Lethal Justice

This is the moving story of Lesley Gosch, sent to death row in Texas after being accused, questionably, of murdering Rebecca Patton, the wife of the President of the Castle Hills National Bank, San Antonio. Through the eyes of Joy Elder, a Welsh nun who began exchanging letters with him and visited him, we experience the reality of life on Death Row: the horrors of the environment; the terrible uncertainty of not knowing exactly when his life would be taken; and the agony of enduring numerous false alarms.

Yet, remarkably, in the midst of this darkness, Lesley's very disciplined spiritual journey enabled him to have the strength to come to terms daily with his predetermined death, without succumbing to self-pity or long-term despair.

Lesley was finally executed by lethal injection but wanted his untimely and brutal death to witness to the world the inhumanity of capital punishment.

Lethal Justice is not only an account of the destruction of a man's life due to injustice. It is also that rare thing, a book which has something practical, uplifting and helpful to say about the spiritual life. It owes this to the spiritual stature of Lesley Gosch and to the sensitivity of Sr. Elder's response to him.... A highly readable and sensitive account.

Ruth Evans
The Month