Tower Topics ~ Fall 2000

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Monk takes God’s love to death row

To many people who read the news reports and court documents, Gregg Braun was quite simply a monster.

         
       Gregg Braun               Bro. Jermiah Tuttle

But to Brother Jeremiah Tuttle, he was a brother and a friend.

***

Death Row at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary resembles an underground bunker. Natural light seldom reaches the cold concrete cells. An occasional tour group wanders through, gawking at the condemned and their visitors. It is hardly a place where hope springs eternal.

When he recalls entering H-Unit on July 6, Brother Jeremiah’s eyes still burn and his hands shake slightly.

“At that moment, the reality of what I was doing hit me,” he says. “I was going to visit face to face with a man who was going to be killed in two weeks, an organized killing.”

***

Gregg Braun was a murderer. During a five-day spree in July 1989, he killed four women and one man in Kansas, Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico. When captured by New Mexico law officers, he belligerently told them: “You guys must be proud. You don’t know what kind of famous criminal you caught.”

But 11 years later, Brother Jeremiah contends, the state of Oklahoma killed a man of prayer, a man who extensively studied Western monasticism and often said that if his life could’ve been different, he thought he may have become a monk. A man filled with self-loathing and remorse, who struggled with the belief that his sins were too great for even God’s forgiveness. A man who corresponded regularly with Bob and Ruth Hessman, the parents of Mary Rains, one of Braun’s victims. The Hessmans believed so sincerely in his transformation that they pleaded for his life. They attended a prayer vigil the night of his execution where Ruth read aloud their last letter from Braun.

“What a remarkable testimony to forgiveness,” Brother Jeremiah says.

***

Brother Jeremiah’s correspondence began through a friend, Dominican Sister Renee Dreiling. She was the condemned man’s fifth- and sixth-grade teacher and had corresponded with him since his arrest. Brother Jeremiah was intrigued when Sister Renee told him of Braun’s fascination with monastic life. Braun even viewed his life on death row in a monastic way, committing himself to prayer and spiritual reading.

Braun’s letters were full of questions. He fleshed out his scholarly knowledge of monasticism with questions about every day life at Conception Abbey. What was it like to pray in community? What was the silence like? He inquired about Brother Jeremiah’s journey from simple vows toward solemn vows (see Solemn profession...), which he professed in August, six weeks after Braun’s death.

As they grew closer, Brother Jeremiah read of Braun’s fears and remorse.

“His letters were filled with so much pain,” Brother Jeremiah recalls. “He would vacillate. One letter would be full of self-hatred. He didn’t think God’s mercy could surpass the wrong that he’d done.” The next letter would radiate with hope. “He had a great devotion to Mary,” Brother Jeremiah reveals. “He knew that Jesus listened to his mother and that was a source of hope for him. In that way, God was approachable.”

***

In late June Braun’s execution date was set for July 20. It was then that he asked if Brother Jeremiah would come to Oklahoma for a visit. After much wrangling with red tape and prison rules, the monk found himself at the doors of H-Unit two weeks to the day before the execution date. As he entered the visiting chamber, he saw Braun for the first time, through reinforced glass and heavy metal bars. They talked by telephone for two hours.

“He talked briefly about his upcoming execution,” Brother Jeremiah recounts. “He was torn between whether he should hold out hope for his appeals or begin preparing for his death.”

Braun tentatively discussed his crimes, referring to the times of the murders as “when the madness started.”

Then he caught himself and was silent for a moment.

“I can’t describe the look that came over his face,” Brother Jeremiah says. “It was a look of sadness the likes of which I’d never seen before.”

The two hours went quickly.

When Brother Jeremiah stood to leave, Braun pressed his palm to the glass and the monk did the same.

“There was a moment when the bars and the glass seemed to disappear and we touched,” Brother Jeremiah says, his voice cracking. “Gregg said he loved me and thanked me for coming. I told him I was proud and honored to call him my brother and friend.”

Shortly after that, Brother Jeremiah said goodbye.

Braun corrected him.

“I’ll see you later,” he said.

***

On July 19, Brother Jeremiah received permission for a day of recollection and prayer. He spent the day fasting, and praying in complete silence. At around 8 p.m., Braun made a final phone call to his family. A short time later Brother Jeremiah learned from Braun’s father that all last-minute appeals had been denied. At 10 p.m. Brother Jeremiah walked from his room to the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception, where he and a fellow monk sat quietly before the Blessed Sacrament.

“It was a time of watching and waiting with Gregg,” he remembers. “There were many, many people out there doing the same.”

The monks of Conception, the Benedictine Sisters of Perpetual Adoration in Clyde, the Sisters of St. Francis in Savannah, Mo., and numerous other religious communities throughout the country prayed for Braun. In Great Bend, Kan., the Dominicans led the vigil attended by the Hessmans.

At midnight, Gregg Braun named his five victims one by one in the order that he had killed them and said, “I’m sorry.” He strained against the straps that pinned him to a gurney and chanted, “I’m sorry I murdered you. I’m sorry I took your lives. I pray for Jesus Christ to bless your lives and to save you. I’m sorry I killed you.”

At 12:11, a mixture of lethal chemicals was injected into his bloodstream. Six minutes later Gregg Braun was pronounced dead.

***

“I don’t know for sure what I was able to do for Gregg,” Brother Jeremiah says today. “I only know what he brought into my life. I look at what he was able to do for others — his last years were spent in intercessory prayer. He was always praying for people.”

In the countless letters from Braun to Brother Jeremiah, not once did he ask the monk to pray for him.

“He was always asking for prayers for his victims and for his family, never for himself,” Brother Jeremiah explains. “He didn’t want to hurt anyone anymore.”

The monk says he knows what Braun did and admits there are no excuses for such evil.

“He hurt a lot of people,” Brother Jeremiah says. “It is a hurt that is going to go on in all of their lives. Children are growing up without mothers and husbands are without wives. But I also know from the letters and the visit that that was not the Gregg they killed.”

Brother Jeremiah says the entire experience of the past year has “added life to a death sentence.”

“There was a real person there,” he says. “He was more than part of a horrible story in a newspaper. A good friend was killed and I miss him.”

Editor’s note: for more information on the death penalty, see the website of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty at ncadp.org or the Oklahoma Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty at ocadp.org.
For statements on the death penalty by U.S. Catholic bishops, see www.nccbuscc.org/sdwpnational/criminal/death/index.htm.

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