Dale Recinella for­mer­ly worked as an attor­ney on large finan­cial deals, includ­ing the build­ing of a National Football League sta­di­um. He also sup­port­ed the death penal­ty. But he now focus­es on the needs of death row inmates and oth­er pris­on­ers in Florida. His new book, enti­tled ​“Now I Walk on Death Row,” tells of his career tran­si­tion and the rever­sal in his views on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Although he attrib­ut­es his changes to his Catholic reli­gious faith, he also came to see the prac­ti­cal prob­lems with the death penal­ty: ​“All the stud­ies show that life in prison with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole is much cheap­er than get­ting to an exe­cu­tion. The dif­fer­ence is who the mon­ey goes to. With life in prison, the mon­ey goes to cor­rec­tions offi­cers. With the death penal­ty, the mon­ey goes to lawyers on both sides. Correction offi­cers’ uni­forms are much cheap­er than Brooks Brother suits,” he said. As a vol­un­teer chap­lain, Recinella min­is­ters on death row three days a week and gives reli­gious edu­ca­tion instruc­tion at Union Correctional Institution in Raiford, Florida.

(M. Pattison, ​“From Wall Street financier to death-row chap­lain,” Catholic News Service, May 17, 2011; Chosen Books 2011). See Books, New Voices and Religion.

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