Bryan Brooks was an adolescent, identical to them. In the summer time of 1978, he was on break from Putnam City West High School, working along with his father at the household’s mechanic store.
They had been working at a steakhouse 14 miles from Brooks’ faculty. One Sunday in July, an armed man searching for cash marched the 4 teenagers — David Lindsey, David Salsman, Terri Horst, Anthony Tew — and two coworkers into the restaurant’s freezer and executed them one after the other.
When Brooks turned Fr. Bryan Brooks, one other Catholic priest invited him to a vigil in McAlester to be held as the state exacted retribution on the killer of six Sirloin Stockade staff and three others.
Brooks nonetheless remembers how a big crowd outdoors of the Oklahoma State Penitentiary hugged and cheered at 12:30 a.m. on July 1, 1995, when the condemned drew his last breath.
Brooks stood close to the crowd, head bowed, quietly praying for Roger Dale Stafford.
“Have mercy on your son who is about to return to you. May this our prayer made in faith assist him, relieve his struggle in body and spirit, forgive all his sins, and strengthen him with your loving embrace.”
Brooks, the pastor at the Church of Saint of Benedict in Broken Arrow, has returned to the state penitentiary to recite that prayer 113 occasions — every representing a person or girl executed by the state of Oklahoma.
Penciled right into a wrinkled leather-based calendar on Brooks’ desk are one other 22 executions the state has deliberate in the subsequent two years.
He refuses to enable these deaths to go unnoticed. Brooks was in McAlester once more at 10:24 a.m. Thursday when fewer than a dozen individuals gathered outdoors the jail as the state killed Richard Fairchild by deadly injection. Fairchild was sentenced to die for beating his girlfriend’s 3-year-old son to loss of life.
Brooks mentioned his religion, his coaching and his mentor taught him that every one lives are sacred, even those that have taken the lives of others.
“The executions are carried out in a way that undermines the dignity of life,” Brooks mentioned. “What’s being done is more of an act of vengeance than an act of justice and that’s counter to the gospel of life and as a priest, I’m called to be a witness to that.”
‘Where I’m Supposed To Be’
Sometimes the 60-year-old priest paces and prays alone in entrance of a barricade on North West Street as the condemned takes his final breaths in the execution chamber. On uncommon events, he’s surrounded by crowds of activists striving to make their voices heard, some for and others towards the loss of life penalty. Usually, he’s joined by a parishioner or two and a pair members of the clergy whereas close by one or two opponents of the loss of life penalty maintain up a five-foot “thou shalt not kill” banner and present updates by way of a livestream video.
Brooks sat in the witness room with solely a pane of glass between him and the condemned 4 occasions as the state carried out capital punishment, a sentence sought by prosecutors and handed down by choose or jury.
Each time the state takes an inmate’s life, Brooks drives two hours to the southeastern Oklahoma jail generally known as Big Mac. In 27 years, he has missed one execution — to be along with his dying father.
Fr. Donald Brooks, no relation, turned the state penitentiary chaplain in the Sixties and helped negotiate an finish to the 1973 McAlester jail riot that left three inmates useless, greater than 20 individuals injured and 24 buildings destroyed. Donald Brooks was trusted by prisoners and guards, and turned identified in Catholic and felony justice circles for the prayer vigils he organized each time an inmate was put to loss of life.
When his mentor fell in poor health and may now not journey to McAlester, Fr. Bryan Brooks took over.
“I really don’t like doing this. God knows there are a lot of other things to do, to plan,” Brooks mentioned. “But this is just where I’m supposed to be and I know that without a doubt.”
As that crowd celebrated Stafford’s loss of life in 1995, Brooks mentioned his private calling turned clear: Give everybody an opportunity to repent, to make an apology and salvation — it doesn’t matter what they’ve carried out.
“These lives are taken by violence and we’re gonna take another person’s life by violence and that’s as serious as it gets,” Brooks mentioned.
Forgetting the Words to the ‘Our Father’
He remembers his second journey to McAlester for Robert Brecheen’s execution on August 11, 1995. He prayed as an ambulance transported Brecheen to the hospital after the condemned tried to commit suicide by overdosing on remedy he had been hoarding. Doctors saved a life the state took hours later as retribution for taking pictures an Ardmore girl in the head as he robbed her house.
Brooks remembers sitting in the entrance row of the witness room for the first time, watching George Ok. Wallace being strapped to the execution desk. Brooks was so nervous as the physician injected life-ending medicine into Wallace on August 10, 2000, that he couldn’t bear in mind the “Our Father,” one of the most well-known and incessantly recited prayers in the New Testament.
He remembers Mark Fowler’s loss of life higher than most. Fowler was the nephew of a priest he knew from seminary. Brooks sat subsequent to Fowler’s father in the gallery on Jan. 23, 2001, as they watched his son die for his position in a triple murder at an Edmond grocery retailer. Fowler admitted to the theft however denied killing anybody.
He remembers Jay Neill as the final execution he would witness. As he watched Neill die on Dec. 12, 2002, for murdering 4 individuals throughout a Geronimo financial institution theft, Brooks knew the bodily, emotional and non secular toll of these killings had grow to be an excessive amount of.
“I didn’t exactly make it known that I didn’t want to do that but I haven’t been asked again since,” he mentioned.
He remembers Clayton Lockett as the inmate whose loss of life known as into query the state’s execution protocols. As Brooks prayed outdoors, Lockett writhed and clenched his tooth in ache on the execution desk after the physician administered an unapproved drug.
Brooks paid shut consideration to the news that adopted. An investigation into the state’s execution process and authorized challenges that created a de facto moratorium. From February 2015 to September 2021, Brooks prevented McAlester. No death-row inmates’ lives had been taken by the state.
Brooks took up gardening and oversaw the constructing of the adoration chapel at St. Benedict.
In that small chapel on the church’s south finish, Brooks has prayed every morning since October 28, 2021, when the state resumed executions by taking the life of John Grant for killing a jail employee in the kitchen of the Dick Conner Correctional Facility in Hominy.
When he isn’t in McAlester, Brooks leads day by day and Sunday mass, visits sick parishioners, counsels engaged {couples} and hears confessions of the 1,250-member parish. He oversees church employees, preaches at funerals, guides and helps the monks of japanese Oklahoma as the vicar of monks and serves on quite a few Catholic boards and committees. He stacks and places away chairs after church occasions and unclogs bogs.
Brooks has presided over funerals of homicide victims and comforted their grief-stricken households.
On his prolonged to-do listing is analysis for upcoming executions. He sends emails to a whole lot of monks, deacons, seminary college students and others who’ve expressed curiosity, together with detailed summaries of the crime, names and ages of the victims, updates on appeals and commutation hearings and the date and time for the vigil.
‘Bring Christ’ To the Victims’ Pain
On Oct. 20, when the state executed Benjamin Cole for murdering his 9-month-old daughter, Brooks greeted jail guards stationed at the barricade, acquainted protestors and news reporters as he took his spot on the avenue in entrance of the jail.
Brooks prayed for the victims and their households. For the corrections officers and the physician administering the life-ending medicine. And for the inmate earlier than and after loss of life.
“All powerful and merciful God, we commend to you Benjamin Cole, your servant. In your mercy and love, blot out the sins he has committed through human weakness. In this world, he has died. Let him live with you forever.”
This prayer reserved for after loss of life is on web page 19 of a stapled booklet of prayers, verses and hymns that Brooks supplies to anybody who desires to take part. The pages are stored in shiny, navy blue folders creased and worn from years of use.
Inside, above the pockets, are rows of labels that function reminders to these in prayer and a register of the useless — these avenged by capital punishment and those that are victims of it.
(*114*): Rhonda Kay Timmons. To be executed: Robert “Randy” Clayton.
(*114*): Earnestine Jones. To be executed: Eddie Trice.
(*114*): Gloria Leathers. To be Executed: Wanda Jean Allen.
There are not less than a dozen stickers inside every folder, not all of them the identical.
Among the pages is the Catholic Church’s opposition to capital punishment. The instructing is learn aloud throughout execution vigils. Brooks sometimes consists of it in his sermons. Once whereas serving a parish in Okmulgee, a parishioner stood up at the finish of mass and sternly pronounced that he knew a sufferer whose killer had been executed.
“I had just stepped on a landmine because I was not thinking there are people in the pews here every Sunday that have been touched by violence,” Brooks mentioned. “And you’ve got to be bringing Christ to that pain as much as you are going to the prison.”
His parishioners have included a district lawyer and a choose who had sentenced individuals to loss of life.
“In talking with them I realized, okay, let’s bring some humility to this,” Brooks mentioned. “Let’s kind of throttle back a little bit.”
Though his language has softened, Brooks’ message is unchanged. So is Oklahoma’s help for the loss of life penalty.
‘The Long Game’
Two-thirds of voters authorized a 2016 state query defending capital punishment in the Oklahoma structure.
A 2021 survey discovered that 64% of Oklahomans favor the loss of life penalty.
Brooks is aware of that selling abolition places him in the minority. He’s reminded each time an inmate loses an enchantment or the Pardon and Parole Board denies commutation.
He’s reminded each time the state kills on his behalf.
Brooks finds encouragement in the small however important adjustments he’s seen since Stafford’s execution.
Pope Francis’ hardened stance towards capital punishment. Publicity over circumstances like Julius Jones and Richard Glossip highlighting flaws in the felony justice system. Conversations with parishioners who’ve skilled a change of coronary heart.
“I have seen things change. Just because there are not 200 people out here doesn’t mean that people have not been moved to rethink, why are we doing this?” Brooks mentioned. “We have long ways to go, but Jesus plays the long game.”
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