Death penalty opponents in Tennessee got a jump on this year’s abolition efforts by urging the state to stop all executions including four already scheduled in 2026.
Tennesseans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty gathered with community and religious leaders in December to remind Gov. Bill Lee and other elected officials of the futility of capital punishment.
“It’s a system that is costly, biased, unreliable, does not make us safer, does not address the real needs of most victims and that is not aligned with our faith’s teaching that calls us to a way of being in the world where mercy is always the final word,” said Stacy Rector, a Presbyterian minister and executive director of the anti-death penalty and victims care group.
According to Death Penalty Information Center, Tennessee has scheduled four of the nation’s 15 executions announced so far in 2026. Ohio leads with five, followed by Texas with four and Oklahoma with one.
Stacy Rector speaks at the press event.
But more are sure to come if the 47 executions in 2025 are any indication. Florida led the trend with 19, followed with five each in Alabama, South Carolina and Texas. Tennessee was next in line with three and just ahead of Arizona, Indiana, Mississippi and Oklahoma with two. Louisiana executed one inmate last year, the center reported.
While the plea did not dissuade the state from executing Harold Wayne Nichols by lethal injection Dec. 11, future executions must be opposed not only to spare the condemned but also to prevent further harm to victims’ and prisoners’ families, faith leaders said.
“There is no doubt that a society can hold persons accountable for their actions. The common good requires common action in matters of justice. The alternative is social chaos,” the state’s three Episcopal bishops said in a joint statement. “The question is whether in the process of holding people accountable by the death penalty, social cohesion and the good of society will be maintained or undermined by the process itself.”
It definitely will not, bishops Phoebe Roaf of West Tennessee, John Bauerschmidt of Middle Tennessee and Brian Cole of East Tennessee explained.
The death penalty is morally corrosive due to its unequal application to people of color and the poor, and its ineffectiveness as a deterrent to crime makes it tragically wasteful and demoralizing, they said. “The death penalty degrades our societal sensitivity to violence. It cannot deprive anyone of their humanity even in the course of depriving them of life; but this ultimate penalty can coarsen and debase the members of a society that exercises it.”
The state’s three Catholic bishops — J. Mark Spalding of Nashville, David P. Talley of Memphis and Mark Beckman of Knoxville — described death penalty opposition as a matter of faithfulness.
“The Catholic Church upholds the sacredness of every human life, even the life of one who is guilty of serious crimes.”
“The Catholic Church upholds the sacredness of every human life, even the life of one who is guilty of serious crimes. To take a life in punishment denies the image of God in which every person is made. The gospel calls not for vengeance, but for mercy.”
Even those who violently take life are worthy of God’s mercy, said Timothy Holton, a United Methodist minister: “No one is beyond Christ’s love, even those who do terrible things. As someone whose loved ones were murdered, I urge Gov. Lee to stop this execution and to use our resources instead to support victims and their families.”
Sherard Edington, executive presbyter for the Presbytery of Middle Tennessee (PCUSA), added that faith-based opposition to the death penalty is nothing new.
“I’m especially fond of a statement made by the denomination back in 1959 that says, “Use of the death penalty tends to brutalize the society that condones it.’ And it does. Our God calls us to reject brutality and instead strive to develop communities of compassion and mercy.”