In an effort to persuade Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders not to proceed with nitrogen gas executions, a number of local Christian leaders from various religions assembled at the Arkansas Capitol Thursday morning. In March, Sanders approved a new state law that permits the use of nitrogen gas hypoxia for executions; the statute became operative on August 5.
The absence of oxygen in the body is known as hypoxia. In a nitrogen gas execution, a mask is fitted over the prisoner’s face, forcing them to breathe in pure nitrogen gas.
Forty religious leaders from throughout the state signed the letter, including two Buddhist and one Jewish leader, as well as Bishop Anthony Taylor of the Catholic Diocese of Little Rock. Using Catholic teaching to support their position, the clergy want the governor to look into the use of nitrogen executions as torture.
Pastor Betsy Singleton-Snyder of Pinnacle View United Methodist Church stated, “As religious leaders, we come today with one united voice.” We must not proceed with this unproven, risky, and extremely concerning execution strategy.
According to Singleton-Snyder, they are urging the state to look for more compassionate and restorative ways to deal with crime and to pay attention to data and research as well as moral and spiritual guidance that might help elected officials make decisions regarding the death sentence.
The United Methodist Church formally opposes the death penalty because it violates the sanctity of life and is incompatible with the gospel, according to Singleton-Snyder and Rev. Paul Beedle of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Little Rock.
According to Beedle, even if everyone is subject to the law, we should use it to be the best versions of ourselves and to treat one another with respect.
Instead of making us our finest selves, the death sentence does the exact opposite. According to Beedle, it turns the state become the murderer of its people. Some people will claim that you will discover a more humanitarian method for us to murder one another if you actually conduct the investigation. If you truly look into it, you’ll discover laws that don’t put us in that situation in the first place, I say.
Arkansas has joined Louisiana, Alabama, Oklahoma, and Mississippi in allowing the use of this method of execution under the new state law. A different group of Little Rock anti-death penalty demonstrators last week gave a demonstration of the appearance of an execution mask made of nitrogen gas and the process of gassing someone to death.
Witnesses have said that the procedure causes anguish and can take minutes rather than seconds to kill someone, even though state officials in various states have portrayed it as swift and painless. The United Nations has compared nitrogen executions to torture and stated that the technique is unproven. Before Alabama carried out the nation’s first nitrogen gas execution last year, the UN denounced the state’s use of the gas.
Alabama and Louisiana are the only two states that have employed nitrogen gas executions thus far. Five prisoners have already been executed in Alabama using this technique, and a second one is planned for late October. The state is currently facing a lawsuit over the procedure. Jessie Hoffman was the victim of Louisiana’s first nitrogen gas execution, which took place in March.
Despite having 23 death row inmates, Arkansas has not carried out an execution since 2017. To date, state authorities have not made any announcements regarding the scheduling of nitrogen gas executions.
Ten death row inmates filed a complaint in Pulaski County Circuit Court contesting the validity of the nitrogen procedure on the same day the new state statute entered into force.
Rev. Jacqui Buschor of Faith Lutheran Church stated during the event held at the Capitol on Thursday that this execution method fundamentally weaponizes the first gift that God has given to all living beings, which is our very breath.
Buschor begged Sanders to think again before using nitrogen suffocation.
“Smothering the breath of life from any one of God’s children does not make Arkansas better, safer, or more holy,” she added.
The director of the Catholic Diocese of Little Rock’s prison ministry office, Father Phillip Reeves, stated that life must be preserved at all stages since God has given all people dignity.
According to Reeves, there is growing recognition [in the Catholic Church] that a person’s dignity endures even after committing extremely terrible crimes.
Reeves compared the transition of the biblical apostle Paul from a persecutor of Christians to the death row inmates at the Varner Unit in south Arkansas who had graduated from seminary school and are now teaching others, demonstrating that even those who have done damage can go on to do good things.
According to Reeves, these three men, who were formerly viewed as useless and disposable, are now providing convicts with care in ways that chaplains are unable to.
State executions, according to Rev. Denise Donnell of New Beginnings Church of Central Arkansas, are a hypocritical act.
According to Donnell, it is absurd to kill someone to convey the idea that we think killing is bad.
According to Donnell, Jesus was a revolutionary who opposed social inequalities and was lynched as a result. She compared Sanders’ harsh and violent understanding of Christianity to that of the Ku Klux Klan and questioned it.
However, Donnell asserted, “I don’t think God believes that.”
Donnell added that as a disproportionate number of death row inmates are Black, impoverished, and/or suffering from a mental illness, it is impossible to overlook the racial, ableist, and class factors that determine who is eligible for the death penalty.
Violence only breeds more, more severe violence, according to Second Baptist Church of Little Rock pastor Preston Clegg. He stated that although criminals must be held accountable, this should not be done in a manner that feeds the cycle of violence.
According to Clegg, peacemaking becomes increasingly foreign to us the more we permit violence and torture to mold our moral imaginations. How can this be healed? is a question we must learn to ask. Not just, What’s the punishment for this? Because we are unable to distinguish between the two, we will continue to suffer.
According to Methodist Family Health’s Rev. Hammett Evans, while working in Georgia, he witnessed salvation firsthand via Kelly Gissendaner’s experience. Gissendaner murdered her husband and was sentenced to death and executed by lethal injection in 2015; she was the only woman on death row in Georgia at the time.
Evans, who knew Gissendaner, claimed that she tutored other prisoners while pursuing a degree in theology.
Evans stated that Kelly’s tragedy concerns him as a pastor because it illustrates the consequences of choosing execution before atonement. Arkansas now wants to use nitrogen gas, which witnesses have called horrifying, in our execution procedures, causing prisoners to convulse and gasp for air. Not only are we taking lives, but we are doing it in ways that denigrate the divine image that exists inside each and every individual.
According to Evans, the religious leaders there are against nitrogen executions because they think that everyone can be saved and that change is possible.
According to Evans, “we think that true justice heals rather than kills.”
After the press conference, which was held at the Old Supreme Court room in the Capitol, the faith leaders walked down the hall to the governor s office, where they handed the signed letter to a woman who worked at the front desk.
After the event was over, as the religious leaders stood outside of the governor s office talking, Sanders and her staff emerged. They quickly walked past the crowd and headed down the stairs, not acknowledging anyone.
It’s dragon-slaying time!
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