A pastor is touring the country to warn against the use of firing squads to carry out death sentences, telling Newsweek that he wants Americans to know it is not the humane alternative to lethal injection it is being presented as.
The Reverend Jeff Hood, who has served as a spiritual adviser to more than a dozen inmates who have been executed, recently launched his "Firing Back" campaign, visiting seven states that have used or could use firing squads to carry out death sentences.
The effort comes as the military is preparing to carry out its first firing squad execution since World War II, with the December 3 execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan.
President Donald Trump approved the execution days after Tennessee’s failed attempt to execute Christa Pike brought fresh scrutiny on how states carry out the death penalty, particularly when using lethal injection. The Pentagon had said Hasan's execution would be live-streamed, but President Donald Trump later called off that plan following an outcry, including from the families of the victims, retired military leaders and lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle.
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In a post on Truth Social last week, Trump said livestreaming the execution "might have been a strong deterrent for the World to witness how America deals with Terrorists and SCUM like Hasan" but that "many very good and well meaning people" would rather not watch him die. Trump said the immediate families of the victims could view the execution in person if they chose to, adding that they "deserve to witness JUSTICE!"
Reverend Hood, a longtime anti-death penalty activist, told Newsweek that he believes Hasan’s execution by firing squad, as well as the plans to livestream it, are in part, the Trump administration’s response to questions raised by Pike’s botched execution. Asked for comment, a White House spokesperson referred Newsweek to the president's Truth Social post announcing Hasan's execution would not be livestreamed.
Hood said: "With lethal injections, such catastrophe is inevitable and we have seen botched execution after botched execution so the answer, of course, for the Trump administration is, 'Well, we'll do firing squad.'
"It's going to be something that is not going to able to be botched. The problem with that is it's a lie."
Hood said it was just the latest attempt by supporters of capital punishment to promote what he calls the "lie of the clean kill."
"It's this lie that the firing squad is this quick, painless form of execution," Hood said. "That's why I call my book The Lie of the Clean Kill because I fundamentally believe that there is no such thing as a clean kill. There's no such thing as a clean execution."
He also said he hopes to make the issue part of the conversation ahead of November’s midterm elections.
"I think the basic question is about our future as a nation," Hood said. "Do we want to teach our young people to kill by continuing to kill? You cannot teach people in our urban centers not to shoot each other by shooting each other.
"I think the main message to the country is stand down, stand down America."
‘A Workaround’
Hood argues that governments have repeatedly touted methods of execution as humane only for problems to emerge once those methods are put into practice.
"The firing squad is being used as a workaround from the failures of lethal injection," he told Newsweek.
"Every form of execution that comes about, we're told, 'this is the clean kill.' We were told that about lethal injection. We were told that about nitrogen gas. We keep hearing the government say, 'Trust us, this is going to be clean.’ And we keep realizing that the government has lied."
Last month, Pike survived two doses of the lethal drug pentobarbital as Tennessee sought to execute her for the 1995 murder of classmate Colleen Slemmer. It was the latest in a long history of problems with lethal injection executions in the United States, and came after Tennessee officials called off the execution of Tony Carruthers in May after it took over an hour to establish intravenous access required to administer the lethal drugs.
As well as bringing a focus on what went wrong inside the execution chamber, it also renewed scrutiny on how states obtain lethal injection drugs after pharmaceutical companies moved aggressively to keep their products from being used in executions.
Some states have been forced to halt executions because of difficulties obtaining drugs or turn to alternative methods to carry out death sentences. Alabama began carrying out nitrogen gas executions, but the state was blocked from what would have been the nation’s ninth execution using the method earlier this year after the Supreme Court declined to set aside a lower-court ruling that found the method is unconstitutionally cruel.
Hood witnessed the nation’s first execution by nitrogen hypoxia in 2024 while serving as Kenneth Smith’s spiritual adviser.
"I was told, you're about to see the cleanest form of execution ever devised. In the midst of that, what I saw was somebody heaving back and forth, over and over, and eight minutes of absolute hell," he said.
In July, Idaho became the first state to adopt the firing squad as its primary form of execution. Four other states—Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Utah—authorize the use of firing squads in certain circumstances, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Last year, South Carolina executed three inmates using a firing squad.
Some lawmakers have touted the method as the quickest and most humane way to execute a person.
But Hood argued that there have been multiple cases of botched firing squad executions, citing reports of problems with South Carolina’s execution of Mikal Mahdi last year.
Mahdi’s attorneys claimed that only two of the three bullets fired had struck Mahdi and that they had struck him in a way that he suffered long enough to violate the Constitution’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. NBC News reported that the South Carolina Department of Corrections commissioned an autopsy that found all three bullets struck Mahdi’s heart.
Hood also noted that some states have contingency measures in the event that the first volley of shots fails to kill an inmate.
"If it's such a perfect method, then why do some state protocols have provisions for a second volley of shots?" he said.
The Human Cost
Hood also spoke of the psychological burden placed on those who have to carry out firing squad executions.
"In this situation, you have people who are actually shooting someone," he said.
"In the case of Nidal Hasan, we are having to train military officers and tell them that it is OK to shoot someone who is defenseless and strapped to a chair that is paralyzed from the waist down…that creates a closeness that I would argue does something to the psyche."
Hood said that responsibility could leave lasting emotional damage on participants.
"I can tell you from my experience, having been in the execution chamber 14 times, there's a moral injury that comes with even watching and being in the chamber," he said.
"I cannot imagine the moral injury that takes place when someone is the actual shooter and what they're going to have to live with."
He also questioned the argument that firing squads are acceptable because some condemned inmates have chosen it over other available methods.
"When you're asking someone to choose from a menu of horrors, their choices are still horror," Hood said. "There is no real choice."
Calling on Gavin Newsom to Clear Death Row
Hood’s campaign will culminate with a press conference on Thursday, where he will urge California Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat who has who has been floated as a 2028 presidential hopeful, to clear the state's death row before he leaves office in January.
"We’re encouraging Governor Newsom to grant clemency and commutations to everyone on death row, clear out death row in California," Hood said.
Hood argues that such a move would ensure firing squads never become a reality in the Golden State.
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Newsom "can make sure that this horror never visits the state of California with one signature," he said.
It was reported earlier this month that Newsom has recently stepped up conversations with advisers about whether to commute the sentences of the hundreds of inmates on the state’s death row before leaving office.
Asked if Newsom would clear out California’s death row, Newsom spokeswoman Diana Crofts-Pelayo previously told Newsweek: "Governor Newsom has been clear about his position on the death penalty since his first year in office, when he ordered a moratorium on executions.
"He believes the intentional killing of another person is wrong."
Hood’s campaign comes after the recent release of his book, The Lie of the Clean Kill, which documents the history and use of firing squads in the U.S. and argues that there "is no clean way to take a human life."
Hood has made the book available for free on the campaign’s website, FiringSquads.org.
"I don't want people to feel like they have to pay money to engage in this moral argument," he said. "It was important to me that people could search it very easily."
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Matt Cannon and Tony Phillips.