A Nitrogen Execution Over My Head:
Anthony Boyd’s Prophetic Cry
“To have a nitrogen execution hanging over my head on October 23 is unreal and constantly nerve-racking. Haven’t you seen what it did to these other guys?” – Anthony Boyd, September 15, 2025
Anthony Boyd’s words are not sterile. They are not distant. They are prophecy spoken through trembling lips. They testify to the sickness of a society that imagines killing can heal, that violence can be sanctified by law, that cruelty can masquerade as justice. His cry is not just his own…it is ours. If we do not hear it, then we have already forfeited our humanity.
I know this because I am walking with him. I have heard the tremble in his voice. I have seen the exhaustion in his eyes. I have felt the weight of this slow crucifixion in the silence that follows a court’s cold decision. When Anthony speaks of the execution hanging over his head, I know exactly what he means. I can testify…the nerves fray. The spirit aches. This is not theory. This is torture unfolding in real time.
The False Promise of Humane Killing
A Nitrogen Execution Over My Head and the Lie of Clean Death
“Haven’t you seen what it did to these other guys?” Anthony’s question refuses to let us look away. Nitrogen hypoxia was sold as clean, quick, merciful. A new way to kill that would ease the conscience of the state. But the lie is already exposed…men convulsing, gasping, suffocating before horrified witnesses.
What was promised as science has revealed itself as spectacle. What we call “protocol” is nothing more than ritualized torture.
I don’t have to imagine what this dread feels like. I hear it in Anthony’s whispers about what happened to the others. I hear it when he wonders aloud if his own body will thrash and seize in those final moments. Humane killing? There is no such thing. There is only suffocation dressed up as justice.
The Torture of Waiting
Over My Head: Death Row as Crucifixion by Calendar
“To have a nitrogen execution hanging over my head…is unreal and constantly nerve-racking.” In those words is not just the threat of death but the slow strangulation of anticipation. Scholars may call it the death row phenomenon…but I call it what it is…torment.
I have sat across from Anthony when the date was set. I have watched his hands shake when the news comes down. I have prayed with him in the silence after. This waiting tears at the mind, the body and the soul. It is crucifixion by calendar. Each delay is another nail. Each date is another wound.
And make no mistake…the suffering spreads. His family carries it. His friends carry it. I carry it. Everyone who dares to look this system in the eye is dragged into its cruelty. The state wants us to believe the punishment belongs to Anthony alone. That is a lie. His torture belongs to all of us.
A Broken Sacrament of Justice
The death penalty wraps itself in the garments of law, but the garments are filthy and torn. We know the truth…wrongful convictions, racial bias, the poor left to stand alone. Hundreds of human beings once condemned to die have been proven innocent. And yet we carry on as if error were acceptable, as if vengeance justified the risk of killing the wrong man.
When I sit with Anthony, there are no statistics. There is only a man staring into the abyss of suffocation. There is only the groaning of a system that pretends to be justice while feeding on human lives.
The Anti-Sacrament of a Nitrogen Execution
Theologians speak of sacraments as signs of grace. The death penalty is its opposite…a sign of corruption, a ritual of desecration. Each nitrogen execution is not justice…it is idolatry at the altar of death.
Mercy as Revolution
Life Stronger than Death
The prophetic voice doesn’t stop at tearing down. It calls for something new. If execution is crucifixion, then mercy is resurrection. To spare Anthony Boyd is not to erase accountability…it is to affirm that life is greater than death. It is to announce that the state does not get the final word. It is to bear witness that God’s image still flickers, even in the condemned.
I have seen that image in Anthony. I have seen flashes of hope. I have seen the reach for dignity. And I know this…if the state kills him, it snuffs that out. If mercy prevails, then life proclaims itself stronger than death.
Mercy is not weakness. It is rebellion. It is resistance. It is the refusal to let violence define us. In Anthony’s fear…and in my testimony of walking beside him…we are given a chance to reject the false sacrament of death and embrace the sacrament of life.
“I desire mercy, not sacrifice.”
Conclusion: The Prophecy of a Condemned Man with A Nitrogen Execution Hanging Over His Head
Anthony Boyd’s cry…“Haven’t you seen what it did to these other guys?”… is not a complaint. It is prophecy. It unmasks the lie of execution. It reveals cruelty paraded as order. It calls us to remember that killing cannot heal.
And I testify…I have walked into the heart of this torture with him. I have seen what it does. I have felt the collapse of his spirit under the suffocating weight of the state. If we kill him, we destroy not only his body but the fragile truth he dares to speak.
But if we listen…if we stop this execution…we do more than save one man. We take a step toward dismantling the machinery of death itself. We refuse to bow at the altar of execution. We choose mercy. We choose life. We choose resurrection.
To execute Anthony Boyd is to crucify him again and again in our name. To spare him is to declare that prophecy has not fallen silent…that justice has not been swallowed whole by vengeance…that love remains the only absolute.
And I tell you, as one who walks with him…mercy is the only way forward.
*If you would like to support the Execution Intervention Project (the organization that financially supports Dr. Hood’s work and Boyd’s Campaign), click here.
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