I recently had a detached retina. Not something I would recommend. I had emergency surgery in February and then laser surgery in March. Despite weeks of having to sleep sitting up, along with no yoga, I am almost 100%. Almost.

The detached retina and the ensuing surgery caused the vision in my left eye to deteriorate. My current glasses’ prescription doesn’t touch the blurring in that eye now. I have made an appointment to get a new prescription but can’t get in to see the doctor until the end of next month. In the meantime, the vision in my right eye is practically 20/20. Nothing but a blur in my left. Still as the days pass, I am becoming accustomed to seeing in this wobbly way.

As I sat in a dimly lit church today for the Good Friday service, I squinted to make out faces. The flames from the candles appeared in multiples, and I held my hymn book close to my face to see the words. As the ministers read John’s account of Jesus arrest and execution, I could almost recite it.

It’s that familiar to most Christians. The story of Jesus’ crucifixion, an act of unconditional love and sacrifice, is central to our faith story. And we can clearly see that truth in the story. To be honest, we have seen it this way for so long that it is the only way many of us can see this story.

But there are layers, as with most stories. It is also a story about an execution, specifically Jesus’ execution, along with at least two other people. And the parallels in the gospel account to the capital punishment system today are everywhere, including guilt or innocence being beside the point.

The Good Friday story, whether we like it or not, is a story of the State’s use of violence to control a population and punctuate its own power. It’s the story of politicians who are more concerned with the optics of an execution and its impact on their positions than on justice and truth. It’s the story about the need for the powers that be to make an example of someone, anyone, and most often society’s “no one.”

I wonder how many Christians read this story today in Tennessee and how many know that the state plans to resume executions? I wonder how many of our state leaders read this story today and made that connection themselves? With which character in the story do they identify? With whom do we identify? When a dying Jesus says, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do?”, what is he asking forgiveness for?

These are questions that I have, questions about our vision for those of us who identify as Christians. Have we developed tunnel vision in our understanding of Good Friday? Is this just a beloved story about personal salvation or does the story have implications for who we are and how we live together every day? What does Good Friday ask of us and how might it be calling us in this moment and in this time to check our vision, to see other human beings in all their brokenness as God sees them?

—TADP Executive Director Reverend Stacy Rector

P.S. Please consider reaching out to Governor Lee, if you haven’t already, and ask him not to resume executions. There are too many unanswered questions and too much tunnel vision. Take action today.

After five years with no executions in our state, the Tennessee Supreme Court has set execution dates for four men on Tennessee’s death row.

The dates set by the court are:

Oscar Smith, May 22

Byron Black, August 5

Donald Middlebrooks, September 24

Harold Nichols, December 11

Now is the time to ask Governor Lee to stop these executions.

The new lethal injection protocol recently announced by the Tennessee Department of Correction is more secretive than the previous protocol, despite the governor’s insistence that the process be transparent. The new protocol also relies on pentobarbital, a drug that has been shown to cause unconstitutional suffering in those who are executed.

TAKE ACTION NOW and let Governor Lee know that resuming executions does not make us safer. The resources Tennessee spends on executions should instead go to support those harmed by violence and on violence prevention initiatives.

BACKGROUND: In 2022, prior to the release of the findings of an independent review of Tennessee’s problematic lethal injection protocol, Governor Bill Lee stated, “To ensure continued transparency for Tennesseans, we will publicly share the report and any additional action when our internal assessment is complete.” In a press statement about the release of the report, the governor went on to say, “I have thoroughly reviewed the findings in the independent investigator’s report and am directing several actions to ensure the Tennessee Department of Correction adheres to the proper protocol.”

On January 9, 2025, after initially refusing to release the new execution protocol to the media, the Tennessee Department of Correction released a redacted version. The new protocol is noticeably shorter than the previous one and includes only a single page on the lethal injection chemicals with no specific directions for testing of the drugs. The new protocol also removes a requirement that the drug, pentobarbital, come from a licensed pharmacist and authorizes the state to deviate from the protocol whenever the commissioner deems it necessary. The protocol is supposed to act as Tennessee’s own official set of rules governing its execution process, so by its very nature it cannot be open to deviation on a whim.  

Then on January 16, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that it was withdrawing the federal government’s lethal injection protocol based on concerns that execution by pentobarbital may cause unconstitutional pain and suffering. The DOJ’s review of the use of this drug for lethal injection confirms what medical experts have said for years: pentobarbital causes excruciating pain when used to carry out executions and violates the Eighth Amendment. The use of pentobarbital in executions also creates a serious risk of trauma to the correctional staff who are charged with carrying out executions. The greater the secrecy around this protocol, the greater the risk of harm to TDOC employees.

On December 23, 2024, President Joe Biden commuted 37 federal death sentences to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, representing the largest number of death sentences commuted by any President in the modern era.

YOUR ACTIONS mattered in achieving this result. Thank you!

Calls for President Biden to act had been growing as letters from hundreds of individuals and groups, including TADP and other state advocates, business leaders, Black pastors, Catholics, innocence organizations, prosecutors, former judges, mental health and intellectual disability advocates, victim family members, were made public, stressing concerns about the federal death penalty system that warranted commutations.

This decision means that no federal prisoner will be at imminent risk of execution under the incoming administration. During President-elect Trump’s first term, the federal government carried out 13 executions in a seven-month period, an unprecedented number and pace.

A majority of those executed during this execution spree were people of color, while several had claims of intellectual disability, severe mental illness, racial bias, prosecutorial misconduct, and other serious problems in their cases.

The cases of those whose sentences were commuted reflect many of these same problems, and much like the cases of those executed, the courts have been unable or unwilling to address those problems.

“This is a historic day,” said Martin Luther King, III, who publicly urged the President to commute the federal death row. “By commuting these sentences, President Biden has done what no President before him was willing to do: take meaningful and lasting action not just to acknowledge the death penalty’s racist roots but also to remedy its persistent unfairness.”

Today is another historic day as we celebrate Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and inaugurate a new president. But it is also a day that raises concerns for many of us. We are concerned about the future of our democracy, the growing divide between the haves and the have nots, the climate crisis, and the epidemic of gun violence, among many other things. We may feel disillusioned and powerless as we take stock of all that we face. The challenges seem too great.

Celebrating Dr. King today is a antidote to that disillusionment and powerlessness. This day we celebrate knowing that our nation has faced hard times before. Dr. King’s own life and death remind us of the risk we take when we follow his example to stand for justice as well as what we can achieve.

Because we did not give up or give in, President Biden commuted the death sentences of 37 men. They will live because our collective action mattered. It happened because we made it happen. And, we will keep acting and speaking and marching and voting and praying and singing and whatever we must to ensure that Dr. King’s legacy endures–with justice rolling down like water and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream–no matter how long it takes or how hard the journey is.

Friends, never underestimate what we can do together.

Photo: Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1929 – 1968) holds a press conference at the Savoy Hotel in London, UK, September 1964. (Photo by Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)