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death penalty
Setting 'Powerful Example' for Other States, Newsom Works to Clear Country's Largest Death Row
"The death penalty is a flawed, expensive, and error-filled practice that fails us all," said Equal Justice Initiative's Bryan Stevenson, urging other elected officials to follow the California governor's lead.
Nov 05, 2026
Opponents of capital punishment applauded on Thursday after Gov. Gavin Newsom moved to commute all of California's death sentences, sparing up to 548 lives as the term-limited Democrat prepares to leave office with eyes on the White House.
The New York Times had reported last month that Newsom was mulling the move, which he addressed in a Thursday letter initially obtained by The Sacramento Bee: "After nearly 30 years in public office, I have come to understand the limits of what government can justly accomplish. I take this action because I firmly believe that state-sanctioned killing is incompatible with California's values, undermines the foundations of our legal system, and diminishes each of us."
The Bee explained that "Newsom can commute single-felony sentences, but must receive the California Supreme Court’s approval to commute sentences for people with multiple convictions. Four of the seven justices must approve those requests, though there is no time limit for them to do so. If they do not approve before Newsom leaves office on January 3, 2027, the requests lapse and do not roll over to the next governor, according to attorney Natasha Minsker, an anti-death penalty advocate."
However, Democratic Gov.-elect Xavier Becerra has pledged to maintain the death penalty moratorium that Newsom issued in 2019, and could keep pushing to make all 548 sentences life without parole if the state's high court doesn't initially sign off. In his letter, Newsom cited his decades of publicly opposing state-sanctioned killings and his executive order seven years ago, which "formalized the de facto moratorium on executions in place since 2006, the last year California executed anyone."
"The people sentenced to death in California caused indescribable suffering to victims, their families, communities, and our state as a whole," but "I have concluded the state cannot morally kill them," Newsom wrote. "Because the death penalty is inherently incompatible with our legal system's commitment to justice, I have determined that this clemency decision, while difficult in many respects, will ultimately affirm the strength and integrity of our state and its justice system."
The outgoing governor called the decision "among the most difficult" of his career, but also "a righteous action." He said it follows "the moral leadership of past presidents, including our Founding Fathers, and governors across America," and is informed by what he has heard from "crime victims and survivors, public safety experts, and religious, civil rights, and other community leaders."
Coalitions of civil rights groups, business executives, faith leaders, victims' family members, former corrections professionals, and ex-prosecutors have recently urged Newsom to take this action before leaving office. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, he is now among a dozen state and federal leaders who have made sweeping clemency grants to death row inmates since capital punishment was reinstated in the United States in 1976.
It is arguably the most significant of those actions because of its scope. California has the largest death row in not only the United States, but the Western Hemisphere, according to the governor's letter. The Times reported that "Newsom's action cancels approximately one-fourth of all death sentences nationwide."
The national ACLU and its three affiliates in the state were among the groups pressuring the governor to act. The organization's executive director, Anthony Romero, declared Thursday that Newsom "made history" and "honored his commitment to end a system that conflicts with human dignity, fairness, and the values enshrined in our Constitution."
"These commutations reflect what justice demands: an end to a racist, error-prone, and inhumane punishment that has burdened California for far too long," Romero continued. "By taking this step, Gov. Newsom has affirmed that the death penalty has no place in California, and he showed real courage by confronting racialized injustice head-on."
US Campaign to End the Death Penalty's executive director, Laura Porter, also offered praise: "We are grateful that Gov. Newsom, like other Republican and Democratic leaders across the country, has decided to grant clemency to individuals on death row. The historic number of commuted sentences would set a new record and offer an acknowledgment that the death penalty process is flawed."
Bryan Stevenson, Equal Justice Initiative's founder and executive director and the author of the award-winning memoir Just Mercy, similarly welcomed the development, saying: "The death penalty is a flawed, expensive, and error-filled practice that fails us all. I commend Gov. Newsom for this historic act and hope that other state elected officials follow his lead... Now more than ever, Americans need leaders who act on our beliefs, protect the vulnerable, and stand up for human rights and human dignity."
As the Times noted:
Death penalty opponents have planned a national ad campaign praising him for the move. The minute-long commercial casts the governor’s decision as an act of courage and leadership inspired by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Dolores Huerta, and Robert F. Kennedy. It will air on dozens of news and political shows nationwide, said Dan Newman, a Democratic strategist who advises both Mr. Newsom and the anti-death penalty groups sponsoring the ad.
Mr. Newman said that the governor had been motivated by personal conviction. But the ad could also help Mr. Newsom in a 2028 presidential campaign.
Among the Californians cheering Newsom's move is Jeanne Woodford, who presided over four executions as warden of San Quentin State Prison, signed a recent letter to Newsom, and shared that "as someone who has carried out executions in California, I am haunted by the fear that we will execute an innocent person."
"Innocent people have been sentenced to death in California," she stressed. "Since 1973, more than 200 individuals nationwide, including eight in California, have been freed from death row after they were found to have been innocent. Gov. Newsom will ensure that California will never execute an innocent person."
Newsom's move may save some innocent prisoners, but it is also set to spare some notorious ones. The Times pointed out that the state's death row includes "Richard Allen Davis, who murdered Polly Klaas, a 12-year-old, after kidnapping her from her home in 1993," as well as "Cary Stayner, who killed four women near Yosemite in 1999, and the 1980s serial killer Charles Ng."
Relatives of the 12-year-old are divided: Her father, Marc Klaas, has criticized Newsom for the 2019 moratorium, but her stepsister, Jess Nichol, recently met with the governor and encouraged his action. She said in a statement that "I won't pretend I've always opposed the death penalty. I used to think the man who killed my sister deserved execution. But over time I've realized that whether he's executed has absolutely nothing to do with my recovery or with real public safety."
"The system tells survivors that execution matters to our healing," Nichol added. "It doesn't. It's a distraction from what we actually need."
While President Donald Trump—whose Republican Party just lost its majorities in Congress—is infamously pro-death penalty, fresh calls for ending capital punishment nationwide have mounted since late September, when Christa Pike survived two injections of pentobarbital from a doctor involved with an earlier botched execution at the maximum security prison in Tennessee.
"There hasn't been a moment since that night when I haven't been in pain," Pike said last week. "My body hurts. My arms hurt. My hands hurt. My throat hurts. I still struggle to speak. And the pain isn't just physical. There is pain in my mind and in my soul. I had not contemplated life beyond that night, and I'm deeply hurt by the incompetence that has put so many people in this terrible position. I continue to think about my victim's family and the terrible pain and loss they have endured. I am recovering, and I know that I am getting stronger. But healing is not the same as being okay."
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'Pain in My Mind and in My Soul': Christa Pike, Who Survived Botched Execution, Speaks Out
"I had not contemplated life beyond that night, and I'm deeply hurt by the incompetence that has put so many people in this terrible position."
Oct 30, 2026
Christa Pike, whose twice-botched execution in Tennessee last month has renewed calls for abolishing the death penalty in the United States, spoke out about her experience on Friday, a month after she had "walked into the execution chamber at Riverbend men's prison prepared to die."
"I had made my peace," Pike said in a statement dictated by her legal team. "I had told the people who loved me, supported me, and stood by me through the years I was grateful for them. I had also told the people in the room, and who were there to witness my execution, that I was leaving them in loving kindness. Several days later, I woke up alone in a hospital, confused and in pain."
Despite an ongoing legal fight stemming from the pervasive abuse the 50-year-old suffered throughout her youth, the US Supreme Court let Tennessee move forward with its plan to kill her on September 30. Pike, who was sentenced to death over the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, survived two injections of pentobarbital from a doctor involved with an earlier botched execution at the maximum security prison in Nashville. She was taken by ambulance to Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
"There hasn't been a moment since that night when I haven't been in pain," Pike said Friday. "My body hurts. My arms hurt. My hands hurt. My throat hurts. I still struggle to speak. And the pain isn't just physical. There is pain in my mind and in my soul. I had not contemplated life beyond that night, and I'm deeply hurt by the incompetence that has put so many people in this terrible position. I continue to think about my victim's family and the terrible pain and loss they have endured. I am recovering, and I know that I am getting stronger. But healing is not the same as being okay."
"Since that night, I have been largely isolated in the prison's medical ward, away from other people and the human connections that mean so much to me," she continued. "That isolation brings its own kind of pain. I spent 28 years in solitary confinement, and much of what I am experiencing today is a repeat of that condition. I am searching for meaning in what happened to me. One thing that has given me strength is the extraordinary love and support I have received from people around the world. I am overwhelmed by the kindness and prayers of people I have known for years and complete strangers who have never met me."
"To know that so many people care about me, that they see me as a human being whose life matters, is something I cannot fully put into words," Pike said. "It is humbling, and it has touched me more deeply than I can explain. I also want to thank the first responders, doctors, nurses, and everyone at the hospital who cared for me. They treated me with compassion, dignity, and respect. I will never forget their kindness. I also want to thank my attorneys and everyone who has fought for me, stood beside me and refused to give up on me."
She added that "I don't know why I survived that night. I don't know what comes next. Some days, finding hope is harder than others. For now, I am trying to heal, one day at a time. And I am holding on to the love and kindness of so many people who have reminded me that I am not alone."
clicks.wdsu.com/f/a/ZdWHrZpX...End the death penalty.
[image or embed]
— Bill K - NO DEATH PENALTY (@really-mad.bsky.social) October 30, 2026 at 9:57 AM
Gov. Bill Lee—who declined to commute Pike's sentence before the failed injections—has since halted executions in Tennessee through the end of the year, but the Republican suggested Thursday that the state may try to kill Pike again.
"As it relates to a particular individual like Christa Pike and her crime, she is still incarcerated under the laws of the state of Tennessee," Lee said Thursday. "I suspect her sentence will be the same as it was before unless determined otherwise by the courts."
While a review of Pike's execution attempts is underway, and Tennessee Department of Correction Commissioner Frank Strada has already announced he will step down, opponents of capital punishment are demanding more. Amnesty International USA said earlier this month that "Tennessee’s botched attempt to execute Christa Pike, as witnessed by her attorneys, demonstrates why the death penalty truly is the ultimate cruel, inhuman, and degrading punishment."
"All execution methods are inhumane and unacceptable," the group declared. "The death penalty must be abolished, everywhere."
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Americans Should Reject All State-Sanctioned Murder, Live-Streamed or Not
Last year, the US was 1 of only 17 countries to record an official execution.
Oct 23, 2026
The Pentagon’s self-described “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth recently announced a plan to live stream the execution by firing squad of former Army Major Nidal Hasan, a wheelchair-bound veteran convicted of a mass shooting at Fort Hood in 2009.
President Donald Trump eventually backed away from the live-stream plan. But not before Americans across the political spectrum agreed that—whatever Hasan’s crime—live streaming an execution crossed a line. In one poll, 80% opposed it.
That’s not surprising. Live streaming the slaughter of a human being, especially when the spectacle is cheered on by a defense secretary who claims to worship his troops’ killing power, their “lethality,” above all else—including their loyalty to the Constitution—falls outside any definition of morality.
The death penalty is so normalized in the United States that we don’t even recognize how depraved “normal” executions are by the rest of the world’s standards.
The thought of kids pulling out their phones on the playground, or adults glued to their tablets at work, to witness an execution is uniquely horrifying. But much of the official criticism of Hegseth’s proposal to make the execution public also had a particularly chauvinistic quality to it.
Some argued that it would lower the integrity of the US to the level of “other” countries. As North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis said: “Public executions are what oppressive dictatorships like Iran and Afghanistan do. It should not be happening in America.”
Yet beyond the issue of live streaming, the underlying act of state-sanctioned homicide itself sounds a lot like what “they” do. The death penalty is so normalized in the United States that we don’t even recognize how depraved “normal” executions are by the rest of the world’s standards.
Last year, only 17 countries recorded official executions, according to Amnesty International. China led the list with the most executions, followed by Iran and Saudi Arabia. Yemen (with 51) and the United States (with 47) rounded out the top five. During that same year, no executions at all occurred in Europe or Central Asia. And for the last 17 years, the United States has been the only country in the Americas to officially execute anyone.
The US embrace of the death penalty as other countries abandon it is disturbing enough. Equally disturbing is the fact that executions here historically have often been quite public.
The US has a long legacy of lynching, whether carried out by a wartime firing squad or hanging people from a makeshift noose on a tree. During racist lynchings carried out from the Civil War era well into the 1960s, crowds of people—including well-dressed women, men with children on their shoulders to make sure the little ones could see, poor and rich but all white—gathered near the tree with picnic baskets and post cards for sale to commemorate the slaughter of Black men, women, and children.
Yet this isn’t only about our past. It’s about this administration’s effort to normalize a level of deliberate bloody slaughter being carried out today—whether in the Gaza genocide, the US bombing of school children in Iran, or Immigration and Custom Enforcement’s (ICE) brutal treatment of immigrants and protesters. All based on the idea that some people simply have no right to live.
These decisions made here have international impacts.
The Israeli government is openly borrowing from the cruelties of the US prison system. Earlier this year, the Israeli parliament legalized capital punishment. From its founding in 1948, Israel had not allowed an execution—with only two exceptions, one of whom was Adolf Eichmann, the main organizer of the Holocaust.
But in March 2026, the Knesset passed a law requiring death by hanging for Palestinians convicted in military courts of any lethal action Israel deems terrorism. (Jewish Israelis, including illegal settlers in the West Bank, remain completely immune from the threat of capital punishment.)
Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s extremist national security minister, made a video showing off the gallows under construction—gloating that the new site would have an open viewing area, “just like in the US.”
Still, it’s encouraging that Americans’ outrage forced Trump to back off from Hegseth’s brutal spectacle. And with the percentage of Americans opposing capital punishment climbing year after year—alongside public opposition to war, genocide, and ICE’s violence—perhaps one day the White House will similarly abandon those horrors as well.
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Don't Allow Donald Trump to Shoot an Unarmed Man
I watched a man fight for his life under nitrogen gas for at least sixteen minutes. Now Trump has
approved a firing squad for a paralyzed prisoner.
Oct 19, 2026
Before his nitrogen execution last year, Anthony Boyd wanted to figure out a way to help people understand the horror he was about to experience. He told me to watch his legs. When he couldn't go any further, he was going to lift up his legs one final time. Once and for all, he wanted to settle that nitrogen executions were neither quick nor humane.
The State of Alabama controlled the gas, the mask, the restraints, the room. Boyd had nothing left to control but himself... his legs.
At approximately 5:57 p.m., the nitrogen began flowing. Boyd clenched his fist. He raised his head. Then he lifted his legs several inches, exactly as he had promised me. By my watch, he fought for his life for at least sixteen minutes, maybe even closer to nineteen depending on when the gas actually entered the mask. He was not pronounced dead until 6:33 p.m. Afterward, officials had the audacity to call his movements involuntary and insignificant. They all wanted to talk about the justice that was just done. I knew better. The lies and misdirections of government are always endless.
The cameras became the problem... not the killing itself. This should send chills down the spine of our country.
The primary thing that these executions produce is more horror.
As a spiritual advisor to men on death row throughout the nation, I have witnessed fourteen executions in five states, which is more than any other spiritual leader in the nation. Repeatedly, I have watched a condemned man's body tell the witnesses what the official statement would later explain away. I know what the government's descriptions and language of procedure can conceal.
I carry that knowledge into what is coming at Fort Hood. On December 3, the United States Army intends to execute Nidal Hasan by firing squad. President Donald Trump approved the death sentence in early October. It will be the first firing squad carried out under federal authority since the Army shot Private Eddie Slovik for desertion in a French courtyard in January 1945. The country went 81 years without doing this. Of course, it is Trump who is bringing it back.
Don't think for a second I am going to skip the horrors of Nidal Hasan's actions. Indeed, Hasan was convicted of killing 13 people and wounding 32 others in the 2009 Fort Hood shooting. The people he killed had families and futures. The survivors have carried 17 years of consequences. Their suffering must never become an afterthought. Opposing this execution does not require anyone to shrink the horror of what came before it. But those deaths do not make the killing of Hasan an automatic act of justice. They also do not lift the moral responsibility from the president who has authorized the shooting.
Who deserves to die and who deserves to live? The rifles at Fort Hood will not go back to the armory when it is over. They will be cleaned, racked and kept ready for whoever is next.
The Army's own announcement lays out the chain. The president alone can approve a military prisoner's death sentence. Trump exercised that authority. He does not have to pull the trigger to own what happens when the rifles are raised. Other people will fire. The directive to shoot an unarmed paralyzed man will come straight from the Oval Office.
Of course, if the horror wasn't horrific enough. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth proposed livestreaming the execution so the world could watch America kill Hasan. Trump argued that streaming it might be a strong deterrent. On October 15, after widespread criticism from all sides of the political spectrum, Trump backed down. Hasan would be shot to death behind closed doors. He seems to glow each time he makes such a pronouncement.
So, the cameras became the problem... not the killing itself.
This should send chills down the spine of our country. The government considered turning a human death into a demonstration of national power. When the demonstration met resistance, the administration dropped the audience while keeping the shooting. The only difference between a public execution and a private one is the number of witnesses.
Consider whose hand is on the order. This is a president whose own defense secretary, Mark Esper, wrote that during the protests of 2020 Trump asked whether the people in the streets could simply be shot in the legs. This is a president who entertained broadcasting a man's death as a warning to the world. He is now being handed rifles, a chair and a legal pathway to use them against a prisoner who cannot stand.
Anyone who thinks that Trump is going to be comfortable stopping at Hasan, has not listened to those who have worked closest with him.
The only difference between a public execution and a private one is the number of witnesses.
A firing squad is a capability before it is a sentence. Once a government has built the chair, qualified the shooters, written the protocol and fired on one man, it owns that capability for good. It will not retire with Hasan. South Carolina shot three men in 2025. In one of those executions, an outside pathologist who reviewed the state's autopsy found the bullets largely missed the man's heart. Meaning, he bled out for an extended period of time. Idaho spent more than $1.2 million building a firing squad it has not used. Those who think this is an inexpensive, certain, or quick enterprise are sorely mistaken. The federal government is about to join the blunders that have always plagued the firing squad, and human executions in general for that matter. Who deserves to die and who deserves to live? The rifles at Fort Hood will not go back to the armory when it is over. They will be cleaned, racked and kept ready for whoever is next.
Hasan is where that question begins. He is not where it ends.
I do not want this president to have the power to shoot an unarmed person. Not Hasan. Not a drug dealer. Not a protester. Not anyone. Unchecked power does not know the difference between them. It only knows the hand that holds it. A man who once asked about shooting Americans in the legs is about to find out what it feels like to give the command for a volley.
Once a soldier learns to fire on a bound prisoner on command, the distance to the next bound prisoner gets shorter.
I think of the soldiers who may be ordered to take part. They entered an institution that asks them to protect human life, sometimes at terrible cost. They should not have to pretend that shooting a restrained man is another administrative duty. Once a soldier learns to fire on a bound prisoner on command, the distance to the next bound prisoner gets shorter. Once a president learns he can order it, the list of people he might order it for gets longer.
I do not want the families of the Fort Hood victims forgotten. Their loss deserves more than a government telling them that another death settles the account. One murder will never offset another murder.
Besides, isn't Donald Trump the last person on earth you would trust with a rifle?
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Trump Cancels Livestreamed Execution of Fort Hood Mass Shooter After Nationwide Outcry
Hours before the president backed off of the plan, a poll found 8 in 10 Americans opposed it.
Oct 15, 2026
As poll numbers showed the vast majority of Americans were repulsed by the idea of livestreaming the execution of Nidal Hasan, the former military psychiatrist convicted of killing 13 people at Fort Hood in 2009, President Donald Trump backed away from the plan Thursday.
On Truth Social, Trump wrote that he still believed that "streaming the execution for all to see might have been a strong deterrent for the World to witness how America deals with Terrorists and SCUM like Hasan."
But the president suggested the White House had received word that "many very good and well meaning people would rather not watch him die, through streaming, or through any other visual device," and said the execution by firing squad, scheduled for December 3, will not be publicly displayed.
Trump announced the decision hours after a nationwide poll by The Washington Post, ABC News, and Ipsos found that 8 in 10 Americans opposed the plan to livestream Hasan's state killing, regardless of their views on the death penalty in general or on executing the convicted murderer.
Nearly 70% of people who supported the execution said it should not be livestreamed. The plan was strongly opposed across the political spectrum, with 91% of Democrats, 83% of independents, and 64% of Republicans disapproving of the proposal—aggressively pushed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth—to make the killing viewable to anyone.
Among Republicans who identified themselves as part of Trump's far-right MAGA movement, 55% said they opposed the livestream plan.
Men who were identified as MAGA were the only group in which a majority supported the livestream; 57% said they approved of it.
Hegseth said last week that the execution would be streamed “because people need to understand that there’s serious consequences for these types of things.” Trump expressed strong approval of the plan, while Vice President JD Vance, a Catholic convert, tepidly attempted to distance himself from it, saying he would not personally watch the execution. A number of Republicans in Congress spoke out against the plan.
While Hegseth defended the plan as one that was aimed at deterring violent crimes like the Fort Hood killing, fascism scholar Ruth Ben-Ghiat said a livestreamed execution could only be "an attempt to normalize extreme violence, ritualize violence, militarize the country, and make violence entertaining so when they ask you to commit violence in their name, you will be ready."
The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights expressed horror at the proposal, saying it "would breach the absolute prohibition of torture," and Amnesty International called it "barbaric and deeply shocking."
In the Post/ABC/Ipsos poll released Thursday, one independent in Minnesota, Lawrence Sagstetter, said the livestream would be "going too far."
“It’s just going to cause more of an uproar, not only nationally but internationally," he said.
A Republican from New York, Bruce Gonka, said Hegseth's plan was "all for shock, and we don’t need that. We’re better than that."
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As Catholic Convert Vance Casts Doubt on Execution Livestream, Lead US Bishop Says Plan Promotes 'Culture of Death'
"The public execution even of one who has done grave harm will only further undermine the moral fabric of our nation and be a blight on the conscience of its people," Archbishop Paul Coakley.
Oct 09, 2026
While US Vice President JD Vance—a Catholic convert—suggested on Friday that the administration may not actually livestream a firing squad execution at a military base in December, the church's top bishop in the country denounced the widely decried plan.
US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth pledged this week to make the execution of Fort Hood mass shooter Nidal Hasan "public," and officials said that would mean a livestream. As Religion News Service noted, the Pentagon chief is an evangelical Christian who has often spoken about his faith and "attends a church led by Pastor Doug Wilson, a self-described Christian nationalist."
On Friday, the vice president—who recently published a book about his religious experiences, including his conversion to Catholicism—told reporters that despite those statements about a livestream, "I don't know that that's actually gonna happen."
Vance argued that Hasan, a former Army major and doctor, committed "the worst terrorist attack on American soil outside of 9/11," but also said that "if it's ultimately livestreamed, I'm not gonna be watching it."
Meanwhile, using President Donald Trump's preferred term for the Department of Defense, Archbishop Paul Coakley, president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, said in a statement that "it is with shock and great sorrow that I have learned of the Department of War's decision to publicly livestream the execution of Nidal Hasan."
"Our God is the God of life. In no way can Hasan's actions be condoned, but this decision is a barbaric promotion of a culture of death and must be reconsidered. The word of God exhorts us: 'Do not repay anyone evil for evil' (Romans 12:17)," declared Coakley, a "conservative culture warrior" elected to his leadership role last year.
"The public execution even of one who has done grave harm will only further undermine the moral fabric of our nation and be a blight on the conscience of its people," he added. "I pray for the intercession of Our Lady of Good Counsel that we as a nation may always choose life even in the most trying times and circumstances."
Coakley joined a growing chorus of critics who have condemned the Pentagon plan, including the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, which said Friday that "the livestreaming of an execution is tantamount to a public execution and would breach the absolute prohibition of torture."
American Immigration Council senior fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, who had blasted the livestream decision on Thursday, called the archbishop's statement a "strong response from the Catholic Church."
James Martin, a Jesuit priest and editor at large of America Magazine, explained that "the Catholic Church teaches that the death penalty is 'inadmissible,' primarily because every human being has God-given dignity, even a murderer, even a mass murderer. The televising of an execution is barbarism of the worst kind, offering up death as entertainment."
"Some Catholics still reject Pope Francis' magisterial pronouncement on the death penalty, which is now included in the Catechism," he noted. "But opposition to the death penalty, grounded in the respect for all human life, is not a brand new doctrine. Rather, it is one that took time to develop, as the church came to understand more deeply the innate dignity of every human life."
Sharing Coakley's comments on social media Friday, journalist Paul Blest wrote that "this happening so soon after the botched Tennessee execution is creating the conditions for real momentum against the death penalty."
Tennessee last week botched two attempts to kill Christa Pike with injections of pentobarbital, after which she was rushed to the hospital. Pike's legal team said Thursday that she "continues to experience cognitive challenges" but is taking "limited steps" with assistance. While Republican Gov. Bill Lee has responded by halting executions and ordering a probe, the incident has fueled fresh calls for the US to outlaw the death penalty at the state and federal level.
The Vatican's secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, also weighed in on the livestream plan, saying Friday that "it is truly incomprehensible that anyone would want to use this method in this day and age. I do not know for what purpose. It is certainly unacceptable to turn death into a spectacle. However guilty the person may be, there are other ways."
"The church's position is one of total opposition to the death penalty. It is incompatible with human dignity and does not serve as a deterrent," Parolin said, acknowledging Coakley's comments and pledging that "there will be a statement from the Holy See."
As the Catholic leaders and others from various faiths spoke out against the Defense Department plan, Robert Jeffress, a Texas-based American Southern Baptist pastor and televangelist, wrote on social media that "I support the Pentagon's decision to livestream the execution of mass murderer Nidal Hasan. Capital punishment is commanded by God in Genesis 9:6 to remind people of the sanctity of human life. The more people that can see that truth illustrated through a public execution, the better."
Christa Brown, a former lawyer, sexual abuse survivor, and author of the memoirs This Little Light and Baptistland, responded: "Livestreaming an execution is barbaric. And no amount of Bible verses will change that."
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UN Says Trump-Hegseth Livestream of Execution Would Breach ‘Absolute Prohibition of Torture’
"The world’s supposedly greatest (or formerly greatest) democracy has arrived at a horrific new moral nadir," said one columnist of the plan to livestream the killing by firing squad of Nidal Hasan.
Oct 09, 2026
As rights advocates across the US expressed horror at the Trump administration's confirmed plans to publicly broadcast the execution of Nidal Hasan, the former military psychiatrist who was convicted of killing 13 people in a mass shooting at Fort Hood in 2009, the top United Nations human rights expert warned that the public state killing would violate international laws prohibiting torture.
“The livestreaming of an execution is tantamount to a public execution and would breach the absolute prohibition of torture,” the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) told Agence France-Presse Friday.
As Common Dreams reported Thursday, the US Army announced that Hasan would be executed by firing squad at Fort Hood on December 3, with the Trump administration inviting the public to watch the shooting via livestream.
The UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions said in a report to the UN Human Rights Council in June that all capital punishment must be abolished worldwide, as "severe physical pain and psychological distress are an inherent part of the design and implementation" of the practice.
The OHCHR has particularly spoken out against public executions, such as those that have been carried out in Afghanistan and Iran.
Public killings by the state "constitute a form of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment," the office has said.
"This planned livestreamed execution says it all about what is happening in America today, opening the window ever wider on the Trump administration’s moral vacuity and its paucity of human decency."
Should the livestream go forward, Hasan's execution will be the first public state-sanctioned killing in the US in 90 years, according to Michael L. Radelet, professor emeritus at the University of Colorado Boulder, an expert on capital punishment.
Rainey Bethea, a Black man, was hanged in Kentucky in 1936 after reportedly confessing to the killing of a white woman. He was never charged with murder. Thousands of people attended his execution outside a courthouse.
As Edmarverson A. Santos wrote at the independent research platform Diplomacy & Law, the Trump administration's proposed execution livestream "raises substantial concerns under international human rights law."
"The UN Human Rights Committee expressly interprets Article 7 of the [International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights] as prohibiting public executions and considers executions conducted in violation of that provision to constitute arbitrary deprivations of life under Article 6," wrote Santos. "A government-sponsored livestream accessible to the general public could fall within that interpretation, particularly where the condemned person's death is deliberately displayed as part of the state's punitive message."
"Hasan's conviction for intentional murder and the presidential approval of his death sentence do not independently establish the legality of publicly broadcasting his execution," Santos added.
Paul Daley, a columnist for The Guardian Australia, wrote Thursday that the planned livestream—and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's statement that the execution will be made viewable to all to show that "there’s serious consequences for these types of things"—amounted to "state-sanctioned killing as entertainment."
"The world’s supposedly greatest (or formerly greatest) democracy has arrived at a horrific new moral nadir," wrote Daley. "This represents a significant lurch in the US from civilization towards savagery... And this planned livestreamed execution says it all about what is happening in America today, opening the window ever wider on the Trump administration’s moral vacuity and its paucity of human decency."
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'Barbarity for the Sake of Barbarity': Trump Pentagon Confirms Plan to Livestream Firing Squad Execution
"The death penalty on its own is morally indefensible," said one critic. "Turning it into a public spectacle is an abomination."
Oct 08, 2026
The Pentagon on Thursday confirmed plans to livestream an execution by firing squad in December—a revelation that came amid fresh calls for the United States to end the death penalty after Tennessee botched two attempts to kill Christa Pike with injections of pentobarbital.
The US Army announced Wednesday that Nidal Hasan—a former military psychiatrist convicted of killing 13 people and injuring 32 more in a 2009 mass shooting at Fort Hood—will be executed at the Texas base at 1:00 pm Central Standard Time on December 3.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth told the right-wing outlet Real America's Voice News that "we'll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it's public, because people need to understand that... there's serious consequences for these types of things."
Then, other outlets, including The Associated Press, reported that "officials in the Pentagon clarified Thursday that the execution would be livestreamed and that more details would follow."
The Washington Post reported that "if Hasan's execution is carried out, it would mark the first US military execution since April 13, 1961, when Army Pvt. John A. Bennett was hanged after being convicted of rape and attempted murder, according to the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center, which monitors capital punishment. The military's last known firing squad execution was carried out by 'musketry' on November 9, 1945."
Hegseth's comments and the subsequent confirmation from the US Department of Defense were met with disgust and outrage.
"What a sick man," former National Nurses United communications director Charles Idelson said of the Pentagon chief on social media. "A. Executions have never been proven to be a deterrent to capital crimes. B. The spectacle of a public execution is morbid, it recalls the public lynchings so common during the Jim Crow era. C. If the shooter was white, I don't believe this would be public."
Hasan is a US citizen born to Palestinian immigrant parents. Just before he opened fire on soldiers who were set to deploy to Afghanistan, he shouted "Allahu akbar," an Arabic phrase commonly used by Muslims that translates to "God is great!"
While some critics called out Hesgeth, Obama administration speechwriter-turned-podcaster Jon Favreau took aim at Vice President JD Vance, who recently published a book about his faith journey, including his conversion to Catholicism. Favreau said that "I would like to hear our Catholic vice president explain why they're intentionally choosing to broadcast the death of a human being for the entire world to see, including children."
Producer and journalist Simon Thompson wrote on social media: "Just when I think this administration couldn't get any worse. Livestreaming executions by firing squad? This administration, a Christian administration apparently, is making a snuff movie and treating it like a [pay-per-view] event."
Journalist Séamus Malekafzali similarly said, "Content with having desensitized the American public by broadcasting faceless images of Iranian sailors dying and buildings full of people leveled to the soundtrack to Halo, the government is now moving to livestreaming snuff films, faces and all."
"I know people hate when people make comparisons to American adversaries, but this is literally what ISIS did, save for the live aspect," he added. "Those executions were also done on camera under the auspices of nominally government institutions, just a different kind of government."
Although Trump left office the first time after overseeing a federal execution spree, American Immigration Council senior fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick said Thursday, "Jesus Christ, I didn't think we'd actually get to the 'public executions' stage of Trump's project to roll back the last 100 years of societal development."
Corbin Trent, co-founder of Justice Democrats, suggested it could backfire for the Republican administration. He wrote: "I'm completely in favor of this. I think more of this would go a long way to ending the death penalty."
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After Two Botched Attempts, UN Experts Urge Tennessee Not to Try to Execute Christa Pike Again
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk also argued that "the death penalty has no place in any society."
Oct 01, 2026
United Nations human rights experts on Thursday joined the growing chorus of people around the world outraged by Tennessee's two botched attempts to execute Christa Pike and called on the state to refrain from trying again to kill the 50-year-old woman.
After a last-minute legal battle, the US Supreme Court allowed Tennessee to execute Pike for the 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer. The state tried to do so at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville on Wednesday night—with two injections of pentobarbital, each of which was supposed to be lethal—but she survived and was transported by ambulance to a hospital.
A doctor interviewed by WSMV 4 Nashville's Steve Mehling suggested that an IV could have been placed incorrectly—and, as the journalist summarized: "Pike may suffer from a flurry of long-term effects. This includes skin necrosis, permanent scarring, functional impairment, compartment syndrome, chronic neuropathic pain, and pigmentation change at the injection site."
As of Thursday afternoon, Pike's attorneys said that she was still alive, but in critical condition, "and receiving lifesaving medical care," according to The Washington Post. Republican Gov. Bill Lee, who had previously declined to grant clemency in this case, has since halted executions in Tennessee and ordered an investigation into the state's second botched killing of an inmate this year.
Several UN special rapporteurs and members of the Working Group on Discrimination Against Women and Girls had urged US authorities to commute Pike's sentence last month, saying that her "execution would mark the culmination of a trajectory of severe physical and psychological suffering marked by childhood abuse and nearly three decades of solitary confinement on death row."
After Wednesday's botched attempts, some of the same experts weighed in again: "Christa Pike was denied clemency. One hour before her execution, a court halted it. The Supreme Court then lifted the stay. She was injected twice with lethal drugs and survived. Forcing a person to face death, have it suspended, and then face it again within hours amounts to barbaric and torturous punishment, compounded in this case by decades of psychological torture on death row."
"The state of Tennessee must immediately and irrevocably end this cruelty by commuting Christa Pike's death sentence," said Morris Tidball-Binz, special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions; Margaret Satterthwaite, special rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers; Pau Pérez-Sales, special rapporteur on torture; Mariângela Batista Galvão Simão, special rapporteur on the right to health; Reem Alsalem, special rapporteur on violence against women and girls; and working group members Claudia Flores, Ivana Krstić, Dorothy Estrada-Tanck, and Haina Lu.
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk went even further, arguing against capital punishment.
"The case of Christa Pike lays bare multiple reasons why the death penalty should be abolished," said a statement from his office. "The prolonged suffering—physical and mental—arising from multiple failed execution attempts is abhorrent, and cruel. And there are key fair trial questions still unresolved."
Türk is calling on "state authorities not to pursue any further attempt to execute Pike," his office said. "We are also troubled by the increase in the number of executions in the United States. The death penalty has no place in any society."
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'Inhumane, Barbaric, Torturous': Christa Pike Survives Twice-Botched Execution in Tennessee
“This event is the worst we’ve seen and unlike any other botched execution in the modern era,” said Robin Maher, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. “There is no precedent.”
Oct 01, 2026
The botched execution of Christa Pike in Tennessee on Wednesday night was met with disgust and outrage by death penalty opponents who have long argued that not only is murder by the state morally wrong, but the government's inability to carry out such punishments humanely has been shown time and time again to result in horrific human rights violations and barbaric scenes of cruelty inside the nation's prison walls.
Pike, sentenced to death in Tennessee over the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, survived two otherwise lethal injections of pentobarbital on Wednesday while strapped to a gurney by prison officials at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville.
"Tonight the State of Tennessee once again failed to carry out a lawful execution," said Pike's attorneys—Randy Spivey and Kelly Gleason from the TN Office of the Post Conviction Defender, and Stephen Ferrell and Luke Ihnen from Federal Defender Services of Eastern Tennessee—in a statement late Wednesday.
"We take no pleasure in being right," her lawyer's continued, "but the concerns raised by Ms. Pike proved to be true: difficult vein access, blown veins, degraded pentobarbital, no emergency medical care available when things inevitably go wrong, all under a protocol that remains veiled in secrecy. Christa is being treated at a nearby hospital. We have not been informed as to her condition."
Pike's legal team said she remained alive after two rounds of the lethal injection, with witnesses reporting confusion after the first dose resulted in Pike raising her head to speak to those who administered the drug and falling into a deep sleep, but audibly snoring and still alive, after the second.
“This event is the worst we’ve seen and unlike any other botched execution in the modern era,” said Robin Maher, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. “There is no precedent.”
It was the second botched execution in Tennessee this year, reports The New York Times. According to the newspaper:
The apparent failure came after dueling court rulings delayed the execution of [Pike] by about nine hours. The state had raced to go ahead with the execution before the day ended and to avoid having to reschedule.
In a pair of emergency legal filings, Ms. Pike’s lawyers said that while two syringes of pentobarbital, the lethal drug, had been administered, Ms. Pike had not lost consciousness. She still had a heartbeat, they said, and was audibly snoring.
The execution of Pike, who court records show was subject to pervasive abuse throughout her childhood and was only 18 years old when she carried out the brutal crime, had been put on hold earlier Wednesday only to be reinstated by the US Supreme Court later in the day.
Amnesty International USA condemned the treatment of Pike and called for an end to all capital punishment in the United States.
"Tennessee’s botched attempt to execute Christa Pike, as witnessed by her attorneys, demonstrates why the death penalty truly is the ultimate cruel, inhuman, and degrading punishment," the group said. "All execution methods are inhumane and unacceptable. The death penalty must be abolished, everywhere."
Republican Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee announced after the botched execution that the state’s other remaining execution for 2026 would be put on hold and ordered “a comprehensive, third-party review to determine exactly what occurred” in the attempted killing of Pike.
Pike, said human rights advocate Evad HaAm, "survived a completed lethal-injection attempt. That is not a stay. It is a botched execution."
While Pike's current medical status and chance for survival remain unknown, further attempts by the state to kill her, he argued, "would violate the Eighth Amendment prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment."
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