By DEXTER DUGGAN
PHOENIX — Although most news attention focused on the nearly two hours it took for a convicted Arizona double murderer to die during the execution by lethal injection in July, he had been baptized a Catholic not long before, according to a deacon who helped Joseph Wood prepare for death.
Ed Sheffer, a deacon with the Diocese of Tucson who has ministered to death-row inmates at the state prison in Florence, Ariz., for ten years, wrote an account that appeared in the August 21 issue of the Phoenix diocesan newspaper, The Catholic Sun.
“We spent a little over an hour together that morning” of the July 23 execution, Sheffer wrote. “We spoke about the two-plus year journey we had together in Christ. Our discussion turned to the reality of what the day would offer: fear or love.”
Wood’s execution reportedly was the third in 2014 in the United States when the lethal injection failed to bring a swift end to the condemned prisoner. Arizona officials launched an investigation into this incident.
He had been convicted of fatally shooting his estranged girlfriend and her father in 1989 in Tucson. A recent news story recounted that after Wood shot the father in the chest then smiled, he grabbed the woman, who pled for her life, but he shot her twice in the chest.
Sheffer wrote that he read a number of Scriptures to Wood on July 23 and had “meaningful conversation over each of these….
“He got the message. He was assured his death this day would not get the last word, love would. Then we talked about giving his life up as an offering, that what sometimes seems to be a curse holds the potential to be a great blessing, a blessing because of the cross….
“I asked him if he believed it was possible for God to make something good out of what was bad or seemed lost,” Sheffer continued. “I pointed to who he was many years ago and who he had become after encountering Christ. I assured him that God could use the darkness of this day, too, to end in good as well. He smiled and understood what I was saying.
“I told him fear was beneath him at this point in his journey, he belonged to Christ,” the deacon wrote.
“We spoke about when Jesus appeared in the upper room and the very first thing He said and offered was shalom — peace be with you. Jesus was saying you are one with God, you are one with me. I have reconciled you to myself,” he wrote.
Sheffer wrote that when he recently “had the privilege of baptizing Joe,” that day “was one of the most powerful physical experiences of the Holy Spirit.”
Among the Scriptures he shared with Wood on the execution morning were Psalm 23, Wisdom 3:1-9, Romans chapter 5, Romans 6:3-9, Romans 8:15-28, 2 Cor. 4:14-5:1, Col. 1:24, James 1:2-4, and 1 John 4:7-21, Sheffer wrote.
At the Patheos blog on August 27, Deacon Greg Kandra called Sheffer’s account a “haunting testimony.”
Sheffer also wrote, “Although it was not my sister or father who was killed at the hands of Joe, I genuinely do suffer with the family members who were victimized.”
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