by William Trollinger

As I write this on Monday morning, Lance Shockley is scheduled to be killed at Potosi Correctional Institution by the state of Missouri at 6pm on Tuesday for the 2005 murder of Highway Patrol Sergeant Carl Graham, Jr..

Perhaps Missouri’s Governor Mike Kehoe will relent in response to very serious questions about whether Jason Shockley (who has consistently maintained his innocence) actually committed this crime, as there is no definitive evidence – DNA, fingerprints, eyewitness testimony — linking him to this killing. This is combined with the inadequacy or ineptitude of his defense attorney, who refused to question the jury’s foreman regarding the evidence that the latter was seriously biased and engaged in misconduct during deliberations. More than all this, the judge imposed a death sentence when the jury was deadlocked on punishment (something only a judge in Missouri and Indiana is free to do).

(Side note: at least 201 innocent people have been executed in the United States since 1973 – and this is the bare minimum. More than this, people of means are almost never executed, because they have the funds to hire good legal counsel, and are not dependent on overworked public defenders.)

Perhaps Gov. Kehoe will take into account the fact that Shockley has been a exemplary Christian guide and mentor both to his fellow inmates and to prison staff. Since he has been moved to pre-execution solitary confinement, this has included spending “a few hours a week sitting in the middle of the wing preaching, praying, and reading Scripture while his fellow prisoners sit on floor of their cells to listen through the food ports in their doors.” 

Perhaps Gov. Kehoe will act in keeping with his Catholic faith, as the Church has long opposed capital punishment. Perhaps he will take into account Pope Leo XIV’s observation that ”Somone who says, ‘I’m against abortion but I’m in favor of the death penalty’ is not really pro-life.’”

Perhaps.

28 years ago – September 24, 1997 – I was sitting in the front row of the “friends and family” viewing box at Potosi, where Shockley’s friends and family will be seated tomorrow evening. 

Upon moving in 1984 to Missouri – my first death penalty state – I submitted my name to Death Row Support Project, to become a pen pal with someone who had been sentenced to death. That’s how I connected with Samuel McDonald, CP-17 (signifying that he was the seventeenth man placed on Missouri’s Death Row). 

Unlike Lance Shockley, there was no question that Sam – in a drug-induced haze — shot Robert Jordan, an off-duty police officer. But in keeping with Shockley, Sam’s public defender was inept, getting into shouting matches with the judge. More than this, the judge would not permit testimony that Sam – a decorated Vietnam War veteran —  had returned from the war not only addicted to heroin, but also suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome (for which there was a raft of evidence). 

So it was that he was sentenced to die.

I first connected with Sam via letters. Then there were visits to the penitentiary. Then, after I moved out of state to take another teaching position in 1988, it was phone calls, usually every other weekend. We talked sports, politics, religion; we had a lot of laughs, making fun of each other. But there were also serious conversations. I commiserated with him when his son was shot and paralyzed. He commiserated with me when my mother died of cancer, attending to my grief perhaps more than anyone outside my family. 

In short, we became very close friends.  . . . and he gave to me at least as much as I gave to him.  And I worked hard to forget that Missouri was determined to kill him. But all that came to an end in the spring of 1997, when the Supreme Court refused to stay his execution, and the governor of Missouri ignored my letter and many, many other pleas, and refused to consider clemency. 

And Sam asked me to serve as one of his six witnesses.

So there I was, sitting in the front row of the viewing booth with members of Sam’s family. And the guards raised the blinds. There was Sam on a gurney, looking at us and speaking rapidly (we could not hear what he was saying). Then the drugs kicked in, Sam shuddered, and then he was still. 

And as I write, I hope against hope that this scene is not repeated tomorrow evening.

For two remarkable personal accounts regarding Lance Shockley, see here and here.  

And for an additional indignity that Lance Shockley – “a Christian minister behind bars” – must endure, see here.