Jul 24, 2026
by Justin Randall Phillips
Oklahoma’s botched execution of Clayton Lockett, the second such example of incompetence in just over four months, has re-ignited the national debate over capital punishment. Evangelicals from across the hermeneutical and ideological spectrum weighed in, notably including responses from Shane Claiborne, Jonathan Merritt, Rachel Held Evans, Al Mohler, Samuel Rodriguez, and Gabriel Salguero, to name but a few. Their responses revealed principled convictions on the death penalty: God prohibits Christians from supporting bloodshed of any form; God mandates the death penalty to punish evildoers; or God may permit capital punishment but administering it justly requires close attention by vigilant citizens.
As one trained in Christian ethics, I value principled conversations, but being in the death penalty repeal movement raises questions about the practicality of having the same principled debates over and over. In other words, the likelihood of us “converting” each other theologically on the death penalty is quite slim, that is, assuming theology ever entered into one’s consideration of the matter. After all, my own conversion on the death penalty was emotional, first, and only later theological. As a teenager I watched the film adaptation of Sister Helen Prejean’s Dead Man Walking and left the theater changed, which is to say I adopted a new position based largely on little more than an emotional response to a movie. Since then, my core conviction about the death penalty has remained the same, but my reasons have changed to the distinctly theological . . . which I will not go into here.
The point is that our continual clash over competing theological principles might actually create an impediment to carefully considering the facts of the death penalty. In 2014, thirty-eight years after the death penalty was reinstated – supposedly reformed to account for its previous failures – we still have a policy inconsistently applied based on race and class, shrouded in government secrecy, and too expensive to maintain. Furthermore, any policy that could result in the death of an innocent person provides particularly stubborn testimony to the necessity for its repeal.
Consider the plight of Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam, a professing Christian, who faces the prospect of overseeing ten executions the next two years. Recently, while speaking at an evangelical conference, Haslam was asked how his Christian faith would inform his decision on these executions. He replied, “I can’t honestly answer when it comes to 11 o’clock the night before exactly what that would feel like and look like.” I find Haslam’s promise to pray during each case to be a welcome contrast to those who glibly suggest, as one state legislator has, that although “Our job is not to judge. Our job is to arrange the meeting between the (defendant) and the creator, for him to judge.”
Governor Haslam has many facts to ponder beyond just theology or personal feelings. Much has changed in the public opinion since I walked out of the movie theater drying my eyes. At that time, 1996, 78 percent of Americans supported capital punishment for those convicted of murder. Today, support has slipped to 55 percent nationally. The political landscape is shifting, too. No longer is the death penalty a strictly liberal issue, as conservative opposition has emerged on consistently pro-life grounds combined with a healthy skepticism of the government’s ability to fairly adjudicate who should live or die. Many conservatives are also troubled by Tennessee’s efforts to conceal the source of lethal injection drugs, as other states have done likewise, prompting legal challenges by death row inmates. States fear that if the source of their drugs were made public these companies would lose business or face harassment.
In this age of austerity, Tennesseans must consider whether or not it can afford the death penalty. While it sounds counterintuitive, maintaining the capital punishment system is more expensive than alternatives forms of sentencing, including life without parole. Cost studies in multiple states reveal that capital trials are more expensive than non-capital trials, in some cases four times as expensive, as shown by the latest study in Kansas. Why is this? The stakes are raised the moment the state pursues death: longer jury selections, more expert testimony, two phases (the trial and sentencing phase) cost the taxpayers. If the defendant has a public defender, then we are literally paying for both sides of the trial, where most of the expense occurs, not during the appeals process. Revenue-strapped states like Tennessee must sacrifice services for those with intellectual disabilities, pay raises for teachers, etc. while the death penalty survives.
The increasing number of Christians who acknowledge the need for criminal justice reform should also be aware of the unfair application of the death penalty to the poor and people of color. For instance, the vast majority of Tennessee’s death row could not afford their own defense at trial, which means that they were likely assigned overworked, under-resourced public defenders. Race factors into death sentences for homicide convictions, as well. Several studies show that far more death convictions are sought and imposed for defendants accused of killing white victims than victims of color, even though white victims makeup only half of all homicide victims. Even simple geography matters: Consider that only 2 % of all U.S. counties account for a majority of the total death row population. In fact, of the top fifteen counties for executions, eleven are in Texas or Oklahoma, with two in Missouri and Arizona. This disparity holds true in Tennessee, too, as forty percent of our death row comes from Shelby County (Memphis). The same crime, depending on the location, can yield very different sentences.
Murder victims’ family members serve as living witnesses to the dysfunction of this flawed system, as their loss is often forgotten among the political jockeying and theological debates. Clayton Lockett was sentenced to die for shooting 19-year old Stephanie Nieman and burying her alive. The potential for a state-sanctioned death did not deter him or others from committing horrific crimes, a terrible fact backed up by countless testimony by law enforcement. If the death penalty deters violent crime, why is it that the South, which utilizes the death penalty far more widely than other U.S. regions, maintains the highest murder rate? Furthermore, capital punishment rarely delivers the promised closure for murder victims’ family members, as the average time between sentencing and execution in Tennessee is twenty-two years. Endless proceedings drag families through perpetual trauma. Broken and victimized families are also left with little financial recompense. Tennessee could do as Maryland has done, by earmarking some of the financial savings from their now-abolished death penalty (in 2013) to go to murder victims’ family members.
The obvious rejoinder to this painful reality for families is to speed up the process and end excessive appeals. Problem: Doing so would undoubtedly lead to executing innocent people. Since 1973, 144 death row inmates have been exonerated, three in Tennessee. In fact, the day before the Lockett execution, a widely-circulated new report estimates that four percent of inmates who have received a death sentence are innocent. A ninety-six percent success rate in virtually every arena is outstanding, but where life and death are concerned, 96 percent is a failure, because the fatal errors could have been avoided. Continuing capital punishment means we are willfully sacrificing 1 in every 25 people on death row due to our refusal to pursue truth just as hard as we pursue death.
Surely, in the face of such facts we can agree that there are better alternatives to the death penalty, keeping in mind that I haven’t mentioned the corresponding issues dealing with executing the mentally ill, prosecutorial misconduct, DNA evidence preservation protocols, post-traumatic stress for execution participants, or even ethical standards for the health professionals who oversee the proceedings. If in the face of this evidence you still consider the death penalty to be permissible or mandated biblically, then you are obligated to advocate for the measures it would take to repair this broken system.
Here are some options: Follow the lead of the Constitution Project, a bipartisan group whose recent report Irreversible Error suggests in great detail thirty-nine recommendations to reform capital punishment. More locally, death penalty proponents could advocate in Tennessee for full compliance with the American Bar Association’s ninety-three guidelines for a fairly and accurately administered death penalty. At present, Tennessee fully complies with only seven of those guidelines. Given this reality, death penalty proponents must consider whether their principles can actually be put into practice.
Obviously, I’m not proposing we make decisions divorced from our faith; that sort of dualism rarely plays out well in human history. After all, another Tennessee governor, Frank Clement often said decades ago, “If you can’t mix your politics and religion, there’s something wrong with your politics.” During his three (non-consecutive) terms as governor, Clement opposed the death penalty privately due to his Christian beliefs (43-60), yet he would not voice this opposition publicly until the end of his second term. Clement personally visited with eight inmates scheduled to die, six of whom would be executed during his second term, as he was loathe to use his executive power for a moratorium. He agonized over these decisions, and the process ultimately moved him to utilize his power in 1965, during the second half of his third term, commuting the sentences of five inmates to ninety-nine years.
Similarly, Governor Haslam will face the proverbial eleventh hour ten times over the next two years. At this moment, too, Governor Haslam has before him an invitation to pray with some of the inmates he is set to execute. Christians are those curious people who confront evil in such a way that believes God can do what appears to be impossible. Redemption is, after all, at the heart of our story, even the redemption of murderers. So for the sake of our brother (who happens to be the governor), our state, and the national debate, I propose we not allow our principled, hermeneutical disagreements to impede a careful, sober consideration of the realities of capital punishment.
As already mentioned, my own opposition to the death penalty is theological and practical. No, I do not ignore the Old Testament or discount the Apostle Paul. Nor do I canonize criminals or disregard victims. My study of capital punishment has led me to conclude that it simply does not work. You might disagree deeply based on a theological conviction, which is fine. However, you now have to reckon with the reality of the death penalty as it is, not as what you wish it to be.
Justin Phillips works for Tennesseans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty in Nashville (TN) and has a Ph.D. in Christian Ethics from Fuller Theological Seminary. Twitter: @jrphillips5
Illustration courtesy of Seth T. Hahne. Check out Seth’s graphic novel and comic review site, Good Ok Bad.
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