Nothing has been abolished. The largest death row in the nation still stands. Every sentence is still written. Governor Newsom’s moratorium stopped the killing. It did not end it. A moratorium is a promise. A promise is breath. It lasts exactly as long as the governor who made it.
I know what waits on the other side of that promise. Fourteen times I have stood in the chamber as a spiritual advisor. Twelve times the needle. Twice the gas. Before the first, Alabama handed me a release to sign. The gas might kill me too, it said. I signed. Then I stood with Kenneth Smith while the state sealed a mask over the face God gave him and took back the breath God put in him. Last October, I stood with Anthony Boyd while he fought for air for more than sixteen minutes. The longest nitrogen execution on record. Count sixteen minutes sometime with your hand on your own chest.
Alabama called it humane both times. The word went in with us. It did not come out.
Here is what a moratorium cannot stop. The poison is running out across the country. The states did not hear that as a verdict. They heard it as a shopping list. Alabama built a mask. Louisiana borrowed it. Idaho went back to the rifle. On December 3, the Army intends to shoot Nidal Hasan at Fort Hood, where he murdered thirteen people. For a while, the plan included a broadcast. The broadcast died of ridicule. The rifles did not. Every new method is baptized with the same word. Humane. I have heard it before every chamber. I have never seen it survive one.
The next governor of California inherits all of it. The shortage. The gas. The gun. A row with every sentence intact. A chamber that was torn down once and can be raised again in a season. Nothing in state law stops a successor from signing a new protocol the week after the oath. The altar is still standing. Somebody only put out the fire.
The power to commute sits with the governor. It exists for the hour the ordinary machinery cannot hold. This is that hour. Commute the sentences. All of them. Not some. Not the sympathetic ones. All.
Innocence has nothing to do with it. I spend my life with murderers. I know what they did. I have sat across from men whose crimes I will not describe in an article. Commutation does not raise the dead. The dead stay dead. The families stay broken. The blood is still in the ground and it still cries. What commutation does is take the state out of the business of answering blood with blood. A gurney is blood. A mask is blood. A rifle is blood. A moratorium that ends is blood deferred.
There is a reason this falls on California. No other state has a row this size for one man to empty. No other governor has already shown his hand. Newsom shut the chamber when every governor before him kept the lights on. That was one no. A no that expires in January is a pause. A no that cannot be undone has not been spoken in this country. Texas would hear it. So would the Army.
I pray in every chamber. The prayer has not changed in fourteen executions. Let somebody with the power to stop this say no more. Governors have that power. Most of them carry it like a coal. Newsom picked it up once. A watchman who sees the sword coming and stays silent answers for the blood. He has seen the sword. He has seen the gas. He has until January to decide whether he sets the coal down with the sentences still standing.
The gas is waiting. The gun is waiting. The row is only sleeping. January is coming either way.
The Rev. Dr. Jeff Hood is an Old Catholic priest who has served as spiritual advisor to hundreds of condemned people on death row. He has been in the chamber for fourteen executions, including the first and eighth by nitrogen gas.
