Nichols’ faith shouldn’t have swayed jury in sentencing

“Whoever kills one man kills a nation.” I first heard that when I was about 11, in Hebrew… “Whoever kills one man kills a nation.” I first heard that when I was about 11, in Hebrew school, learning something Jewish, probably, and it stuck with me even after all that other learning slid from my Teflon brain.

This saying came shuffling back when I heard about Terry Nichols, Timothy McVeigh’s co-conspirator in the Oklahoma City bombing, who was spared the death penalty, possibly because he was a Christian.

The jury was deadlocked for 19 and a half hours, according to a June 13 Associated Press article, but four of its members held out against the death penalty, and Nichols will now live the rest of his life behind bars.

Now, I am against the death penalty, but, to paraphrase “The West Wing,” there is nothing about this that isn’t bizarre or, for that matter, puzzling. Nichols was convicted of 161 murders — 160 people and the killing of a fetus, but that argument is a whole other column. He, by all rights, should not be living on this earth. If the world were based in justice — or vengeance — he would not be allowed to breathe the same air or walk the same soil as innocent people.

But this world is not only based in justice, but also mercy. And words like “faith” and “redemption” are going to swim around this decision because he has “found God,” as if God were some trinket at a yard sale any fool could manhandle and purchase for a buck.

All this also begs the question: Was Nichols given life in prison because, as the AP report put it, he “had worn out four Bibles through prayer and research”? And would a man who wore out four Qurans or four Torahs be given the same clemency?

Given that many, if not most, Americans believe that Christianity is the One True Religion in the same way that I believe that Sean Connery is the One True Bond, my guess is no. If he were a man of a different faith, he would not have been shown such mercy. So much for church and state being all separate and stuff.

Both the prosecution and the defense apparently emphasized Nichols’s conversion — or born-again-ing or whatever. That’s a dangerous precedent.

A firm belief in God does not automatically mean a firm belief in not killing people. The Spanish Inquisition sure hacked up a lot of people. Henry VIII started an entire church and liked to separate his wives’ heads from their bodies. When George W. Bush was governor of Texas, the state led the nation in the number of inmate executions. The list goes on.

The state of one’s soul — saved or unsaved; crunchy or extra-crunchy — does necessarily not determine the course of one’s actions. And being Christian (or Jewish or Muslim or Unitarian Universalist) does not shepherd us down the path of righteousness or deliver us from evil. If we’re lucky, it can maybe — maybe — make us better human beings.

Moreover, what’s in a man’s soul should not be the subject of jury deliberation. And pitching Nichols’s Christianity in America’s heartland is, frankly, a cheap tactic. Yeah, God sells pretty well, and people like redemption stories; Nichols could offer both.

This is not to say that he should have been executed. I have the luxury of being the armchair — or cubicle — commentator. If I were in their jury box, would I have let rhetoric and tears sway me? If Nichols prayed to a god who went by a different name, would that have mattered? There’s nothing about this that isn’t puzzling and bizarre.

The ends do, in some respects, justify the means. Whatever the jury’s motivation was, they didn’t elect to kill a man, so that’s a check in the “no more cruel and unusual punishment” column.

There’s an addendum to the quote above: “Whoever saves one life saves the world.” Nichols’s jury saved a life, even if it was the life of a man who killed potential nations. Perhaps they saved the world. Or perhaps they were victims themselves of shoddy manipulation and prejudice.

Sydney Bergman wants you to send feedback and save the world at sbergman@pittnews.com.