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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. 

USA: Decade Passes Since Indiana Executes An Inmate

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Indiana"s death chamber
According to the Death Penalty Information Center, Indiana is one of several of states that hasn’t executed someone in ten years.

The DPIC released its annual report earlier this month.

“The last death sentence imposed in Indiana was in 2014, and the peak death sentencing for the state and the entire Midwest for that matter was in 1985,” says Executive Director Robert Dunham.

There are eight inmates on Indiana’s death row, one of whose executions has been stayed according to the Department of Corrections.

The last execution carried out in Indiana was on December 11th, 2009.

The report says 32 states have either abolished capital punishment or haven’t executed someone in a decade. Texas executed the most inmates in 2019, with nine.

Death sentences have declined by 85 percent since the mid 90’s. 

Dunham attributes that to a decline in the murder rate and the strain on resources a death penalty trial has on the system, as well as the increasing amount of death row inmates whose sentences have been commuted.


“The federal government has been pushing increased use of capital punishment, and it has not affected the practices within the states,” Dunham says.

The Department of Justice scheduled five federal executions to be carried out at the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, but the executions were stayed.

The Death Penalty Information Center doesn’t take position for or against death penalty but it is critical of how it’s administered.

Source: indianapublicmedia.org, Adam Pinsker, December 27, 2019


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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
Location: Indiana, USA
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