On Nov. 30, 2022, 7-year-old Athena Strand was kidnapped and murdered by FedEx driver Tanner Horner. Horner was at Strand’s house delivering a package when he instead abducted and then later murdered the young girl.
When arrested by police, he confessed to the murder-kidnapping and led police to the place where he had disposed of her body.
Beyond a confession, the FedEx vehicle Horner used in the abduction and murder recorded video and audio of the entire graphic ordeal. On video, Horner is seen picking Athena up, placing her into the truck and shutting the door. Audio from inside the truck records Athena asking Horner if he is a kidnapper, followed by Horner’s threat to hurt her if she screamed. Horner then covers the camera to block video recording, but the audio continues with Horner saying, “You’re really pretty. You know that?” Then, for more than an hour, the audio records the sounds of Athena’s murder.
Josh Olds
Horner pleaded guilty and, on May 5 was sentenced to death by the state of Texas. This met the definition of an open-and-shut case. The guilty man admitted he did it. He led police to the body. There’s video of the kidnapping and audio of the murder.
Into all this, political commentator Matt Walsh shared a still image from the FedEx video showing Horner driving his truck with Athena behind him in frame. He wrote: “I am challenging any death penalty opponent — there are millions of them, allegedly — to step up to the plate right now and explain why this guy should not be executed. His guilt is established beyond any doubt whatsoever. His crime is utterly savage and heinous. Tell us why he doesn’t deserve to die. Go ahead.”
I am a nonviolent pacifist. I believe the death penalty should be abolished. Yes, even for those like Tanner Horner.
I’m not going to treat this like some sort of challenge or game. I am fairly confident Walsh is not asking for this in good faith. But it is cases like these that test the bounds of my nonviolent convictions. So, I write this for myself as a reminder. I write for those who will read Walsh’s challenge and ask for the same defense in good faith. And I write for those who will see this as a justified use of the death penalty.
“Opposition to the death penalty is not rooted in sympathy for murderers or callousness toward their victims.”
Opposition to the death penalty is not rooted in sympathy for murderers or callousness toward their victims. It is not borne out of a desire to be soft on crime or from a naivete that pretends human beings never intend to do awful things to one another.
There are people in this world who commit horrific acts and they cannot be justified. There are people in this world who cannot safely live in society. There are evil acts that irreparably rupture lives, relationships, families and communities. Athena, her family and her community deserve justice.
Opposition to the death penalty is rooted in the fundamental belief that killing does not bring about that justice.
The common defense: 1 in 8 are innocent
The most common argument used against the death penalty is that it often is applied in cases where the evidence against the alleged perpetrator is flimsy at best. Since 1973, there have been 1,664 people killed by state execution. During that same time frame, there have been 202 exonerations of individuals on Death Row.
Of those scheduled for execution, one in eight later have been found innocent. And that’s only the ones where proof of innocence led to a reexamination of their case.
The execution of a human being is too serious a thing to get wrong one out of every eight times. An 88% success rate is a healthy B+ in the high school chem lab, but it is an abject failure in the execution chamber.
“We do not tolerate 88% accuracy in things like parachutes, anesthesia or air traffic control.”
We begrudgingly tolerate 88% accuracy when Netflix recommends movies and when autocorrect guesses words, grousing that it should be higher. But we do not tolerate 88% accuracy in things like parachutes, anesthesia or air traffic control. The more serious and irreversible the consequence, the less tolerance of error we should have. On this basis alone, our continued tolerance of the death penalty is morally reprehensible.
The common defense: The death penalty is racially and economically biased
The second most common argument against the death penalty is how it is applied inordinately to people of color. African Americans comprise 41% of the people on Death Row and 34% of those executed, despite being only 14% of the American population.
Folks like Matt Walsh often point to statistics like this to claim proof that Black people are inherently violent. Walsh, of course, refuses to consider the effects systemic injustice and social inequality might have on both instances of violence and its policing.
The truth is the death penalty often is used to carry on the tradition of lynching.
In 2025, 75% of defendants against whom state prosecutors sought the penalty were people of color. In one study, a group of psychologists found that “in cases involving a white victim, the more stereotypically Black a defendant is perceived to be, the more likely that person is sentenced to death.”
The U.S. Supreme Court has defended this bias, writing in McClesky v. Kemp that such “apparent (racial) disparities in sentencing are an inevitable part of our criminal justice system.”
Poverty also plays a major role in death penalty cases. The Equal Justice Initiative has said, “The death penalty is mostly imposed on poor people who cannot afford to hire an effective lawyer.” Public defenders often are unequipped, overworked, underpaid and inexperienced. Alabama, a primary death penalty state, has a Death Row that is overwhelmingly poor, with 95% of Death Row inmates being indigent.
“It is often weaponized against the most vulnerable.”
If being white and/or having adequate counsel effectively ameliorates the chances that an individual will receive the death penalty, that penalty cannot then be seen as just. The stated purpose of the death penalty is for it to be justice against the “worst of the worst.” Instead, it is often weaponized against the most vulnerable.
The practical defense: The death penalty is expensive and not a deterrent
As I’m sure Walsh would point out, these common defenses don’t really have much to do with the specific case for which he’s asking a defense. Tanner Horner is undeniably guilty. He is definitely not the one in eight. This is a rare case where we know without a doubt he did it.
Also, Horner is white. There’s no racial bias going on here. And, from at least my cursory understanding, his legal counsel adequately argued against the death penalty citing mitigating circumstances in Horner’s life.
But I still want to mention these defenses because of what Walsh is trying to do with his tweet. He’s trying to downplay the reality of the vast majority of death penalty cases by focusing on this outlier. He’s trying to justify the injustice inherent in the death penalty by presenting this case as representative of all death penalty cases. He’s effectively saying, “See, we need the death penalty because of guys like this. Never mind who else it unjustly kills.”
“He’s trying to downplay the reality of the vast majority of death penalty cases by focusing on this outlier.”
So maybe Walsh would consider something practical. In 2016, the U.S. Department of Justice concluded: “There is no proof that the death penalty deters criminals.” In fact, there is an overwhelming consensus among criminologists that the death penalty is not an effective deterrent.
One survey of criminologists found only 5.3% of respondents felt the threat of the death penalty had lowered the murder rate and 0% said it was “totally accurate” that the death penalty significantly reduces the number of homicides. The death penalty does not make us safer. It does not reduce crime. The threat of the death penalty did not save Athena Strand, and implementing it will not bring her back.
Executing somebody is expensive. Move aside morality and ethics or discussions of guilt and innocence, the death penalty is economically irrational. It costs between 2.5 to 5 times more than non-death penalty cases.
A 2011 study of California’s Death Row found between 1978 and 2011, California taxpayers spent $4 billion more in prosecuting death penalty cases than if those cases had been prosecuted using life without parole. During this time, California executed 13 people.
There’s also the fact that many death penalty sentences are overturned.
A Washington Post review found of the 8,466 death sentences from 1973 to 2013, 3,194 were overturned and 392 convicts had their sentences commuted. Statistically, death penalty cases are a more expensive route to life in prison. American taxpayers pay a premium just to potentially kill its criminals. This money does not resurrect victims or support victims’ families. It does not make our streets safer or prevent circumstances leading to violent crime. Rather, it clogs our court system with expensive and time-consuming litigation, creates specialized prisons and diverts money from correctional programs that actually prevent and deter crime.
The moral defense: Death is not the way of Jesus
Yet, I feel it’s not a practical or economical defense that Walsh is looking for. Walsh’s defense of the death penalty is not based on economics or even his politics, but on his theology. He’s called the death penalty “prescribed by God,” believing it to be the state’s role to serve as an agent of righteous retribution.
Walsh has stated: “As a society, we have two choices, OK? Only two. Either we are going to inflict severe, merciless suffering on the criminals — the violent degenerates, the sociopathic predators, the dysfunctional, the barbaric — or we’re going to allow severe, merciless suffering to be inflicted on the innocent.” He has even gone so far as to call the death penalty “pro-life” because it values the lives that are destroyed by what he calls “heinous, barbaric, animalistic predators.”
His moral and theological framework reflects a deeply retributive philosophy of justice — one rooted in the belief that evil deserves proportionate suffering in return. It is a vision shared by 75% of white American evangelicals. In biblical terms, it’s a “life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot” (Deuteronomy 19:21).
But not everything that is biblical is Christlike.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus reveals this violence-for-violence exchange is not the way of God’s kingdom. N.T. Wright translates it this way “You heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you: Don’t use violence to resist evil!” (Matthew 5:38-39a).
“Violence can lead to vengeance; it cannot lead to justice.”
Walsh’s desire to inflict violence on the violent is, in a word, antichrist. Violence can lead to vengeance; it cannot lead to justice.
And this was the example of Jesus in his life and in his death. In Walsh’s theology, the crucifixion of Jesus is seen as the ultimate example of retributive justice. Not because Jesus was guilty, but because he takes on the sin of the world. As the sin-bearer, he then faces the retributive wrath of God. Rather than take away from this that we should be like Jesus — the one who absorbs violence rather than inflicting it, the one who offers grace and healing — Walsh instead envisions the state as an arm of this violent God he has created.
But if we follow the crucified Christ, we cannot remain content with systems that disguise their desire for vengeance, power and bloodlust as a system of justice. People who claim the name of Christ, who also claim the power to kill, should at least wrestle honesty with the fact that they worship a man executed by the state while crowds insisted his death was justified.
To stand against the death penalty does not mean being naïve about evil. It does not require releasing violent offenders back into society or pretending accountability is unnecessary. To stand against the death penalty means committing to breaking systems and cycles of violence rather than perpetuating and sanctifying them.
Walsh digs into Athena Strand’s murder because he knows it touches us emotionally. We want this man to die. His challenge is rhetorically effective because it sets aside moral and practical reasoning and instead substitutes emotional escalation. He doesn’t ask if the death penalty creates a safer or more just society; whether executions are applied fairly and coherently; or if the machinery of death can be untangled from the webs of racism, classism, prosecutorial and police misconduct, or political spectacle.
Instead he asks us: “Look at what this man did. Don’t you want him to die?”
“These ‘worst cases’ are used to emotionally insulate the entire system from scrutiny.”
These “worst cases” are used to emotionally insulate the entire system from scrutiny. Forget how much it costs. Forget how often folks are actually innocent. Forget how it is applied unfairly and arbitrarily. This guy deserves it. This guy justifies it. Public outrage toward one outrageous act becomes political cover for a system that has targeted the poor, the marginalized and the mentally ill.
If justice is to be anything more than revenge, then it must be capable of imagining a response to evil that does not mirror the evil itself. Tanner Horner never should walk free again. He should be held accountable for the devastation he has caused for the rest of his life. But no atrocity — not even this one — gives us the moral right to kill. Our grief and rage must be used to shape us into a society that believes there is a better, more Christlike way to achieve justice than by offering death.
Even if every practical criticism of the death penalty disappeared tomorrow — even if every condemned prisoner were unquestionably guilty, every sentence fairly applied, every trial economically efficient, every execution proved to deter crime — I would still oppose it. Because it is not the way of Jesus, who calls us to resist evil without resorting to violence.
Josh Olds is a public theologian and pastor for those disillusioned with institutional church. He is the creator of the small-group video series “Year on the Mountaintop” and a featured contributor to Fostering Hope: A Prayerbook for Fostering and Adoptive Parents. Follow his work on Facebook or at JoshOlds.com.