There are ten executions scheduled in the next two months…
Why the Death Penalty Still Persists in America
On a quiet evening in America, somewhere behind prison walls, a clock approaches the predetermined hour. A man waits in a cell, counting breaths, knowing each one may be his last. Down the hall, technicians check the lines and guards prepare the straps, rehearsing the ritual they will call “justice.” Outside, a handful of protesters clutch candles, whisper prayers, shout pleas, and bear witness. And most of the nation sleeps, unaware, unmoved, indifferent.
This is how the death penalty survives. Not by overwhelming public support. Not by moral clarity. But by inertia. It survives because it’s hidden. It survives because it’s been normalized. It survives because people look away.
For years we have been told that executions are “on the decline,” that abolition is “inevitable.” “It’s only a matter of time,” they say. Yes, the number of new death sentences is lower than in past decades. Some states have abandoned capital punishment altogether. But the truth is harsher than the platitudes we’ve been fed: the machinery of death is grinding faster right now than it has in decades. Governors are rushing to sign death warrants. Courts are reluctant to intervene. States are dusting off firing squads, cooking up new ways to suffocate people with nitrogen gas, scrambling to keep the killing business alive.
If we’re honest, we will admit that the abolition movement as it exists today is not enough. Advocates have done extraordinary work…organizing vigils, filing lawsuits, persuading legislators…but executions persist. Progress is fragile, uneven, often quickly reversed. The uncomfortable truth is that our movement has grown far too narrow, too professionalized, too cautious to carry us through this dark hour.
But make no mistake. This is not an obituary. This is a manifesto. The death penalty will not simply vanish on its own. It will fall only if we rise to meet it with imagination, disruption, urgency, and fire.
The Limits of Today’s Death Penalty Abolition Movement
For far too long, the movement’s energy has been concentrated in the courts and the halls of government. These efforts matter. They’ve saved lives. But they cannot be the center of gravity if the movement is to succeed.
The death penalty is sustained not primarily by legal precedent but by public indifference. Most Americans rarely think about executions at all. When they do, they imagine them as distant events…reserved for monsters beyond redemption. That indifference is the state’s greatest weapon.
And indifference is not broken in law journals. It is broken in neighborhoods where people fear crime and are told that death is the answer. It is broken in churches where forgiveness is preached but vengeance wins the day. It is broken in classrooms where students memorize civics but never mercy. It is broken in prisons where men and women live under the shadow of state-sanctioned killing. It is broken…
Abolition cannot remain the work of experts. It must become the work of ordinary people…in churches, schools, community centers, libraries, grocery stores, on buses or in living rooms. Until abolition becomes a regular part of ordinary lives, the machinery of death will keep grinding along.
Centering the Voices of the Condemned
The death penalty thrives on distance. Executions are scheduled in hidden chambers, carried out at odd hours, described in sanitized legal language. The condemned are reduced to case numbers, docket entries, mugshots. Humanity is scrubbed out of the entire process.
Too often even abolitionists have mirrored this distancing…speaking about the condemned rather than with them. But those on death row, and the families who love them, know the cruelty of this system in their bones. Their testimony cannot be an afterthought. It must be the foundation of our witness.
When condemned people speak, the myths collapse. When a man on death row tells you about his grandchild learning to read, when a woman waiting for execution describes her first prayer in years, when a mother breaks down over the state’s plan to kill her son…you cannot keep believing the lie that executions are tidy or righteous. You are forced to see human beings.
If the movement is to succeed, it must center these voices. Those closest to the pain must be closest to the power.
From Cost Arguments to Moral Fire
The death penalty is not just broken policy. It is a moral crisis. Yet, too often, abolitionists argue in safer terms…cost savings, statistical disparities or procedural flaws. These arguments aren’t wrong…but they’re not enough.
We must dare to speak with moral clarity. No one is disposable. No one is reducible to their worst act. The state has no authority to decide who deserves to live and who deserves to die. To kill in the name of justice is to destroy the very possibility of justice.
Until abolitionists recover that fire, the debate will remain framed by those who say killing equals justice. We must speak another word. Life is always greater than death. Mercy is always greater than vengeance. Love is always greater than fear.
Critiquing the Movement We Love
Here, honesty is required. The abolitionist movement has too often lost its way.
Our major organizations are filled with brilliant, committed people. But they have become trapped in a cycle of professionalization. They write reports, convene panels, manage grants, and host vigils. But too often this energy fails to ignite public imagination. They measure victories in the language of press hits, policy tweaks, temporary stays. Rarely in the language of moral awakening.
Too many organizations have grown risk-averse. They polish their messaging until it is bloodless. They reduce the struggle against execution to an argument about policy, afraid to speak in the raw cadences of mercy and justice. In doing so, they win a few hearings, a few opeds…but they lose hearts.
Worst of all, many have drifted from the grassroots. Where once the movement drew its power from the testimony of the condemned and their families, now it too often operates in insulated professional silos. Carefully curated campaigns. Sanitized talking points. Safe, bloodless appeals.
This critique is not betrayal. It is love speaking truth. Abolitionist organizations have done heroic work. But if they continue as they are, they will not finish the task. They will keep winning small, temporary victories while executions roll on. The death penalty is too urgent for timidity. It is time to go big or get out of the way.
From Policy to Prophecy: A New Abolitionist Strategy
For too long, abolitionists have played the role of polite petitioners. Pleading for reforms. Hoping politicians might grow a conscience. But executions will not end because governors suddenly find compassion. They will end because the moral ground beneath them collapses.
The task of the Death Penalty Abolition Movement is not to beg but to bear witness. Not to flatter but to confront. Not to wait but to prophesy.
The death penalty is blasphemy against human dignity. It is murder with the state’s signature on it. Our words must reflect the urgency of our cause. Until we name it as murder, until we name it as blasphemy, our movement will remain too timid to prevail.
Toward a Broader, Bolder Death Penalty Abolition Movement
If abolition is to succeed, it must welcome energy, anger, testimony, grief, creativity and confrontation. Real activism that demands real results. It must look less like a sterile campaign and more like a moral uprising.
Movements that change the world are rarely neat. They are alive with lament and hope, with contradiction and courage. They disturb the peace of those who cling to gradualism. They embody the world they are trying to create.
So it must be with the Death Penalty Abolition Movement. We will not win confined to nonprofits and courtrooms. It will win as a revolution of mercy…messy, public, relentless and unafraid. A revolution that names death as death and refuses to be silent while the state kills in our name.
The Abolitionist Call: Ending Executions in Our Lifetime
The death penalty will not collapse on its own. It will fall only if we strip away its disguises, refuse our consent and proclaim again and again that murder is always intolerable. The status quo of polite persuasion will only yield more polite murders.
The choice before us…the Death Penalty Abolition Movement…is stark. Silence…which is consent…or speech that sets captives free.
The death penalty has claimed the final word for far too long. But it is not the final word. Life is. Mercy is. Hope is.
And until words of abolition are spoken more profoundly and loudly than the language of death, we will keep getting our asses kicked…and our friends murdered.
*If you would like to support the Execution Intervention Project (the organization that financially supports Dr. Hood’s work), click here.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In