Faith Leaders Speak Against Death Penalty, Urge Arkansas Governor Not to Restart Executions

by Tess Vrbin, Arkansas Advocate

Arkansas faith leaders petitioned Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Thursday not to restart executions in the state in light of a new law allowing the use of nitrogen gas suffocation for the death penalty.

Seven clergy members of different Christian denominations held a news conference at the state Capitol and spoke against both Act 302 of 2025 and the death penalty itself before delivering a letter to Sanders’ office.

“Together we prayerfully urge you to investigate the problems associated with execution by means of gas suffocation and continue to recognize the value of every human life,” said the letter, signed by 43 faith leaders — 41 Christian, one Jewish and one Buddhist.

Arkansas became the fifth state to permit nitrogen gas executions when state lawmakers and Sanders approved Act 302 in March. The state executed four men within a week in 2017 in advance of its lethal injection drug supply expiring, but no executions have happened since.

Lawmakers who supported Act 302 said the state is responsible for ensuring the punishment of violent criminals and carrying out executions will be easier if lethal injection is not the only option.

There are about two dozen Arkansans currently on death row, according to the state corrections department’s website. Ten of those inmates filed a lawsuit against Act 302 on Aug. 5, the day the law went into effect.

The suit argues that Act 302 unconstitutionally violates Arkansas’ separation of powers doctrine in three ways — it delegates to the corrections department and its director “absolute, unfettered discretion” to choose between lethal injection and nitrogen hypoxia, it provides no standards to constrain the use of nitrogen hypoxia and it impairs the judicial function by imposing and modifying prior sentences.

Thursday’s speakers presented a moral argument against the death penalty, asserting that all humans are made in God’s image, “even people who have done horrific things,” said the Rev. Phillip Reaves, the Catholic Diocese of Little Rock’s prison ministry director.

Southern states carry out more executions than other regions, and most prisoners on death row are Black, said Rev. Denise Donnell of the New Beginnings Church of Central Arkansas.

“When you think about the history of lynching, you realize, hey, this has a racial component,” Donnell said, pointing out that Jesus’ crucifixion was “a public spectacle” and comparing it to lynching.

Act 302 met opposition from the public, including from clergy, during the 2025 legislative session. The Rev. Jeff Hood told a House committee that the nation’s first nitrogen gas execution in Alabama in January 2024 was “horrific” and “devastating” to witness.

Arkansas lawmakers give initial approval to bill permitting nitrogen gas executions

That execution led to a lawsuit filed earlier this year. The plaintiff, an Alabama death row inmate, said Kenneth Eugene Smith’s death after several minutes of violent convulsing was “a human experiment that officials botched miserably.”

The Rev. Hammett Evans, a Methodist minister at Thursday’s press conference, said he got to know a Georgia inmate who converted to Christianity and became a pastor before her execution. He said this story “haunts” him and is a reminder that “no person is beyond redemption’s reach.”

“The state executed God’s son, and God was so opposed to that execution that God raised Jesus from the dead,” Evans said. “The Resurrection was God’s ultimate ‘no’ to the death penalty.”

Unitarian Universalist Rev. Paul Beedle, Lutheran Rev. Jacqui Bushor and Baptist leader Preston Clegg also spoke against Act 302.

“The more we allow violence and torture to shape our moral imaginations, the more alien peacemaking becomes to us,” said Clegg, pastor of Second Baptist Church in Little Rock.

Jennifer Siccardi, a receptionist at Sanders’ office, accepted the letter from the faith leaders after the press conference.

The letter suggests that the state direct resources to “preventing child abuse, providing mental health care and substance abuse treatment, and by investing in community safety programs.”

“We need to do more to help victims in the aftermath of tragedy by providing emotional and financial support and services that help promote healing and recovery, instead of focusing solely on what happens to the person who caused harm,” the letter states.

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