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U.S. | 'I comfort death row inmates in their final moments - the execution room is like a house of horrors'

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Reverend Jeff Hood, 40, wants to help condemned inmates 'feel human again' and vows to continue his efforts to befriend murderers in spite of death threats against his family A reverend who has made it his mission to comfort death row inmates in their final days has revealed the '"moral torture" his endeavor entails. Reverend Dr. Jeff Hood, 40, lives with his wife and five children in Little Rock, Arkansas. But away from his normal home life, he can suddenly find himself holding the shoulder of a murderer inside an execution chamber, moments away from the end of their life. 

The Secret Shame of the Death Penalty

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Welcome to the macabre absurdity of the modern American death penalty. Of course, death by lethal injection became the standard method only because earlier methods — from hanging to the firing squad to the electric chair — were deemed too “barbaric,” not because the state was taking a human life, but because the method of execution offended the sensitivities of the public in whose name the killing is carried out.

By now, it is clear that lethal injection is no less problematic than all the other methods, and that there is no reason to continue using it. But capital punishment does not operate in the land of reason or logic; it operates in a perpetual state of secrecy and shame.

In most cases, it is conducted late at night, behind closed doors, and as antiseptically as possible. Were it to be done otherwise, Americans would recoil in horror, as they did after the debacle in Oklahoma. Mr. Bucklew’s unusual case shows that death-penalty supporters can’t have it both ways. If they want the United States to remain a global outlier by killing its citizens, they must accept that there are no clean executions.


Source: The Editorial Board, The Opinion Pages, The New York Times, May 22, 2014
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U.S. | 'I comfort death row inmates in their final moments - the execution room is like a house of horrors'

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Reverend Jeff Hood, 40, wants to help condemned inmates 'feel human again' and vows to continue his efforts to befriend murderers in spite of death threats against his family A reverend who has made it his mission to comfort death row inmates in their final days has revealed the '"moral torture" his endeavor entails. Reverend Dr. Jeff Hood, 40, lives with his wife and five children in Little Rock, Arkansas. But away from his normal home life, he can suddenly find himself holding the shoulder of a murderer inside an execution chamber, moments away from the end of their life. 
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