The Episcopal Peace Fellowship of St. James Episcopal Church presents “Abu Ali Abdur’Rahman: The Injustice of Justice on Tennessee’s Death Row” at 7 p.m., Thursday, Oct. 18 in the St. James Parish Hall, 1101 Broadway, Knoxville.

In March 1987, Abdur’Rahman was sentenced to death for the murder of drug dealer Patrick Daniels in Davidson County. Twenty-five years later he remains on Tennessee’s Death Row in the River Bend Maximum Security Prison in Nashville. The U.S. Supreme Court has twice refused to consider his appeals –- most recently in June -- although the record shows that he is on Death Row because of a combination of the trial jury not being told about childhood abuse by his parents and his mental illness, his defense counsel not providing him with adequate representation, and the prosecutor withholding evidence from both the defense counsel and from the jury. Additional details of his life and his legal case can be obtained at (link...).

Clemency from Gov. Bill Haslam is Abdur’Rahman’s only possible legal recourse from execution and without clemency Abdur’Rahman will likely be the next person executed in Tennessee.

The presentation will be made by the Abdur’Rahman Clemency Team and will include a slide presentation as well as a question and answer period. The participants will include Brad MacLean, a member of Abdur’Rahman’s legal team and assistant post-conviction defender with the Tennessee Office of the Post-Conviction Defender; the Rev. Joe Ingle, one of Abdur’Rahman’s spiritual team; and Ed Miller, a Nashville attorney and Episcopalian who has written about the injustice of the Abdur’Rahman case.

Today, there are 88 prisoners on Tennessee’s Death Row. Since 1973, three Tennessee Death Row inmates have been exonerated - one each in 2007, 2009 and 2011. Another person who served time on Death Row had her sentenced commuted to life imprisonment and was later paroled. Conversely, as demonstrated in the book “The Inferno” by the Rev. Joseph B. Ingle, Philip Workman was executed in 2007 by the state of Tennessee for a murder that he did not commit.

The Episcopal Church has addressed the Death Penalty at several General Conventions. In 2000 the General Convention adopted the following Resolution: “That as the Episcopal Church continues its opposition to the death penalty, parishes and dioceses be urged to study the death penalty and explore the reasons for our opposition: the inequity as applied to minorities, the poor and those who cannot afford adequate legal representation, the contribution to continued violence, and the violation of our Baptismal Covenant.”

In the Baptismal Covenant, we pledge "to strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being.” In 1958 the General Convention resolved, “The [Episcopal] Church believes that each individual is sacred, as a child of God, and that to legalize killing of an offender is to deny the basic Christian doctrines of forgiveness of sin and the power of redemption, and that mercy is a Christian duty.

Also, the on-line petition for clemency for Abu Ali is at SignOn.org. Click on Search and type in Abu Ali and click. The petition will appear.