Faith leaders in Arkansas plead for Gov. Sanders to end nitrogen gas executions

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (KTAL/KMSS) – Faith leaders of Arkansas join together to stop the use of the gas method in executions.

They are calling on Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders to halt the new law that authorizes nitrogen gas executions for death row inmates.

“We implore you to explore the realities of what suffocation by gas entails. The trauma, the suffering, the inhumanity of this process,” said Reverend Betsy Singleton Snyder, ordained elder in the United Methodist Church of Arkansas.

The reverends, pastors, and fathers from different major religious congregations took to the Arkansas State Capitol on Thursday, pleading with Governor Sanders to halt Act 302, which allows for nitrogen gas executions.

“To kill a person in order to send the message of that we believe that killing is wrong is a ridiculous notion. It’s so ridiculous it forces us to ask different questions so that we can figure out the real why as to what is happening,” said Reverend Dr. Denise Denell, New Beginnings of Central Arkansas.

Arkansas lawmakers approved the measure, and then-Governor Sanders signed it into law this year. Making Arkansas the fifth state in the nation to use the gas method.

“Arkansas has already stepped away from the sin of executions. No jury has sentenced anyone to death since 2018. Yet now without any holy reason we are asked to embrace a method of execution that denies the very breath of God in another person and implicates every Arkansan in the sin of cruelty and death,” said Reverend Jackie Busher, Faith Lutheran Church apart of the Evangelical Church of America.

The Arkansas Department of Corrections reports that nitrogen hypoxia causes a death row inmate to breathe in the gas and be deprived of oxygen, leading to their death.

“I could talk about the lack of moral justification of the death penalty. The lack of scientific justification for the death penalty, or I could talk about how to justify it financially, shows an enormous lack of imagination. But ultimately it is a law that should not govern us,” said Reverend Paul Bele, Unitarian Universalist Church of Little Rock.

The clergy and faith members said the method lacks humanity and is not in line with Christian beliefs.

“We should begin with human dignity. All humans have God-given dignity,” said Father Phillip Reeves, Director of Prison Ministry Office of the Catholic Diocese of Little Rock.

23 inmates are on death row in Arkansas listed on the Department of Corrections website.

Ten have filed a lawsuit challenging the new state law and Governor Sanders’ administration.

National lobbyist groups have also challenged the law, citing it as unconstitutional.