The Window on Death Row

Through Joaquín’s story, the film explores the prison chaplaincy’s unique role in helping inmates navigate moral crises, while raising important questions. Is there ever an ethical reason to take someone’s life? How do we reconcile the contradiction of believing that facing a death sentence, even an unjust one, can paradoxically lead to a second chance at life?

The following is an extended conversation between Joaquín and his former death row chaplain Dale Recinella (aka Brother Dale), edited for brevity and clarity.

Joaquín José Martínez, Death Row Exoneree 

You remember how it was the first few times you visited me? I couldn’t understand what I was doing on death row. What had I done so wrong to end up there? And that’s the reason I lost my faith. How could he [God] allow something like this to happen? I remember you telling me “Everything has a reason. Give it time. Leave it in his hands.” Those words were everything to me.

Dale Recinella, Death Row Chaplain [aka Brother Dale]

I’ve had many men that, like you, arrive at death row and they ask me at the cell front: “Have I lost my faith?” And what I tell them is, I don’t think so. I think your spiritual life is in shock right now. Just like our physical body goes into shock to protect us from a trauma, coming to a place like death row will put you in a spiritual trauma. We go into shock until we are able to adjust to the point that we can start saying, “Okay, how is God here for me in this situation?”And that’s the part of the journey that you and I made together.

Joaquín

Yeah. You told me everything has a reason. Give it time Leave it in his hands. Pray. That’s everything. Brother Dale you can’t imagine [gets emotional].

I’ll never forget that. Not just the visits, but the lessons I learned there. You really did a lot for me. And you’ve done a lot for so many other people on death row, so many of my friends. And maybe they can’t speak now, but I can, and I will never forget everything you’ve done.

Brother Dale

It always seemed to me that we were dealing with this together.

Joaquín 

Yeah.

Brother Dale

And I could never stop thinking. What would I do if I found myself on the other side of those bars?

You would share what you were dealing with and try to come to terms with how God was here for you and your family in that situation. And I would find myself wondering, would I have the faith and the spiritual courage to face this if I was on your side of the bars? I always felt that you and the other men that I visited there were challenging me to increase my faith, because I wasn’t sure I could handle what you were handling.

But the other support that you had from outside amongst your family and your friends really made this a successful journey. Not everyone’s story goes that way.

Joaquín 

I know and that’s what makes it even more difficult. I have to live with that knowledge every single day of my life; knowing that the support I received is the reason I’m free.

To speak to you is one thing, but to go out there to speak about what I went through? It is so difficult knowing that I’m only able to do it because of the support I received. The friends I left behind [on death row], will never get a chance to do so.

There’s a Spanish saying “todos llevamos una cruz,” we all have to carry a cross with us. And I guess that’s the one I have to carry.

Brother Dale

There’s a name we have for that here in the States. They call it survivor’s guilt. Usually it’s in regard to veterans from the wars who came home, but their comrades didn’t because they didn’t live through the battle. We have to learn to accept the fact that we survived this, even though many of our friends did not. And that can be as hard as surviving what happened to us.

Joaquín 

That makes it difficult….

People have to understand that it’s not easy for you either. As a chaplain  you go into death row to help, to comfort other inmates. And not everyone sees it that way. The guards don’t always want to hear that, because they don’t want anyone to have compassion for us monsters, you know?  

But you went there, not just to hear our stories and pray with us, but you actually dealt with the physical experience of being there. People don’t know what you went through.

Brother Dale

Well, what I went through is nothing compared to what you went through. The difference between those six inches on the side of the bars you were on, inside a death row cell and the side of the bars I was on, standing in the corridor? It’s two different worlds. 

But the physical environment is very difficult. I’m told they’ve made it somewhat better. However, when I was there, there was no air conditioning and very little air movement. Death row is a huge concrete box, three stories high in the middle of a field, in a part of Florida with the highest heat and humidity. It’s hard for anyone to imagine what that’s really like for people living in those cells in that heat.

When I tell audiences, I’ve had people say, well, my grandmother didn’t have air conditioning, and I say, but your grandmother could go out on the porch. She could take a walk outside. She could go out and sit in the shade. She probably had a ceiling fan.

None of that is available on death row. When you are on death row, you are in a box of heat and humidity through the entire summer. There is no way to get completely dry. You could take a shower when they said it was shower time, but it was so hot and humid nobody could get dry after the shower.

I never would have imagined these conditions in the modern world if I had not seen it for myself and gotten to know the people that were living with it. But the other thing I realized is, when I used to ask the guards about these conditions, they would say, “Do what you can to improve it, because we have to work here too.”

They were, also, working in the heat and in the humidity all through the summer. I don’t behave as well as I would like when I’m hot and humid for hours on end.

We put these human beings, the ones in white and orange inside the cells  and the ones in brown outside the cells, but they’re all in these conditions. Why are we doing this? I’m hoping that we will find a better way to handle corrections. If you want people to behave as their best selves, you do everything you can to try and help them do that.  

Joaquín 

I recall those days. The walls were wet. You could slide on the floor, the humidity was so high. It’s not easy getting put into these conditions. What people don’t understand is that when you get the death sentence, the trauma is not necessarily the carrying out of the death. It’s the whole time leading up to that. It’s all that pain. It’s all the cruel, unusual punishment that we have to go through every single day. We are constantly reminded that one day we will be executed and we will no longer be there. I was on death row for three years, but it feels like a lifetime for me. 

Brother Dale

Your story is truly a story of redemption and salvation. The Bible has stories where God has rescued people from situations that were fatal, has rescued people from danger, has rescued them from people that wanted to kill them. That’s your story.

Joaquin Martinez

Yeah. I look back now and I think to myself, death row showed me a new way to do things.  

I was an arrogant young child that had everything I could possibly want in a material way. But I lacked principles. Now I enjoy every single second of my life. I live every second of my life like it’s a gift. 

Brother Dale

Well, God knows what we need better than we know ourselves if we’re willing to follow his lead. And he leads us in lots of different ways. As long as we’re open and we’re asking for him to show us his will for our life. He leads me through my wife, my friends, my pastor, my children and grandchildren.

He really does give me lots of clues and insights. And when I’m open to it, he won’t force it on me. But when I’m open to it, it’s amazing the things I would have missed if I was just going on. So there has been a true experience of letting go and letting God lead. And I’ve seen that in everything that you’ve described to me about your life since I’ve met you.

Joaquín:

I’m glad that you were there to lead me.

It’s hard to say. And I don’t want anybody to take me the wrong way. But for me, death row helped me become a better person all the way around.

Brother Dale

Absolutely. And that doesn’t mean you should have been there. It just means that the experience wasn’t wasted. There are so many things in life that we might experience, and we can choose whether to see them as a curse or as a blessing. And the difference usually depends on how we respond to it and what we do with the experience.

I’ve had so many men that have come out of prison, maybe not death row, but prison is prison too. And they say I’m dying to enjoy the things I used to complain about.

Joaquín 

Yeah.

Brother Dale

And it’s so, so true. If we look at the things in our life that require something of us, our families, events, our work, our careers, or our church. We might look at those as burdens. But after having had the kind of experience you have had and so many other men going to prison have, and coming back to our burdens, we thank God for the burdens of our blessings.

Joaquín 

There you go. There you go. [laughing] 

I don’t speak much about it, but a couple years before my arrest, I was involved in a car accident where the other driver was killed at the scene. When I woke up at the hospital, the only thing I did was pray and say, “God, I’ll slow down. I promise to just take things easier. I promise to just calm down, not work so hard, not be so ambitious. Not think so much about the material things and focus on other things that are important.”  

Two or three months later I was back at it again. Fifteen minute lunch breaks, working like crazy. Then I set up my business. It was nonstop. And I’d wake up at times at home or in my garage, not knowing how I ended up there. Drinking and partying. 

I don’t know, it’s just….  I’m thankful that this is all in the past because I think I would have been dead today if I hadn’t gone to death row. Really. The way I was living. I needed the touch of attention. Something saying, hey, slow down.

You know, one thing I was afraid of happening, Brother Dale, was that when I would go home, I would go back to being the way I was.

Brother Dale

A lot of my experiences in my personal journey spiritually, although not the same, brought me to similar insights to what you’re describing. I would never choose to go back to the way I saw things before God came in and shook me and woke me up because to the world, it may have looked like I was much more successful and getting a lot of power and prestige as a lawyer in a major firm decades ago.

But the life I have now, the people I’ve met like you on death row and in solitary confinement and in the death house. They never leave me. They’ve changed me. You’ve changed me. I don’t want to go back to the way I used to be. You taught me, without realizing it, that every single person, no matter what their position or their condition, has something to teach me about being human and about what God is trying to do for us.

Joaquín 

I love you, brother Dale. [crying]

Brother Dale

I love you too. [crying] And I’m proud to have you as a friend. You are doing more than you could imagine to plant seeds of change. You know healing is taking place when somebody is using their experience of trauma to try and relieve the suffering of others and making sure others don’t have to go through that.

The Window on Death Row is one of seven journalism projects in this fellowship. Learn about the other projects here.