A Fight for Life

His Life Torn Apart by Acts of Violence,
One Man Has Made it His Mission to
Help Oklahomans Heal By Challenging
All to Remember Christ's Call for Love and Compassion Even For the Least Among Us

By Ray Dyer
The Sooner Catholic

Jim Fowler never dreamed he’d be waging a war to end the death penalty. But then he also never imagined the kind of nightmares he would experience that would deliver him to this point in his life. That Fowler has been able to turn unimaginable and deeply personal pain into a relentless cry for love and mercy must be a testament to God’s healing power. He understands his message is not always popular, by some he may be despised. Even so, it’s a cross he’s not willing to put down.              

On July 3, 1985, Fowler’s then 19-year-old son, Mark, agreed to help a fellow he had met four days earlier at a party rob an Edmond grocery store. Billy Fox, according to Jim Fowler, had told his son he was going to rob the store. He’d been fired recently and he had hatched a plan to make some easy money. To his dying day, Jan. 23, 2001, the day the state of Oklahoma executed him, Mark Fowler promised his dad he had nothing to do with killing the three men who were shot to death inside that grocery store. Fox pulled the trigger, Mark told his Dad.  He was there only on the promise of easy money.

“As a father, I want to believe him,” Jim Fowler said.

“If I could do one thing, if God would let me do one thing, it would be to get rid of drugs,” Fowler said. “Mark wasn’t raised that way. He grew up being involved in scouting. He had parents who loved him. I’m convinced 99 percent of the problems we have in this country are caused by drugs.”

Jim watched as his condemned son received the Holy Eucharist, the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, as he lay strapped to the execution gurney. He saw the priest bless Mark and he heard him ask God to forgive his sins. Faith gives him comfort in knowing he will one day see his son again.

God never gives someone more than they can handle.

On Sept. 3, 1986, Anna Laura “Goldie” Fowler, Jim’s 82-year-old mother, was attacked in her home just two blocks from the Cathedral of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, the parish she had attended and raised her family in. Her attacker raped her and killed her.

A man by the name of Robert Miller was arrested for the crime. Oklahoma County prosecutors were able to convince a jury of Miller’s guilt and in 1987 he was ordered to die for his crime.

Miller spent seven years on death row until a DNA test proved he was not guilty of raping and killing Jim Fowler’s elderly mother. The DNA pointed to another man, a man police already had in custody in connection with another rape.

Jim and Annie were living in Washington at the time.

“When we got the news that Miller was innocent I remember the first words out of my mouth, I said to Annie, I said ‘Honey, we could have killed an innocent man,”’ Fowler said.

Until that time, Jim Fowler had always been a supporter of the death penalty. But when the picture of an innocent man being put to death formed in his conscience, it caused some deep soul searching, this in turn led to some in depth research on the subject. “I had always believed only the truly guilty were sentenced to death,” Fowler said. He would soon learn that was not necessarily the case.

Jim and Annie moved back to Oklahoma. They needed to work on forgiving their son for the terrible pain he had caused so many and they needed to try and overturn the death penalty.

“It took two years after Mark went to death row before I could go and visit him,” Annie Fowler said. “I was so mad at him. It wasn’t until I started to forgive him that I finally started finding some peace.”

Faith in Action

The Fowlers hold strong to the Catholic Faith teaching that all life is a sacred gift from God. Fowler said when we as society support state sponsored execution “We become as they. They killed so we kill. It doesn’t make sense. It only perpetuates the cycle of violence. It feeds the culture of death.”

The more the Fowlers learned about the death penalty, the more they became convinced it was not about justice, but rather it was about politics and revenge.  

“We are so selective in who we choose to murder,” Fowler said. “You hardly ever see a wealthy person on death row.”

Seven times in Oklahoma DNA evidence has helped free innocent men from death row. Fowler cringes to think of what happened before DNA burst on the scene or about the cases where there is no forensic evidence. Seven lives, men who were convicted to die for crimes they did not commit, were rescued from state-sponsored execution. Nationwide, the number of human beings DNA has cleared and freed from death row is 119. It’s a number that causes Jim and Annie Fowler great angst.  

“That’s 119 juries in 119 jurisdictions that have made this mistake,” Fowler said. He questions how a civilized society can justify this kind of life and death mistake.

“Of course when you consider we kill 4,000 babies a day through legal abortion,” Annie said, shaking her head. “We don’t place any value on human life. We don’t consider the ripple effect an act of violence creates. It goes on and on.”

A high price for the wrong message

Fowler said Oklahoma is sending the wrong message to its young people with its support of capital punishment. He agrees with the Catholic bishops of America who say the death penalty is supporting a “culture of death.”

Cardinal McCarrick recently put it this way: “I pray I will see the day when we have given up the illusion that we can teach that killing is wrong by killing.”

Fowler takes every opportunity to talk about his death penalty views. He has spoken with throngs of high school and college students. He’ll talk with anyone who will listen, but mostly, he said, it’s the younger people who are more willing to hear him out.  He understands change will more than likely come when these young people step into positions of responsibility and especially when they become active in the voting booths.

In the past few months Fowler has spoken at the University of Oklahoma,  Southwest Missouri State in Springfield, Mo., the University of Central Oklahoma and to high school students at Holland Hall in Tulsa and Bishop McGuinness and Mount Saint Mary’s in Oklahoma City. His story has been reported in newspapers in Tulsa, Edmond and Norman. He’s visited several parishes and is willing to go anywhere to spread his message. One place he frequents even though some may not care for his presence is the Oklahoma State Capitol. Fowler constantly writes letters challenging state legislators and the governor to abandon their support of the death penalty. Fowler is convinced that when voters begin to learn how much money is spent on capital punishment elected officials will start to hear from their constituents.  

He said a Texas study shows that state spends approximately $2.3 million more to execute someone than it does to keep a person in prison for their natural life. Studies in Missouri and North Carolina turned in similar results. Fowler said proponents of the death penalty don’t stop to consider the expensive appeals process each person is guaranteed when they are sentenced to death.

“It’s economics,” Fowler said.  He said Oklahoma has 105 inmates on death row. “Do the math. Think of the good we could do with the money we saved by putting these people in prison for the rest of their lives instead of killing them.”

 Fowler says those who contend life without parole may not guarantee a person remains in prison for the rest of their life make “an honest argument.

“But if we’re going to make a mistake it’s better to err on turning a guilty person loose rather than killing an innocent person,” he said. “We know the death penalty does not work. The 38 states that have the death penalty have a higher homicide rate than those states without the death penalty.

“We’re sending the wrong message. We’re helping to continue a cycle of violence and perpetuate a culture of death.

“Life with no parole, with no appeals process. Let’s go in that direction.”