THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, January 25, 1995 TAG: 9501250459
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LAURA LAFAY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: JARRATT LENGTH: Medium: 80 lines
Dana Edmonds was executed Tuesday night, his last wish unfulfilled.
He wanted to be baptized.
``If I am to be deceased, I want to be . . . with my Father in heaven,'' Edmonds, the first inmate in Virginia executed by lethal injection, said Tuesday. ``The Bible teaches us that we must be baptized to be received by the Father. And so I want that opportunity to be received.''
But prison officials refused the request, saying that Edmonds had been baptized, and that one baptism is enough.
``He was baptized at the Mecklenburg Correctional Center in March of 1992,'' said Department of Corrections Director Ron Angelone.
``If you read the Bible, it says that if you're baptized as a Christian, you only have to be baptized once.
``The man has been baptized. You're baptized, you're baptized. We have met his religious needs and we have met them throughout his incarceration.''
Edmonds was executed for the 1983 murder of Danville grocer John Elliot. Under a law that became effective Jan. 1, he was the first Virginia inmate to be given a choice between the electric chair and lethal injection.
Edmonds was pronounced dead at 9:14 p.m., said Wayne Brown, spokesman for the Greensville Correctional Center.
Angelone said he offered to let Edmonds ``reconfirm'' his baptism with a chaplain in his cell. But Edmonds, who described himself as a Christian, wanted an immersion ceremony in one of three baptismal pools at the Greensville Correctional Center, where he was executed.
His Mecklenburg baptism, he said, wasn't a true sacrament.
``I believe that when I was baptized, I was still struggling and truly wasn't baptized,'' he said. ``I wasn't really ready. I just want to be baptized again.''
Russ Ford, a Southern Baptist minister who has worked with Edmonds for 10 years, said Tuesday that Angelone's decision came as a surprise to him.
``In the past, the state has always allowed us to administer sacraments of faith,'' Ford said. ``This is the first time such a request has been denied. We've baptized in the past. We've married men in the past.
``Dana is a Christian, following the religious tenets of his faith. He's trying to be obedient to Christ.''
Christian sects take two approaches to baptism, according to David Lanier, an associate professor of New Testament at the Southern Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C.
``Mainline Protestant and Catholic churches practice infant baptism,'' said Lanier. Presbyterians, Methodists, Lutherans, Roman Catholics and Episcopalians baptize at infancy and believe that once baptized, you are forever baptized.
``Free church traditions such as the Mennonites, the Amish and the Baptists practice believer's baptism. They believe you should be baptized as an adult after making a profession of faith.''
In general, said Lanier, free church traditions require only one baptism. But some charismatic sects believe that a person can lose salvation. According to those doctrines, those who lose salvation must be born and baptized again.
Among noncharismatic sects, it is unusual, but not unheard of, to undergo more than one baptism, said Wayne Blythe, an associate pastor at Freemason Baptist Church in Norfolk and former prison chaplain.
Edmonds spent Tuesday in his death house cell, receiving visitors and writing ``a goodbye letter to everyone.'' Two chaplains came in the morning, and a brother, brother-in-law and cousin visited in the afternoon.
``They kissed me on the cheek and took some pictures,'' he said.
Edmonds said a brief prayer before officials hidden behind a curtain administered a combination of three chemicals that rendered him unconscious, stopped respiration and then stopped his heart. MEMO: The Associated Press contributed to this story.
ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
Dana Edmonds
KEYWORDS: MURDER CAPITAL PUNISHMENT VIRGINIA
EXECUTION by CNB