mayxanh1234
05-10-2011, 08:07 PM
Câu chuyện về một cựu tử tội người Mỹ phạm tội cướp của giết người vào năm 22 tuổi và bị kết án tử hình. Một thời gian sau, ông viết thư xin lỗi gia đình bị hại, một gia đình tín hữu Tin Lành, và được gia đình này chấp nhận tha thứ với lời nhắn nhủ rằng ông hãy đem tình yêu và lòng tha thứ của Chúa đến cho những người xung quanh anh ... Lòng bao dung ấy đã cho ông một sức mạnh vô biên lạ lùng, từ đó ông tụ họp các bạn tù, giúp họ tìm lại được bình an và thanh thản qua lời cầu nguyện và Lời Chúa trong Thánh Kinh ... Sứ mệnh của ông đã được nhiều người biết đến ... Trong khi đó gia đình bị hại đã cùng một nhóm người theo trào lưu chống án tử hình đã kiên trì bền bỉ xin ơn ân xá cho ông ... Mẹ Teresa thành Calcuta đã trực tiếp gọi điện trò chuyện với các quan chức trong hội đồng kháng nghị và ân xá ... Kết quả là ông đã được ơn ân xá khoảng 7 giờ trước lúc hành quyết ... ông là người tử tội duy nhất chịu nhận tội và bị kết án tử hình mà được ân xá tại Mỹ (Ở Mỹ án tử hình chỉ đổi xuống chung thân khi nào có nhiều nghi vấn trong vụ án, chứng cớ không rõ ràng, v. v.. mà thôi)
Một câu chuyện rất cảm động và rất hay ... ông cũng là tác giả của tác phẩm: Tôi sẽ không chết: 72 giờ trong phòng chờ hành quyết ...
Hiện nay, ông đã trở thành mục sư, và hăng say với sứ vụ rao giảng Tin Mừng về tình yêu và lòng tha thứ của Thiên Chúa ...
Tiếc là mình bận quá không dịch ra được ...
Anh chị em nào có rảnh xin dịch ra tiếng Việt giùm ... Xin cám ơn ...
Amazing Story
Billy Moore: Living on Death Row
By Renelle Richardson
The 700 Club
CBN.com (http://www.cbn.com/) – The year was 1974. Twenty-two-year-old Army Private Billy Moore returned from deployment in Germany only to find that his wife was involved with a drug dealer and addicted to heroin. To protect their 3-year-old son, Billy took him and moved into a trailer. But Billy’s paychecks from the army were in his wife’s name, and it was going to take the army 90 days to get it changed.
“I told them, ‘I don’t have 90 days. I have my son with me now and I need finances now because I have to take care of him,’” Billy said.
Billy sought help from various charities and pled with the military to speed up the process of getting his funds to him, but no one could help.
“Bills began to come in. Having a trailer we were living in with no food and no furniture, it was at the point where what else can I do?” he said.
Then a friend of Billy’s gave him a tip about a man who had $20,000 to $30,000 cash in his home. Billy had no criminal history, but burglary seemed to be the only solution to his financial dilemma. Late one night, he broke into the man’s home. While fumbling around in the dark, he felt something hit his leg. It was the man’s rifle.
“As soon as it hits me it goes off and it scares me,” Billy said. “So, the pistol I had in my pocket, I just pulled it out and shot in the direction of where the blast came from. And then I heard somebody fall. I took two steps and the string from the light hits my face. So I grab it and pull it and the light comes on. And so I see Mr. Stapleton lying on the floor face down. I looked at his pants. There were two wallets in his pants that were full of money, so I took the wallets. I turned around and –I don’t know why- I picked up the rifle. I walk down the street to my car, throw the wallets and the gun in the car.”
The next day, some officers paid Billy a visit.
“The next thing I knew, I was lying on the ground with six shotguns in my face,” he said. “They told me, ‘Just make one move so we can kill you.’ I knew then that that was it; that my life and my son’s life was over. I had just messed up everybody’s life, not just my family, but Mr. Stapleton’s family.”
At his trial, Billy pled guilty to burglary and first degree murder. His lawyer felt confident that Billy would serve prison time with the possibility of parole.
“I got on the stand and I explained everything that happened to the judge. I told him how sorry I was, that the murder wasn’t planned and that I didn’t mean to do it; but I did do it and because of that I am pleading guilty. I am responsible for that. He said, ‘Well you did a good and honorable thing by pleading guilty. You did a good thing by not causing the court to spend a lot of money on a trial. However, on Friday, September the 13th, between the hours of 10:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. you will be taken from the county jail to the state prison and you will be executed until you are dead.”
Billy was led to the cell where he was to spend the last three months of his life.
“The pain and the guilt was so intense that I felt the only thing that would help would be to kill myself. So I’m lying there with this razor blade to my throat and I have never heard God speak at a church or anywhere. But I’m in this cell by myself in the dark and I hear, ‘If you are so sad and upset about killing someone, why are you going to do it again?’ I cut myself loose knowing that whatever happened was in God’s hands,” Billy said.
Billy’s sentence shook his family. His aunt was a Christian and was praying that Billy would accept Jesus as his savior. She asked her pastor and his wife to visit her nephew in prison just seven days before his execution. Billy clearly remembers the pastor’s words.
“’We want you to know that Jesus Christ loves you and that God is a just God,’ he said, ‘and we love you too.’ I was like, ‘What?’ I had never heard about Jesus from the perspective that they talked about it,” Billy said. “And I could feel the Holy Spirit. I didn’t know what it was, but I could feel that peace as they were telling me that God loved me. He knew what I did and He still loved me and He died for me. That just blew me away.”
Billy prayed with them to accept Jesus into his life. He was baptized that same day, and he knew a change had taken place.
“The guilt about the crime was gone; not the memory –I still remember it. But the guilt that Satan was using to kill me with was gone,” Billy said. “Finally, I had peace. When I went back upstairs, I’m dripping wet, and the inmates said, ‘Man, what happened to you?’”
“’I got baptized,’” Billy said.
“‘Yeah, if I were going to get executed in a week I’d get baptized too!’ one said. I said, ‘You can say what you want. I have finally done something that I know that is right. I know this is what I’m supposed to do.’”
September 13th arrived and Billy prepared to die.
“I’m just waiting to go be executed. Friday passed. Nothing happened,” Billy said. “I’m like, ‘Thank you Lord. I don’t know what’s going on, but I thank you that this didn’t happen.’”
Billy’s lawyer forgot to inform him that his case went to an automatic appeal with the Georgia Supreme Court. He was given a new execution date. But the case went for appeal once again. Over the course of 16 and a half long years, Billy had 13 execution dates, all of which were postponed. He studied the Bible, taught Bible studies to fellow inmates, and even earned his bachelor’s degree from a Bible college. But no matter how he filled his days, the inevitable loomed in his conscience: one day, like the 13 others who disappeared from his cellblock, he too would be strapped to the electric chair and executed.
EXECUTION DATE APPROACHES
After 16 and a half long years on death row, Billy Moore’s execution date was set for May 24th, 1984. No more appeals. No more court dates. No more postponements. Then a few weeks before his execution, he says there was one thing he felt the Lord told him to do - write a letter of apology to his victim’s family.
“How do you write somebody and apologize for killing their father or their brother or uncle?” Billy said. “The letter was simple. I said, ‘If you can find it in your heart to forgive me I would appreciate it; but if not, I understand because if I was you, I wouldn’t do it either. I began to get letters back where they said that they were Christian people and they forgive me. I wrote them back thanking them for their forgiveness and they wrote me back and it started this correspondence where we were writing every week.”
The day finally arrived when Billy was taken to the deathwatch cell. He would stay there for 72 hours before being led to the electric chair.
“When I went to the captain’s office he said, ‘Here’s your execution warrant, read it. That makes things final.’ Then he says, ‘After we kill you, what do you want us to do with your body? We can bury you here or your family can come and take your body.’ It’s like you’re preparing for somebody else’s funeral, but it’s yours,” Billy said.
Fear flooded Billy’s mind as he walked to the deathwatch cell that day.
“I got this manual about what has happened to certain people when they were executed. How their eyes would pop out of their head, how their teeth would shatter, how their skin would catch on fire, how they would defecate on themselves. All this was going through my mind,” Billy said. “And I was like, ‘God, is this what’s going to happen? When the current hits, is it going to immediately kill me? Or will I linger on?’”
Billy tried his best to stay calm. He read his Bible, but the intense pain of what was to come distracted him from focusing on God.
“The smell in this area - you could smell the antiseptic, but you could also smell the burning of flesh. You could smell death in there,” Billy said.
Billy did his best to focus on the Lord and remain calm. But then something occurred that instantly turned his focus into fury. It was a letter from Billy’s ex-wife explaining that Billy Jr. was not, in fact, his son.
“After reading that, it was like I was just hit in the stomach by Mike Tyson,” he said. “All the air came out. I’m just going to have a heart attack and die.”
As he struggled to get control of his thoughts, Billy says, the Lord spoke audibly to him: “You shall not die but live, and declare the works of the Lord.”
“I’m saying, ‘Lord, is this You? Are You telling me that I’m not going to be executed?’
I could feel the Holy Spirit every time I read this,” Billy said. “I’m saying, ‘God, how do I stand on this? How do I make this mine?’ And it came to me, ‘Faith comes by hearing.’ I said, ‘OK, I get it. I have to say this.’ So I’m walking back and forth in the cell saying, ‘Jesus said I shall not die but live and declare the works of the Lord.’ The guard said, ‘What did you say?’ I said, ‘Jesus said I shall not die but live and declare the works of the Lord.’ He said, ‘What makes you think you’re going to live and your friends died?’ I said, ‘Jesus said I shall not die but live and declare the works of the Lord.’
The guards began preparing Billy for execution. They were about to shave his head, when they were interrupted.
“The sergeant came out of the office and said, ‘What are you doing with him?’ They said, ‘We’re going to shave his head.’ He said, ‘No, you’re not. I just got a phone call from the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeal,” Billy said.
Billy had gotten a stay of execution – seven hours and 15 minutes before the scheduled time. What Billy didn’t know was that his victim’s family not only forgave him, but they, along with local groups, petitioned the courts to set Billy free! He spent six more years in prison. Then on November 8th, 1991, Billy was released. He is now married, an ordained minister who travels the globe speaking about the power of forgiveness, and he remains in contact with his victim’s family and Billy Jr.
“Christ forgave me,” he said, “and the same way and the same power is extended to everyone. A lot of people think that I’m special and that God’s done something special for me. But when we look at it, He did something special for all of us when He died on the cross. As He said, ‘Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.’”
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'Dead man' talking
Campaigner Billy Moore was once only seven hours away from the electric chair. Erwin James meets the only self-confessed murderer ever released from Death Row
http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Society/Pix/pictures/2008/04/22/BillyMoore1001.gif
The Rev Billy Moore in London as part of his ongoing campaign against the death penalty. Photograph: Christopher Thomond
For a man who spent almost 17 years on Death Row, most of them in the shadow of the electric chair, William Neal "Billy" Moore looks remarkably well. "The two guards took me to the chair to show me," he recalls. "It had a sheet over it. One of them pulled the sheet off of it and said, 'Billy, you need to look at this and see how beautiful this chair is, this polished dark wood and these good strong straps, because when we are strapping you down in 72 hours' time, you ain't going to be able to appreciate all of this.'"
Moore, a deeply committed Christian and Pentecostal minister, talks well, too. Speaking out against the death penalty has been an almost full-time occupation for 56-year-old Moore since his release from prison in 1992. In the last few days, he has spoken at the spring conference of his hosts for his visit to the UK, LifeLines, the charity that arranges pen friends for Death Row prisoners in the US, and at an event organised by Reprieve, the charity that fights for the rights and lives of those condemned to death across the world. On Friday evening, Moore will be in conversation with journalist Rageh Omar at an Amnesty International event in London.
The subject is once again topical after the US Supreme Court last week gave the go-ahead for the resumption of executions by lethal injection. This followed a seven-month nationwide moratorium on the death penalty that had been triggered by an appeal from two Death Row prisoners in Kentucky. The prisoners had argued that, far from being "humane", death by lethal injection involved the infliction of a great deal of pain and distress, which amounted to "cruel and unusual punishment". The Supreme Court disagreed. Immediately, Kentucky and 10 other states announced an intention to recommence executions.
The case of Billy Moore, however, raises bigger questions concerning the ultimate punishment versus possible rehabilitation. The most voluble argument against the death penalty has always been that, in the absence of a foolproof system, wrongfully convicted people may die. The message that Moore delivers, on the other hand, is particularly salient, because unlike Death Row survivors who have been released after being found to be innocent, Moore acknowledges his guilt. "Oh, I did it," he says pensively. "I did it, and I pleaded guilty."
What Moore pleaded guilty to was the robbery and murder by shooting of 77-year-old Fred Stapleton. At the time, Moore was a 22-year-old trainee electrical engineer in the army, based in Fort Gordon, Georgia. Estranged from his wife - who was still receiving his pay cheque - and short of money to look after his four-year-old son, Moore says he was in a state of desperation when a friend told him about Stapleton. "He told me that Mr Stapleton kept between $20,000 and $30,000 in his house. I borrowed a gun, and after drinking beer and a bottle of Jack Daniels I followed my friend to the house."
The first robbery attempt by the two men failed because of a locked door, but later Moore returned alone. "I had intended to go home," he says, "but then, somehow, I found myself outside Mr Stapleton's house." This time, he got in. "I went inside and it was pitch black. I moved around trying doors, and then I heard a door open and felt something against my leg. It was a shotgun. Suddenly, it exploded. I grabbed hold of the shotgun, pulled my gun out of my pants and shot back. I heard a thump to the floor and when I turned on the light, there he lay. There was no blood that I could see. He was just lying still."
Execution date
Stapleton was shot on April 4 1974. On July 17, after a hearing lasting three hours, Moore was sentenced by a single judge, with no jury present, to death by electrocution and was taken to a cell on Death Row. His execution date had been set for midnight on September 13."First of all, you are in a state of shock," he says. "When a person goes to jail you think, 'Well, at least I still have my life, I still have that.' But from the state's perspective, when you are given a sentence of death you are already dead. You begin to see that they consider you a dead person - they just haven't killed you yet."
Without doubt, on the day of his sentencing Moore received poor legal representation. The brevity of the hearing to decide whether he should live or die is one clue to the incompetence of his lawyer. Another is the fact that when his first execution date arrived, nobody had told him it was not going to happen. He says: "I waited. As the day drew near, I wondered why nobody was saying anything. On the day, I waited for them to come for me, but nobody came. The guards said nothing, the warden said nothing." Here he smiles, and adds: "So I thought, 'Well, I ain't saying anything either.'"
The following Monday, he received a letter from his lawyer apologising for forgetting to explain that his case - like all death sentences since the supreme court suspended capital punishment in 1972 - had been automatically appealed to the state supreme court. It was then that Moore fired his lawyer and decided to represent himself. (The supreme court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.)
When he received the police case papers, he discovered the names and addresses of several members of Fred Stapleton's family. "Immediately, I knew I had to write to that family and apologise," he says. The family, who happened to be Christians, wrote back with an unexpected reply. "They said that they forgave me. Not only that, they continued to write. They said they had lost a loved one, but you can turn that around and use that as an incentive to help other people. And that's what I did."
Moore, who was on Death Row in various Georgia prisons, studied law and theology. It was six years before he and fellow Death Row prisoners were allowed to associate and to take exercise in the fresh air, and then only because of a lawsuit taken out by the prisoners against the state. He formed a Bible study group and tried to encourage other prisoners. "I'd say: 'It's bad enough us being in here with the state trying to kill us, but while we are waiting to die we can treat each other right.' The majority of the time, if you treat people right, they will treat you right, whatever colour or race. I formed education groups and used my time to help other people whenever I could, through teaching reading and writing, helping people with their cases, praying for people. I'd do anything to help anyone so long as I was not focusing on me, although a benefit to helping other people was that it helped me."
During his years on Death Row, 14 of Moore's fellow prisoners were executed. He himself underwent a total of 15 stays of execution. One time he came to within seven hours of being electrocuted. "On May 21 1984, I was taken to the captain's office and handed my death warrant, dated for 12 midnight on May 24. The captain said I needed to read it and tell him that I understood what it meant and then sign it. Then he said, 'What do you want us to do with your body? We can give it to your family, or we can bury it here in the prison cemetery at the back of the prison.'"
The procedure, once the execution date had been set and the death warrant signed, was that the condemned man would be taken from his cell on Death Row to the "death watch" cell for the last 72 hours of his life. There, the prisoner would literally be watched throughout every moment of the wait by two guards in shifts, who had the task of ensuring that the prisoner did not take his own life. "The death watch cell is right next door to the execution chamber," Moore says. "When the guards showed me the chair, I was standing in front of it as close as I'm sitting next to you."
High-profile supporters
Six-and-a-half years later, Moore had lost all his appeals and was faced with his final execution date when the Georgia board of pardons and appeals reviewed his case. The hearing was attended by five members of his victim's family, who, with majestic magnanimity, were there to petition for his death sentence to be commuted. He also had high-profile supporters, including the Rev Jesse Jackson and even Mother Teresa of Calcutta, who spoke by telephone to the appeals board.
The board relented and, a year later, Moore became the only prisoner who had entered a guilty plea to murder to be released from Death Row and paroled.
nguồn: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/apr/23/prisonsandprobation
Một câu chuyện rất cảm động và rất hay ... ông cũng là tác giả của tác phẩm: Tôi sẽ không chết: 72 giờ trong phòng chờ hành quyết ...
Hiện nay, ông đã trở thành mục sư, và hăng say với sứ vụ rao giảng Tin Mừng về tình yêu và lòng tha thứ của Thiên Chúa ...
Tiếc là mình bận quá không dịch ra được ...
Anh chị em nào có rảnh xin dịch ra tiếng Việt giùm ... Xin cám ơn ...
Amazing Story
Billy Moore: Living on Death Row
By Renelle Richardson
The 700 Club
CBN.com (http://www.cbn.com/) – The year was 1974. Twenty-two-year-old Army Private Billy Moore returned from deployment in Germany only to find that his wife was involved with a drug dealer and addicted to heroin. To protect their 3-year-old son, Billy took him and moved into a trailer. But Billy’s paychecks from the army were in his wife’s name, and it was going to take the army 90 days to get it changed.
“I told them, ‘I don’t have 90 days. I have my son with me now and I need finances now because I have to take care of him,’” Billy said.
Billy sought help from various charities and pled with the military to speed up the process of getting his funds to him, but no one could help.
“Bills began to come in. Having a trailer we were living in with no food and no furniture, it was at the point where what else can I do?” he said.
Then a friend of Billy’s gave him a tip about a man who had $20,000 to $30,000 cash in his home. Billy had no criminal history, but burglary seemed to be the only solution to his financial dilemma. Late one night, he broke into the man’s home. While fumbling around in the dark, he felt something hit his leg. It was the man’s rifle.
“As soon as it hits me it goes off and it scares me,” Billy said. “So, the pistol I had in my pocket, I just pulled it out and shot in the direction of where the blast came from. And then I heard somebody fall. I took two steps and the string from the light hits my face. So I grab it and pull it and the light comes on. And so I see Mr. Stapleton lying on the floor face down. I looked at his pants. There were two wallets in his pants that were full of money, so I took the wallets. I turned around and –I don’t know why- I picked up the rifle. I walk down the street to my car, throw the wallets and the gun in the car.”
The next day, some officers paid Billy a visit.
“The next thing I knew, I was lying on the ground with six shotguns in my face,” he said. “They told me, ‘Just make one move so we can kill you.’ I knew then that that was it; that my life and my son’s life was over. I had just messed up everybody’s life, not just my family, but Mr. Stapleton’s family.”
At his trial, Billy pled guilty to burglary and first degree murder. His lawyer felt confident that Billy would serve prison time with the possibility of parole.
“I got on the stand and I explained everything that happened to the judge. I told him how sorry I was, that the murder wasn’t planned and that I didn’t mean to do it; but I did do it and because of that I am pleading guilty. I am responsible for that. He said, ‘Well you did a good and honorable thing by pleading guilty. You did a good thing by not causing the court to spend a lot of money on a trial. However, on Friday, September the 13th, between the hours of 10:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. you will be taken from the county jail to the state prison and you will be executed until you are dead.”
Billy was led to the cell where he was to spend the last three months of his life.
“The pain and the guilt was so intense that I felt the only thing that would help would be to kill myself. So I’m lying there with this razor blade to my throat and I have never heard God speak at a church or anywhere. But I’m in this cell by myself in the dark and I hear, ‘If you are so sad and upset about killing someone, why are you going to do it again?’ I cut myself loose knowing that whatever happened was in God’s hands,” Billy said.
Billy’s sentence shook his family. His aunt was a Christian and was praying that Billy would accept Jesus as his savior. She asked her pastor and his wife to visit her nephew in prison just seven days before his execution. Billy clearly remembers the pastor’s words.
“’We want you to know that Jesus Christ loves you and that God is a just God,’ he said, ‘and we love you too.’ I was like, ‘What?’ I had never heard about Jesus from the perspective that they talked about it,” Billy said. “And I could feel the Holy Spirit. I didn’t know what it was, but I could feel that peace as they were telling me that God loved me. He knew what I did and He still loved me and He died for me. That just blew me away.”
Billy prayed with them to accept Jesus into his life. He was baptized that same day, and he knew a change had taken place.
“The guilt about the crime was gone; not the memory –I still remember it. But the guilt that Satan was using to kill me with was gone,” Billy said. “Finally, I had peace. When I went back upstairs, I’m dripping wet, and the inmates said, ‘Man, what happened to you?’”
“’I got baptized,’” Billy said.
“‘Yeah, if I were going to get executed in a week I’d get baptized too!’ one said. I said, ‘You can say what you want. I have finally done something that I know that is right. I know this is what I’m supposed to do.’”
September 13th arrived and Billy prepared to die.
“I’m just waiting to go be executed. Friday passed. Nothing happened,” Billy said. “I’m like, ‘Thank you Lord. I don’t know what’s going on, but I thank you that this didn’t happen.’”
Billy’s lawyer forgot to inform him that his case went to an automatic appeal with the Georgia Supreme Court. He was given a new execution date. But the case went for appeal once again. Over the course of 16 and a half long years, Billy had 13 execution dates, all of which were postponed. He studied the Bible, taught Bible studies to fellow inmates, and even earned his bachelor’s degree from a Bible college. But no matter how he filled his days, the inevitable loomed in his conscience: one day, like the 13 others who disappeared from his cellblock, he too would be strapped to the electric chair and executed.
EXECUTION DATE APPROACHES
After 16 and a half long years on death row, Billy Moore’s execution date was set for May 24th, 1984. No more appeals. No more court dates. No more postponements. Then a few weeks before his execution, he says there was one thing he felt the Lord told him to do - write a letter of apology to his victim’s family.
“How do you write somebody and apologize for killing their father or their brother or uncle?” Billy said. “The letter was simple. I said, ‘If you can find it in your heart to forgive me I would appreciate it; but if not, I understand because if I was you, I wouldn’t do it either. I began to get letters back where they said that they were Christian people and they forgive me. I wrote them back thanking them for their forgiveness and they wrote me back and it started this correspondence where we were writing every week.”
The day finally arrived when Billy was taken to the deathwatch cell. He would stay there for 72 hours before being led to the electric chair.
“When I went to the captain’s office he said, ‘Here’s your execution warrant, read it. That makes things final.’ Then he says, ‘After we kill you, what do you want us to do with your body? We can bury you here or your family can come and take your body.’ It’s like you’re preparing for somebody else’s funeral, but it’s yours,” Billy said.
Fear flooded Billy’s mind as he walked to the deathwatch cell that day.
“I got this manual about what has happened to certain people when they were executed. How their eyes would pop out of their head, how their teeth would shatter, how their skin would catch on fire, how they would defecate on themselves. All this was going through my mind,” Billy said. “And I was like, ‘God, is this what’s going to happen? When the current hits, is it going to immediately kill me? Or will I linger on?’”
Billy tried his best to stay calm. He read his Bible, but the intense pain of what was to come distracted him from focusing on God.
“The smell in this area - you could smell the antiseptic, but you could also smell the burning of flesh. You could smell death in there,” Billy said.
Billy did his best to focus on the Lord and remain calm. But then something occurred that instantly turned his focus into fury. It was a letter from Billy’s ex-wife explaining that Billy Jr. was not, in fact, his son.
“After reading that, it was like I was just hit in the stomach by Mike Tyson,” he said. “All the air came out. I’m just going to have a heart attack and die.”
As he struggled to get control of his thoughts, Billy says, the Lord spoke audibly to him: “You shall not die but live, and declare the works of the Lord.”
“I’m saying, ‘Lord, is this You? Are You telling me that I’m not going to be executed?’
I could feel the Holy Spirit every time I read this,” Billy said. “I’m saying, ‘God, how do I stand on this? How do I make this mine?’ And it came to me, ‘Faith comes by hearing.’ I said, ‘OK, I get it. I have to say this.’ So I’m walking back and forth in the cell saying, ‘Jesus said I shall not die but live and declare the works of the Lord.’ The guard said, ‘What did you say?’ I said, ‘Jesus said I shall not die but live and declare the works of the Lord.’ He said, ‘What makes you think you’re going to live and your friends died?’ I said, ‘Jesus said I shall not die but live and declare the works of the Lord.’
The guards began preparing Billy for execution. They were about to shave his head, when they were interrupted.
“The sergeant came out of the office and said, ‘What are you doing with him?’ They said, ‘We’re going to shave his head.’ He said, ‘No, you’re not. I just got a phone call from the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeal,” Billy said.
Billy had gotten a stay of execution – seven hours and 15 minutes before the scheduled time. What Billy didn’t know was that his victim’s family not only forgave him, but they, along with local groups, petitioned the courts to set Billy free! He spent six more years in prison. Then on November 8th, 1991, Billy was released. He is now married, an ordained minister who travels the globe speaking about the power of forgiveness, and he remains in contact with his victim’s family and Billy Jr.
“Christ forgave me,” he said, “and the same way and the same power is extended to everyone. A lot of people think that I’m special and that God’s done something special for me. But when we look at it, He did something special for all of us when He died on the cross. As He said, ‘Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.’”
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'Dead man' talking
Campaigner Billy Moore was once only seven hours away from the electric chair. Erwin James meets the only self-confessed murderer ever released from Death Row
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The Rev Billy Moore in London as part of his ongoing campaign against the death penalty. Photograph: Christopher Thomond
For a man who spent almost 17 years on Death Row, most of them in the shadow of the electric chair, William Neal "Billy" Moore looks remarkably well. "The two guards took me to the chair to show me," he recalls. "It had a sheet over it. One of them pulled the sheet off of it and said, 'Billy, you need to look at this and see how beautiful this chair is, this polished dark wood and these good strong straps, because when we are strapping you down in 72 hours' time, you ain't going to be able to appreciate all of this.'"
Moore, a deeply committed Christian and Pentecostal minister, talks well, too. Speaking out against the death penalty has been an almost full-time occupation for 56-year-old Moore since his release from prison in 1992. In the last few days, he has spoken at the spring conference of his hosts for his visit to the UK, LifeLines, the charity that arranges pen friends for Death Row prisoners in the US, and at an event organised by Reprieve, the charity that fights for the rights and lives of those condemned to death across the world. On Friday evening, Moore will be in conversation with journalist Rageh Omar at an Amnesty International event in London.
The subject is once again topical after the US Supreme Court last week gave the go-ahead for the resumption of executions by lethal injection. This followed a seven-month nationwide moratorium on the death penalty that had been triggered by an appeal from two Death Row prisoners in Kentucky. The prisoners had argued that, far from being "humane", death by lethal injection involved the infliction of a great deal of pain and distress, which amounted to "cruel and unusual punishment". The Supreme Court disagreed. Immediately, Kentucky and 10 other states announced an intention to recommence executions.
The case of Billy Moore, however, raises bigger questions concerning the ultimate punishment versus possible rehabilitation. The most voluble argument against the death penalty has always been that, in the absence of a foolproof system, wrongfully convicted people may die. The message that Moore delivers, on the other hand, is particularly salient, because unlike Death Row survivors who have been released after being found to be innocent, Moore acknowledges his guilt. "Oh, I did it," he says pensively. "I did it, and I pleaded guilty."
What Moore pleaded guilty to was the robbery and murder by shooting of 77-year-old Fred Stapleton. At the time, Moore was a 22-year-old trainee electrical engineer in the army, based in Fort Gordon, Georgia. Estranged from his wife - who was still receiving his pay cheque - and short of money to look after his four-year-old son, Moore says he was in a state of desperation when a friend told him about Stapleton. "He told me that Mr Stapleton kept between $20,000 and $30,000 in his house. I borrowed a gun, and after drinking beer and a bottle of Jack Daniels I followed my friend to the house."
The first robbery attempt by the two men failed because of a locked door, but later Moore returned alone. "I had intended to go home," he says, "but then, somehow, I found myself outside Mr Stapleton's house." This time, he got in. "I went inside and it was pitch black. I moved around trying doors, and then I heard a door open and felt something against my leg. It was a shotgun. Suddenly, it exploded. I grabbed hold of the shotgun, pulled my gun out of my pants and shot back. I heard a thump to the floor and when I turned on the light, there he lay. There was no blood that I could see. He was just lying still."
Execution date
Stapleton was shot on April 4 1974. On July 17, after a hearing lasting three hours, Moore was sentenced by a single judge, with no jury present, to death by electrocution and was taken to a cell on Death Row. His execution date had been set for midnight on September 13."First of all, you are in a state of shock," he says. "When a person goes to jail you think, 'Well, at least I still have my life, I still have that.' But from the state's perspective, when you are given a sentence of death you are already dead. You begin to see that they consider you a dead person - they just haven't killed you yet."
Without doubt, on the day of his sentencing Moore received poor legal representation. The brevity of the hearing to decide whether he should live or die is one clue to the incompetence of his lawyer. Another is the fact that when his first execution date arrived, nobody had told him it was not going to happen. He says: "I waited. As the day drew near, I wondered why nobody was saying anything. On the day, I waited for them to come for me, but nobody came. The guards said nothing, the warden said nothing." Here he smiles, and adds: "So I thought, 'Well, I ain't saying anything either.'"
The following Monday, he received a letter from his lawyer apologising for forgetting to explain that his case - like all death sentences since the supreme court suspended capital punishment in 1972 - had been automatically appealed to the state supreme court. It was then that Moore fired his lawyer and decided to represent himself. (The supreme court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.)
When he received the police case papers, he discovered the names and addresses of several members of Fred Stapleton's family. "Immediately, I knew I had to write to that family and apologise," he says. The family, who happened to be Christians, wrote back with an unexpected reply. "They said that they forgave me. Not only that, they continued to write. They said they had lost a loved one, but you can turn that around and use that as an incentive to help other people. And that's what I did."
Moore, who was on Death Row in various Georgia prisons, studied law and theology. It was six years before he and fellow Death Row prisoners were allowed to associate and to take exercise in the fresh air, and then only because of a lawsuit taken out by the prisoners against the state. He formed a Bible study group and tried to encourage other prisoners. "I'd say: 'It's bad enough us being in here with the state trying to kill us, but while we are waiting to die we can treat each other right.' The majority of the time, if you treat people right, they will treat you right, whatever colour or race. I formed education groups and used my time to help other people whenever I could, through teaching reading and writing, helping people with their cases, praying for people. I'd do anything to help anyone so long as I was not focusing on me, although a benefit to helping other people was that it helped me."
During his years on Death Row, 14 of Moore's fellow prisoners were executed. He himself underwent a total of 15 stays of execution. One time he came to within seven hours of being electrocuted. "On May 21 1984, I was taken to the captain's office and handed my death warrant, dated for 12 midnight on May 24. The captain said I needed to read it and tell him that I understood what it meant and then sign it. Then he said, 'What do you want us to do with your body? We can give it to your family, or we can bury it here in the prison cemetery at the back of the prison.'"
The procedure, once the execution date had been set and the death warrant signed, was that the condemned man would be taken from his cell on Death Row to the "death watch" cell for the last 72 hours of his life. There, the prisoner would literally be watched throughout every moment of the wait by two guards in shifts, who had the task of ensuring that the prisoner did not take his own life. "The death watch cell is right next door to the execution chamber," Moore says. "When the guards showed me the chair, I was standing in front of it as close as I'm sitting next to you."
High-profile supporters
Six-and-a-half years later, Moore had lost all his appeals and was faced with his final execution date when the Georgia board of pardons and appeals reviewed his case. The hearing was attended by five members of his victim's family, who, with majestic magnanimity, were there to petition for his death sentence to be commuted. He also had high-profile supporters, including the Rev Jesse Jackson and even Mother Teresa of Calcutta, who spoke by telephone to the appeals board.
The board relented and, a year later, Moore became the only prisoner who had entered a guilty plea to murder to be released from Death Row and paroled.
nguồn: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/apr/23/prisonsandprobation