A Saint on Death Row, Thomas Cahill
A Saint on Death Row, Thomas Cahill
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A Saint on Death Row
The Story of Dominique Green

Author: Thomas Cahill

Narrator: Thomas Cahill

Unabridged: 3 hr 42 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 03/10/2009

Synopsis

On October 26, 2004, Dominique Green, thirty, was executed by lethal injection in Huntsville, Texas. Arrested at the age of eighteen in the fatal shooting of a man during a robbery outside a Houston convenience store, Green may have taken part in the robbery but always insisted that he did not pull the trigger. The jury, which had no African Americans on it, sentenced him to death. Despite obvious errors in the legal procedures and the protests of the victim’s family, he spent the last twelve years of his life on Death Row.

When Cahill found himself in Texas in December 2003, he visited Dominique at the request of Judge Sheila Murphy, who was working on the appeal of the case. In Dominique, he encountered a level of goodness, peace, and enlightenment that few human beings ever attain. Cahill joined the fierce fight for Dominique’s life, even enlisting Dominique’s hero, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, to make an historic visit to Dominique and to plead publicly for mercy. Cahill was so profoundly moved by Dominique’s extraordinary life that he was compelled to tell the tragic story of his unjust death at the hands of the state.

A Saint on Death Row will introduce you to a young man whose history, innate goodness, and final days you will never forget. It also shines a necessary light on America’s racist and deeply flawed legal system. A Saint on Death Row is an absorbing, sobering, and deeply spiritual story that illuminates the moral imperatives too often ignored in the headlong quest for justice.

About The Author

THOMAS CAHILL is the author of five volumes in the Hinges of History series: How the Irish Saved Civilization, The Gifts of the Jews, Desire of the Everlasting Hills, Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea, and Mysteries of the Middle Ages. They have been bestsellers not only in the United States but also in countries ranging from Italy to Brazil. He and his wife, Susan, also a writer, divide their time between New York City and Rome.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Larry on June 08, 2013

Dominique Green was on Death Row in Texas until his execution in 2004. (This book was published in 2009.) During his time there he taught himself and learned the skills of life that no one had ever taught him. He had to decide the purpose of his life when his execution seemed to be a certainty. The......more

Goodreads review by Tommy on June 26, 2012

I saw Cahill give a speech on this book and one of the most important things I took from it was how he was still affected by Green's death - he broke down visibly at times during his speech - and his thoughts regarding how irrelevant it is if Green was actually guilty or not. As Cahill said in the b......more

Goodreads review by Hans on February 16, 2019

Executing innocent persons is a bad idea.......more

Goodreads review by Daniel on July 06, 2020

While it’s really powerful, moving, and thought provoking about the place of the death penalty in our society (which honestly made me rethink my position on it), the conclusion, that these injustices stem from the Southern Baptists and Calvinists, is extremely far fetched.......more

Goodreads review by Walter on January 14, 2014

Wow: what happened to Dominique Green was both a tragedy and a true miscarriage of justice. (And yet, sadly, his case is representative rather than unique.) Thomas Cahill's book detailing his sad life and eventual death is both compelling and heartbreaking, so gripping in fact that I stayed up all n......more

Quotes

“A tremendously moving book—all the more effective because of the tempered voice with which Cahill narrates an unspeakable injustice. Dominique Green’s personal and moral triumph, prior to his execution under the benighted legal processes of Texas, is portrayed with so much sensitivity, and the racial factor that Cahill emphasizes is conveyed so forcefully, that I expect A Saint on Death Row to become a classic in the growing struggle to cleanse this nation finally of the sin of the death penalty.”
—Jonathan Kozol

“Dominique Green was a wonderful man whose life demonstrated the power of God to heal and transfigure even the most unlikely people and places. Who could have expected that Texas Death Row would be made into an avenue of divine grace?—which is exactly what happened through Dominique’s instrumentation. Though this is a book that ends in death, it does not end in despair. Read it and discover how even the obscenity of capital punishment can be transformed into an occasion of light and peace.”
—Desmond Tutu, Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town, South Africa

“There are many ways to tell the tragic story of America’s death rows. Tom Cahill has chosen to show—through the extraordinary life of one man—that God is always working everywhere and can bring the most beautiful soul to maturity in even the most horrifying circumstances. If you read his story, you will never forget Dominique Green, nor will you ever feel the same way about our courts, our prisons, and our criminal justice system. This book is a life-changer.”
—Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking

“This is a deeply moving narrative about a man transformed as he faced an unjust execution.”
—James H. Cone, author of Black Theology and Black Power and Martin & Malcolm & America: A Dream or a Nightmare

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