Two stories have been in the news recently that have reminded me why I oppose the death penalty. And honestly? The more I think about them, the more convinced I am that we need to fundamentally rethink how we approach punishment, justice, and the power we give our government.
The first story concerns the Pentagon’s plans to livestream the execution of Nidal Malik Hasan, the former Army psychiatrist convicted of killing 13 people and wounding 32 others during the 2009 Fort Hood shooting.
The second story concerns Christa Pike, a Tennessee death-row prisoner who survived a botched lethal injection on September 30, 2026. She received two doses of the execution drug but did not die. Instead, she was hospitalized and required intensive medical care. Tennessee has since suspended its remaining scheduled executions for 2026 while the state reviews what happened.
These are two very different cases, involving very different circumstances. But they have something important in common: they force us to confront what it means when the government claims the authority to decide who lives and who dies.
And I have something to say about that.
I believe the death penalty is cruel and unusual punishment. More specifically, I believe it is one of the cruelest punishments our government can legally impose, and I believe its existence represents one of the biggest contradictions in American law.
And no, I don’t need a legal expert to tell me whether I am allowed to question that contradiction.
Let’s talk about it.
The Constitution, human rights, and the contradiction at the heart of the death penalty
Let’s start with something fundamental.
The Declaration of Independence famously speaks of the unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
The Constitution, meanwhile, establishes protections for life and liberty and explicitly prohibits cruel and unusual punishment through the Eighth Amendment.
Now, here’s my question.
How can a government claim to recognize the importance of human life and liberty while simultaneously reserving the authority to deliberately end the lives of people in its custody?
Think about that for a moment.
The government tells us that human rights matter. It tells us that our freedom matters. It tells us that there are limits on what the state can do to us.
And yet, under the American criminal justice system, the government can sentence someone to death and deliberately carry out that sentence.
To me, that is an enormous contradiction.
I believe that deliberately executing a prisoner is cruel. I believe that the deliberate destruction of a human life as punishment is fundamentally incompatible with the respect for human dignity that a just society should uphold.
And I believe that the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment should be understood in a way that rejects capital punishment altogether.
I know that legal scholars, judges, constitutional lawyers, and the Supreme Court have their interpretations of the Constitution. I know that the Supreme Court has upheld the death penalty under certain circumstances.
But here’s the thing: the fact that something has been declared legally permissible does not automatically make it morally right, constitutionally consistent with the principles we claim to uphold, or worthy of continuing to exist.
Laws can be wrong. Legal interpretations can be challenged. Governments can uphold practices that future generations recognize as unjust.
The existence of a legal precedent does not mean we should stop asking questions.
And frankly, I don’t believe that ordinary people should have to defer unquestioningly to legal experts before they are allowed to recognize what they see as a fundamental contradiction.
I don’t need someone with a law degree to give me permission to question whether the government should have the power to kill people as punishment.
I don’t need the Supreme Court to tell me that human life has value.
And I don’t need a constitutional scholar to explain to me why giving the state the power to deliberately end a person’s life raises serious questions about liberty, dignity, and the limits of government authority.
I can read the principles. I can think about what they mean. I can look at how our government applies them. And I can conclude that something is deeply wrong.
That’s what having an opinion and engaging in democratic debate are all about.
To be clear, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are different documents, and the Constitution does not expressly prohibit every form of capital punishment under current Supreme Court doctrine. I’m not claiming otherwise.
I’m making a moral and constitutional argument: I believe the death penalty contradicts the foundational principles of human dignity and liberty that American government is supposed to protect, and I believe it should be abolished.
And I am not going to abandon that argument simply because the current legal system disagrees with me.
The livestreamed execution: Why does the government need to broadcast someone’s death?
Let’s look at the first story.
Nidal Malik Hasan committed a horrific act of violence at Fort Hood. Thirteen people died, and many others were wounded. Their lives mattered. Their families’ suffering matters. The consequences of that attack should never be minimized.
But I want to ask a question.
Why does the government need to livestream his execution?
What exactly does that accomplish?
Does broadcasting a person’s death somehow make justice more legitimate? Does the public need to watch the state kill someone to understand that murder has consequences?
I don’t think so.
We can hold people accountable for horrific crimes without turning their deaths into public spectacles.
We can impose severe sentences. We can protect the public. We can recognize victims and their families. We can preserve the historical record of what happened.
None of those things requires a public broadcast of an execution.
And the idea that the government should demonstrate the consequences of a crime by broadcasting someone’s death concerns me deeply.
The state already has extraordinary power. It has prisons, courts, law enforcement agencies, and a military. It has the authority to investigate crimes, arrest suspects, prosecute defendants, and impose punishments within the law.
Why should it also have the authority to deliberately end someone’s life and potentially turn that act into a public demonstration of its power?
To me, that is not a necessary component of justice.
It raises the question of whether we are trying to establish accountability or simply demonstrate that the government has the power to kill.
And I do not believe that the government should need to prove its authority by publicly displaying a human death.
This is not about whether Hasan’s crimes were serious enough to deserve punishment. They were horrific crimes, and accountability matters.
This is about whether execution, let alone a publicly broadcast execution, is an appropriate exercise of government power.
I believe the answer is no.
Christa Pike: What happens when the government gets the ultimate punishment wrong?
Now let’s talk about Christa Pike.
Pike was convicted of the 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer, a 19-year-old classmate. I am not going to minimize that crime or pretend it was anything other than horrific.
But on September 30, 2026, Tennessee attempted to execute Pike by lethal injection.
The procedure failed.
She received two doses of the execution drug and survived. She required hospitalization and intensive medical care. Tennessee subsequently suspended its remaining scheduled executions for 2026 while officials reviewed the failure.
Think about what that means.
The government decided that Pike should die. It attempted to carry out that decision. And the procedure did not work as intended.
Now, some people will say that the problem was the execution procedure, not capital punishment itself. They might argue that Tennessee needs better protocols, better training, or a different execution method.
But I think that misses the bigger issue.
When the punishment is death, there is no meaningful way to reverse the outcome once it has been carried out.
A prison sentence can be reconsidered. A wrongful conviction can be overturned. A person who has been imprisoned can potentially be released if new evidence establishes that they were wrongly convicted.
An execution cannot be undone.
And even when a person’s guilt is not in question, we still have to ask whether the government should have the authority to deliberately end that person’s life.
Pike’s case makes the physical reality of execution impossible to ignore. Executions are not merely legal decisions written on paper. They are procedures carried out by human beings, involving equipment, drugs, protocols, and the possibility of failure.
The government can investigate. Officials can promise improvements. Procedures can be revised.
But none of that changes the fundamental problem.
The state attempted to kill a person, and the procedure went catastrophically wrong.
And what happens the next time?
What happens when an innocent person is executed?
What happens when evidence emerges after someone has been killed?
What happens when a prosecutor, judge, jury, or government official makes a mistake that can never be corrected?
There is no bringing that person back.
That is why I believe capital punishment is fundamentally unjust. It gives the government a power that is irreversible, and it assumes that a fallible human institution can exercise that power without making a mistake that can never be repaired.
I do not believe that is a risk a just society should accept.
Even the worst criminals are still human beings
I know this is where some people will disagree with me.
They will point to particularly horrific crimes and argue that certain people deserve to die. They will say that some people are beyond redemption, that rehabilitation is impossible, and that execution is the only appropriate punishment.
I understand why people feel that way, especially when they think about victims and the pain their families have endured.
But I disagree that the answer to a terrible act of violence must be another deliberate act of killing by the state.
I believe people can change.
I believe people can be rehabilitated.
I believe that even when someone has committed an atrocious crime, we should not automatically conclude that their life has no remaining value or that the only way forward is to eliminate them.
Now, I am not naive. Not everyone will be rehabilitated. Some people may remain dangerous. Some may never demonstrate genuine remorse. Some individuals may need to remain incarcerated for the rest of their lives to protect other people.
I’m not suggesting that someone who commits murder should simply be released because we believe in second chances.
Rehabilitation does not mean the absence of consequences. Compassion does not mean ignoring the harm someone has caused.
We can protect society. We can impose serious sentences. We can keep dangerous people away from potential victims. We can support survivors and the families of murder victims.
We can do all of those things without executing prisoners.
And even if someone truly cannot be rehabilitated, I still don’t believe that means the government should kill them.
A person can be beyond rehabilitation without being beyond the need for humane treatment.
We don’t have to believe that every person is good. We don’t have to pretend that every person can be redeemed. We don’t even have to forgive someone who has committed a terrible crime.
But we should be very careful about deciding that a human being should cease to exist because the state has determined that their life is no longer worth preserving.
Who gets to decide where that line is drawn?
And what happens when the people making that decision get it wrong?
This is bigger than the death penalty: It’s about government power
Now, here’s where I want to connect this discussion to another issue that might initially seem unrelated: law enforcement and the military.
I don’t believe that we can or should simply eliminate all law enforcement or all military institutions overnight.
Regardless of whether we live under capitalism, socialism, communism, libertarianism, or some entirely different political and economic system, I think societies will need some way to respond to violence, protect people from immediate threats, and deal with genuine security concerns.
The exact institutions and structures might look very different depending on the system. But I don’t think we can realistically assume that every threat will disappear simply because we change our economic model or reorganize our government.
However, I also don’t believe that law enforcement officers and military personnel should be given unlimited authority or treated as though their positions automatically make their actions legitimate.
I am concerned about the extent to which we arm these institutions, normalize the use of force, and give individual officials the power to make decisions that can permanently change or end someone’s life.
And I think the death penalty belongs in this conversation.
With capital punishment, the government decides that someone should be put to death and authorizes people acting on its behalf to carry out that sentence.
With law enforcement, officers sometimes have to make split-second decisions about using force, including potentially lethal force. That authority can be necessary in genuinely dangerous circumstances, but it also carries enormous risks when it is misused or exercised without sufficient accountability.
With the military, the government authorizes the use of organized force, including lethal force, in the name of national security and other military objectives.
These situations are not identical. An officer defending someone against an immediate threat is not doing the same thing as a government carrying out a planned execution. Military operations also involve different legal frameworks and circumstances.
But they share an important question: What limits should exist on the power of government institutions to use force against human beings?
I believe that question deserves much more serious consideration than it receives.
I believe in self-defense. If someone is facing an extreme, immediate, life-threatening situation, I believe they should be able to defend themselves and others.
I am not arguing that people should simply stand there and allow themselves or others to be killed.
But I draw a distinction between defending someone against an immediate threat and deliberately killing someone after the government has taken them into custody, tried them, and placed them under its control.
In the first situation, lethal force may be necessary to stop an imminent threat to life. In the second, the government has other options for protecting the public and enforcing the law.
Why should the government need to kill someone who is already in custody and can be prevented from harming others through incarceration?
Why should we normalize the idea that the state must have the final say over whether a person deserves to remain alive?
And why should we be comfortable giving institutions more weapons, more discretion, and more power without demanding stronger safeguards in return?
These are questions about government accountability, human rights, and the relationship between individuals and the institutions that govern them.
They deserve answers.
I don’t want to abolish everything overnight. I want meaningful, systemic change.
Let me clarify something else, because I know how these conversations can go.
When I criticize the death penalty, excessive police militarization, or the use of military force, some people might assume that I want to abolish every institution associated with those things immediately.
That’s not what I’m saying.
I don’t believe we should dismantle major institutions overnight without considering what comes next, what people need to remain safe, and how we prevent new problems from emerging.
I believe meaningful change requires planning, public participation, and a willingness to rethink institutions we have often treated as permanent fixtures of society.
For the death penalty, that means moving toward ending executions and replacing them with punishments that protect the public without killing prisoners.
For law enforcement, it means reconsidering when armed responses are necessary, investing in alternatives where appropriate, improving training, establishing meaningful independent oversight, and ensuring that officers who abuse their authority are held accountable.
For the military, it means examining how force is authorized, how weapons are deployed, how civilian lives are protected, and how political leaders are held responsible for their decisions.
These changes would not all look the same, and they would not all happen at the same speed.
But I believe the direction should be clear: less unnecessary violence, stronger accountability, better protections for human life, and fewer opportunities for government power to be abused.
And I believe the public should have a meaningful say in how these institutions are structured.
Not just politicians. Not just military leaders. Not just police departments. Not just people who already hold positions of authority.
The people themselves.
Because these institutions exist within our society, and their power affects our lives.
We should be able to debate what we want them to do, what limits they should face, and what kind of society we want to build.
We should not be expected to accept every existing arrangement simply because it has been around for decades or centuries.
And we should not have to wait for another botched execution, another wrongful conviction, or another abuse of power before demanding change.
What kind of justice do we actually want?
Ultimately, I think these two stories force us to confront a bigger question.
What do we want justice to mean?
Do we want a system that responds to violence by asking how we can prevent further harm, protect the public, support victims, and hold offenders accountable?
Or do we want a system that treats the ability to inflict violence as proof of authority?
I don’t believe that justice requires us to kill people.
I don’t believe that the government should be able to execute someone simply because a court has determined that they deserve death.
I don’t believe that an execution becomes more legitimate because the public can watch it happen.
And I don’t believe that the answer to a failed execution is necessarily to improve the machinery of death and try again.
Christa Pike’s case should make us think seriously about what happens when the state attempts to carry out an irreversible punishment and something goes wrong. The proposed livestream of Nidal Malik Hasan’s execution should make us question why the public needs to witness the government killing a person at all.
Again, I am not minimizing the crimes in either case. I am not asking anyone to forget the victims. And I am not arguing that people who commit horrific acts should face no consequences.
I am arguing that there are limits to what the government should be allowed to do, even in the name of justice.
We can protect society without executing prisoners. We can recognize the suffering of victims without making another person’s death the centerpiece of our response. We can maintain law enforcement and military institutions while demanding that they operate within strict limits and remain accountable to the public.
And we can acknowledge that some people may never be rehabilitated without concluding that the state should kill them.
I believe that human life has value even when the person living it has done something terrible. I believe that the possibility of error should make us cautious about irreversible punishments. And I believe that government power should always be subject to scrutiny, restraint, and democratic accountability.
The government should not have an unlimited right to decide who lives and who dies. And the fact that the law currently permits capital punishment does not mean we should stop questioning whether it belongs in a society that claims to value human rights and liberty.
I believe the death penalty is cruel and unusual punishment. I believe it is a profound moral contradiction in American law. And I believe that we should move toward abolishing it, rather than continuing to defend it simply because our legal system has historically permitted it.
Not necessarily by tearing everything down tomorrow.
But by deliberately, thoughtfully, and persistently changing the systems that put human lives at unnecessary risk.
Because if we truly care about justice, then we should care about the limits of the power we use in its name.
And if we truly care about human life, that principle should not disappear just because the person standing before us has done something terrible.
The question isn’t whether the government has the legal authority to execute people under current law. The question is whether a government that claims to respect human life should have that authority in the first place.
That’s where I stand.
What do you think? Should the government have the power to execute prisoners, or should we move toward a system that protects society without giving the state the authority to deliberately end a person’s life?