive. I wouldn’t be able to do this work if I had to watch my friends get exterminated.

But Willie Darden compelled me: “Joe, I want you to witness my execution.”

I reluctantly agreed, and we made an arrangement.

A spiritual advisor is allowed to stay with the person the night before their execution, until guards come to take them to the death chamber; and so I stayed with Willie outside his cell all night, and went with him when he was taken down.

In the death chamber, there were tall, wide-backed chairs you could sit in, but we agreed that I’d stand so Willie could see me.

When they brought Willie in, he was shackled at his wrists to his waist, and his ankles, too. They led Willie to the chair, unshackled him, and put him in. He looked like an African king.

His scalp was shaved and glistening with sweat. They pushed Willie into the chair and slammed his neck hard against the back so they could put the leather strap around him. He winced, so I knew that hurt.

But he maintained eye contact with me. He gave me the thumbs up to let me know he was okay. They strapped the leather belt across the chest, then his legs and arms down too, and dropped the hood over his face.

He lifted his hand and waved goodbye to me. Then they put three bursts of electricity through him, around 2100 volts in each one, and electrocuted him to death.

Two of us died that day.

After Willie, I said I couldn’t do that again. But I got called up unexpectedly to a situation in Tennessee. Ed Zagorski, who had shot dead two men in 1983, was on death watch in early October 2018, and I went to be with him.

Visits are allowed over a 72-hour period before the execution. I was in a little room, and Ed and I were separated by glass.

On the third day, we were within two hours of Ed’s execution during my visit, when the door opened behind me and the guard announced that the warden had determined my visit was over.

I looked at Ed. He looked at me. We didn’t know what was going on.

A guard on the other side said: “Come out Zagorski, your lawyer’s on the phone.”

We put our hands next to each other on the glass and prayed, then left. I stumbled out into the parking lot, and saw the press and demonstrators packing up. A member of the press told me the governor had stopped the execution.

Lethal injection is horrific; it’s like a combination of waterboarding and chemical burning. It’s torture. Ed had gone to federal court to request an electrocution, and the judge had granted it.

However, the state didn’t know if the electric chair would be ready, so the governor stopped it, and set a new execution date on November 1.

The day of an execution could be compared to an emotional vice—cranking shut as the day goes on, the hours go on, the minutes go on. This person you know and love is going to be exterminated…but then, all of a sudden, it stops.

I went back to visiting Ed regularly until the end of October arrived…and then November 1, All Saints Day. We went through the same thing again, back in the emotional vice, slowly cranking shut.

As the time gets closer, the bizarre rituals begin. Guards came around every day to make sure Ed was healthy. They put the stethoscope on his chest. They took his blood. They gave him his pills.

They wanted to be sure he was A-OK so that they could publicly slaughter him in a matter of hours. He never received this kind of health care on death row, but when they’re getting ready to kill you, they want to be sure you’re good and alive.

Ed had a great attitude. We talked a lot about his mix of spiritual beliefs, and had spent time with the Native Americans.

I arrived on Ed’s last day and was stunned to find him excited.

He said: “Joe, you know I was telling you about Laurie…”

Ed had told me stories of a girl he had loved in his younger days, Laurie, but it hadn’t worked out, though he wished it had. While he was incarcerated, his lawyers had discovered she had passed away, and found her gravestone. They brought him a picture of her grave, and that had meant a lot to him.

Ed said: “You know what I always told you about the afterlife?”

I laughed. Ed had often mused that his version of the afterlife would be full of scantily clad women, no cops, and a Harley.

“Last night, I had a dream about what the afterlife’s really like.”

Ed told me a dream where he had stood on green grass with Laurie. On death row, you’re always standing on concrete. Your feet never touch grass. In the dream, Laurie took Ed’s hand and they flew through a forest to green grass on the other side.

“And she said everything’s going to be all right.”

I told Ed I didn’t think that was a dream; it was a vision.

That’s the vision he took with him to the electric chair. His last words as he stood up to that chair were: “Let’s rock.” In other words: Let’s get on with it. In his mind, he was going to be reaching out and grabbing Laurie’s hand.

That one really did me in. It sent me into trauma therapy for two-and-a-half years.

We’re the only country in the Western world with the death penalty. We’re out of step.

You cannot be in the European Union and have the death penalty. They think we’re utterly barbaric. When I go over there to talk about the death penalty, people are just stunned. They can’t believe we’re killing people over here.

A simple alternative would be not to have it. We have plenty of prisons. We have millions of people locked up in this country. We could easily move people off death row and put them into the general prison population.

This whole machine we’ve created is highly corrosive. Everyone involved with it—the guards, the wardens, those of us trying to stop it—is corroded. It eats you from the inside.

Rather than this arbitrary system we have now of retribution, where two opposing sides—one who has all the money and one who doesn’t—knock each other in a court of law, and supposedly receive justice, we must move towards something more humane, a model of restorative justice.

We need a model where folks can sit down and talk about their crime, discuss what happened, hear each other out, understand where each person was, in a victim-driven process.

It’s called a criminal justice system, but what we have now is not justice.

Joe Ingle is a death row pastor, and the founder of the Southern Center for Human Rights. His memoir, Too Close to the Flame: With the Condemned Inside the Southern Killing Machine (Forefront Books, May 7) recounts his 45 years fighting against mass incarceration and the death penalty, and advocating for prisoners’ rights across the South.

All views expressed are the author’s own.

As told to Shane Croucher.

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