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Executions?: Hold the Pen Still, Byron Donalds

Executions?: Hold the Pen Still, Byron Donalds

Last updated on: November 10, 2026 at 12:22 am by Jeff Hood

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Executions?: Hold the Pen Still, Byron Donalds 2026-11-10T00:22:38-06:00 Jeff Hood

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Byron Donalds

Byron Donalds, You Can Hold the Pen Still

Florida executed nineteen people last year. It has executed nineteen so far this year. Two more sit on the calendar before Byron Donalds takes the oath on January 5. Before Governor DeSantis, the state’s highest count in a year was eight. Since the start of last year, close to half of all state executions in this country have happened at Florida State Prison.

Nobody chose this pace. No legislature voted for it. No commission studied it. No voter was asked. One man signed warrants faster than any governor before him and the state fell into step behind him.

The Swift Justice Byron Donalds Wants

I have written to Byron Donalds. He has said he supports the death penalty. He has said he wants justice to come swiftly. Florida has shown what swiftly comes to mean. Appeals crammed into days. Court calendars compressed. Men moved from their cells toward execution while the machinery of review races to keep up with the machinery of death. What does clemency mean at this speed?

Justice and speed are different things. Speed measures how fast a thing happens. Justice asks whether it should happen at all. Justice asks whether the process leading to it has been worthy of the name. A governor who confuses the two risks turning the most consequential power in his office into a matter of scheduling.

The victims come first. I do not forget the people these men killed. Most of the men on Florida’s row did what the state says they did. Some of their crimes are as horrible as anything a person could imagine. Their victims had families. Those families have lived with losses no governor can repair. No commutation can undo them. I will not pretend otherwise.

Those same families waited decades, then got a month’s notice. They deserve more than a date on a calendar and a hurried announcement. The families of the condemned deserve more than a state moving so fast that nobody has room to breathe. Neither deserves to be treated as an administrative detail.

The Room Byron Donalds Inherits

Then there is the room. I have been in that chamber. I sit at the feet of the man being killed. I have watched people do this work. I have watched the extraordinary discipline it takes to move a human being from a prison cell to an execution chamber. I have watched what happens when the room empties.

I walk out with the guards, the warden and the witnesses from behind the glass. Every one of us carries it out of the room. I have never met anyone built to carry it twice or three times a month.

The state has procedures for the death of the condemned. It has schedules for the witnesses. It has protocols for the personnel. It has no accounting of what repeated executions demand of the human beings involved.

This pace has to stop.

Six Months

I oppose the death penalty with everything I have seen. I am asking Donalds for less than abolition. Six months. January 5 through July 5. No warrant signed. No execution authorized. An independent examination of the pace, the procedures and the human cost, with the findings made public before the six months are out.

Let that examination ask what nobody has asked. How often can a state kill before it breaks the people it sends to do the killing? What happens to the officer who goes home to his kids that night? What happens to the people who prepare the room, establish the IV lines, watch the clock and carry out the orders? What happens to the prison employees who return to the same building the next morning, expected to resume their ordinary work?

A pause erases no conviction. It reopens no trial. It does not pretend a change in policy can resolve the suffering of victims’ families. It asks Florida to stop long enough to look at what it has become.

A state can honor its responsibility to victims without making execution the measure of its seriousness. A six-month examination would leave the gravity of murder untouched. It would show that Florida understands the gravity of its own actions.

Donalds has said Florida is not California. He is right. California carried out its last execution twenty years ago. Florida is on pace for twenty-one this year. There is no contest between states. The question is what kind of government he intends to lead.

He will inherit an office with the power to sign death warrants. He will inherit the responsibility to decide whether every warrant must be signed because the machinery is ready to move.

There is weight in taking office and refusing to let the habits of the previous administration dictate what comes next. Donalds does not have to defend every decision made before him. He has the opportunity to establish a different standard. A pause asks no change in his position. It makes him a governor willing to examine the consequences of his own authority before exercising it.

If Ricardo Gonzalez is executed on December 1, I will be in the chamber with him. Five weeks later, the pen changes hands.

I know what that pen can do. I have watched the consequences from a few feet away. I have heard the silence that follows.

Six months. That is all I am asking of Byron Donalds.

Hold the pen still!

Catholic

Politics and Religion

About The Rev. Dr. Jeff Hood

The Rev. Dr. Jeff Hood is a Catholic priest (Old Catholic), theologian, and nationally recognized activist based in North Little Rock, Arkansas. A spiritual advisor to death row inmates across the country, Dr. Hood has accompanied more people to their executions than any other advisor in the U.S., including the first-ever nitrogen hypoxia execution in 2024. His work sits at the intersection of justice, radical compassion, and public theology. Dr. Hood holds advanced degrees from Auburn, Emory, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, University of Alabama, Creighton, and Brite Divinity School, among others. He also earned a PhD in metaphysical theology and founded The New Theology School, where he serves as Dean and Professor of Prophetic Theology. Author of over 100 books—including the award-winning The Courage to Be Queer—Dr. Hood’s writings and activism have been featured in The New York Times, Rolling Stone, NPR, CNN, and more. A frequent collaborator with men on death row, he sees theology as a shared, liberative act. Dr. Hood has served on the leadership teams of organizations like the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty and the Fellowship of Reconciliation. His activism has earned multiple awards, including recognition from PFLAG and the Next Generation Action Network. On July 7, 2016, Dr. Hood led the Dallas protest against police brutality that ended in tragedy. His actions that night saved lives, and his story is now archived in the Dallas Public Library. A father of five, husband to Emily, and friend to the incarcerated, Dr. Hood rejects institutionalism in favor of a theology rooted in people, presence, and prophetic witness. You can read more about the author here.

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