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Sermon for the First Sunday in Lent – February 10, 2008
Forty-four years and hundreds of cases later, he still thinks about this one the most. In 1963, fresh out of Wake Forest University’s law school, Fred Crumpler of Forsyth County North Carolina was appointed to represent Henry Alford,charged with murder. Indigent and illiterate, Alford was also African American, not an enviable set of circumstances in the American south of the early sixties.
Compounding Mr. Crumpler’sdifficulties, the evidence against his client was overwhelming. According to witnesses, Alford had gone to seek the services of a white prostitute at what the papers referred to as “a drink house.” While there, he got into an argument with another black man, Nathaniel Young, who ended up being killed by a blast from a 12 gauge shotgun. Alford was charged in the shooting.
Crumpler, who frequently visited Alford in jail, advised him that due to the strength of the evidence against him, he would probably be convicted if he went to trial, an outcome which could bring the death penalty. A plea of guilty to second degree murder would prevent execution. Alford, who had an extensive criminal record, said he understood and approved.
Everything seemed set until the day of the plea hearing when Alford got up on the stand and said that he was not really guilty; he was only entering the plea to avoid capital punishment. Everyone in the courtroom was taken by surprise. For the first time a judge was confronted with the issue of whether a person can plead guilty even when he claims that he is innocent.
According to the transcript, Crumpler asked Alford, “Didn’t you authorize me to tender a plea of guilty to second-degree murder?” Alford replied, “You told me to plead guilty, right? I’m not guilty but I plead guilty.”
Judge Walter Johnston accepted the guilty plea anyway and sentenced Alford to 30 years in prison, sparing his life. At that point, Crumpler’s official involvement ended; however, the matter was far from settled. Alford petitioned appellate courts to review the case, saying that his plea was forced on him because it was principally motivated by fear of the death penalty. Therefore, it violated his 5th Amendment rights to not incriminate himself. An Appeals court agreed and reversed the conviction, sending the matter up the legal hierarchy.
In 1970, the case reached the U.S. Supreme Court which in “Alford v. North Carolina,” upheld Judge Johnston’s original decision and sentence, saying that a defendant can plead guilty even if he is unwilling to admit to any wrongdoing “when he concludes that his interests require a guilty plea and the evidence strongly indicates guilt.” As long as the plea represents a voluntary choice when considering the available alternatives, it is not forced just because it was entered to avoid the possibility of the death penalty.
Since then, the term “Alford Plea” has come to apply to any matter in which a defendant, even though claiming innocence, tenders a guilty plea because the weight of the evidence against him all but assures such a verdict should the case go to trial. Just last week in Illinois this plea was entered by a 25 year old man charged in a brutal 2004 murder of a teenage girl who confronted him during a botched burglary of her Lake County home.
In addition, as part of a deal worked out with prosecutors, the defendant, who has a history of psychiatric disorders and was originally declared unfit to stand trial but has since been stabilized on medication, will also be found guilty but mentally ill, a decision that would require him to continue receiving treatment while serving his sentence.
The victim’s mother, who has attended all the hearings in this case, cried throughout the proceedings and afterwards hugged relatives on the courthouse steps. She declined to speak with reporters. The prosecutor said only, “He’s still guilty.”
Finally, that’s what it comes down to: the evidence in this case – as in the Alford case – is overwhelming, including blood, DNA and even a confession. He’s still guilty, even if he is only saying so to avoid having a judge or jury come to the same conclusion; he’s still guilty, even if he is only saying he is to avoid a harsher penalty; he’s still guilty even if he says he did not know what he was doing at the time.
But if he’s still guilty, you have to wonder why the victim’s mother is still crying. Somewhere responsibility lies, even if it is buried beneath pragmatic pleas. Perhaps that’s what she is waiting for; admittance and repentance, acceptance and remorse. Instead, what she gets are pleas; enough for a prosecutor, not enough for a mother.
Despite all the courtroom drama on television, roughly 90 percent of convictions occur when a defendant waives a right to trial and pleads guilty, says a University of Chicago law professor. And most of those pleas involve a deal that reduces punishment. A “guilty but mentally ill” or GBMI plea, allowed in about half the states, attempts to address the issue of punishment by requiring a defendant to serve out his entire sentence, even if he is “cured” of his illness, unlike a person deemed “insane,” who could be released once he is determined no longer to be dangerous.
Proponents of the GBMI plea say it provides for necessary treatment of mentally ill defendants while making sure that they are punished for their crimes. But, says the American Psychiatric Association, that’s not enough. The GBMI verdict takes away the hard choices that judges and juries are supposed to make. “It compromises one of our criminal system’s most important functions,” they say, “deciding…how society defines responsibility.”
Well, I can’t speak for society or for the criminal justice system but, as a representative of the church I can echo St. Paul and say, when it comes to accepting responsibility for ourselves, “Now is the acceptable time.” Now is the time for us, as members of society who also claim citizenship in the kingdom of God, to begin working out what it means to be responsible for who we are and what we do. We are invited, says our Prayer Book, “in the name of the Church to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance.” Invited, mind you, not commanded; but it is an invitation worthy of an RSVP.
Note the order of this process; self-examination and then repentance. We look at ourselves, seek the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, as best we can. Then can we join the psalmist and sing of our gratitude: “Happy are they whose transgressions are forgiven!”
Is it too much of a stretch to say that repentance without self-examination is like a spiritual Alford plea? We’ll confess publicly to assorted sins in words written by someone else for us to say, not in court but in church. In the company of our peers gathered around us and in front of our judge who presides, unseen, before us, we will acknowledge a responsibility for our shortcomings that in our hearts we’re uncertain we possess. We’ll say we’re guilty to satisfy some sort of ecclesiastical expectations – or to prevent the possibility of any unpleasant consequences – who knows, maybe all that sheep and goats, righteous and damned stuff may actually be true. We’ll say it but really it’s just to enter into some sort of plea agreement with God. As T.S. Eliot said, “The last temptation is the greatest treason; to do the right deed for the wrong reason.”
Speaking of temptation – as the Gospel for the First Sunday in Lent has every year since the 5th century - and thinking of the figure usually held to be in charge of that department, is it also too much of a stretch to say that a “guilty but mentally ill” plea is just a contemporary version of “the devil made me do it?”
While we have come a long way in our understanding of mental illness and no longer ascribe demonic possession to behaviors that are triggered by chemical or neurotransmitter irregularities, we still abide in an atmosphere that popular culture believes is permeated more by the therapeutic than it is the divine. An atmosphere in which everything we do is the result of addiction, abuse or the absence of parental love.
One newspaper columnist calls it “The not me decade, in which everybody else is responsible for everything” and cites repeated examples, one being an inmate at a Pueblo, Colorado jail who was injured in a fall while trying to escape and has sued the jail because it did not do enough to prevent him from attempting to escape.
Obviously, that “everybody else is responsible for everything” is an overstatement and, just as obviously, our past has a profound effect on us; but, as every therapist knows, health comes when we acknowledge the pull of our past yet lay claim to our own future. There’s a great honky-tonk song by Billy Joe Shaver: “Well the devil made me do it the first time. The second time I done it on my own.”
It’s those second times of our lives that we’re talking about today. We’re talking about our tomorrows. If we want to look at first times, we can go all the way back to the garden, blame everything on Adam and Eve, sit back and avoid all responsibility; avoid being what we are, children of God, baptized with Jesus into his death, so that, as Paul says, “Just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.”
With the waters of his baptism still streaming down his face, Jesus is immediately led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. The issue is not whether he is or is not the one chosen and beloved by God – that has already been made clear. The challenge, “If you are the Son of God…” is more accurately translated as “Since you are the Son of God…” Another example might be, “If you are really a Christian, then you must feed the hungry.”
Jesus’ temptation is much greater - it would not be much a temptation if it was easy. He is tempted to find another way of being the Son of God; to wander from the risky path of servant hood that leads only to the cross and instead give in to the attractions of the public adulation and adoration that would arise from turning stones into bread and reigning in splendor over all the kingdoms of the world.
Every temptation that Jesus faces – and he will face more, notably in the garden – every temptation attempts to lead him from being who God wants him to be. Still, he refuses to be turned and accepts the consequences of his acts, striking no bargains, making no pleas, forgiving his executioners and leaving it to others to proclaim his innocence; doing the right thing for the right reason.
Because he would not be turned, we, who are pulled in all directions – tempted by self-interest, lulled by self-delusion, eager to blame, slow to assume responsibility - we can indeed change our mind – the true meaning of repentance – and turn back to being the human beings God made us, so that when judgment comes, in whatever shape that may take, each of us will approach the bench and testify, not in a country song but in the words of the old hymn, “Just as I am, without one plea but that thy blood was shed for me…O lamb of God, I come, I come.”