The Road to Abolition

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Christa Pike woke up on October 6 in a Tennessee hospital with a blood clot and pneumonia, handcuffed and shackled to her bed, having become the first known person to survive an execution via lethal injection. On September 30, the state of Tennessee tried to murder Pike. Instead, it put her through an hour and a half of difficulty breathing as she intermittently gasped for air and was eventually sent into critical condition, in a notoriously “botched execution” — in other words, torture. As Sandra Babcock, one of Pike’s attorneys, put it on Democracy Now: “Christa Pike … has just experienced the most agonizing attempt at lethal injection in the country’s history.”

Conversations in the wake of this torture have, understandably, focused on the exceptional circumstances of the attempted killing. However, this is also an important moment to recognize the depths of brutality in which this country wallows, such that the killing of a person by their own government only tends to make front page news when it is “botched.” It is also a key time to push ourselves to imagine beyond that violence, and to ask: What kind of world can we build, in which an execution is unthinkable?

First, we must contend with the extent of our status-quo brutality. This vicious, not-so-new normal is illustrated by the fact that in the end, Pike’s attorneys, who fought persistently for her sentence to be commuted, were forced to argue for her to be hanged, as Pike rightly predicted that her small veins would make lethal injection a long and terrifyingly painful process. Let that sink in: We live in a country where mercy is a hanging.

Death penalty proponents have responded to Pike’s survival by advocating even harsher methods. U.S. Senator and Tennessee gubernatorial candidate Marsha Blackburn responded, “The answer is simple: Bring back the electric chair and deliver justice for these victims swiftly.” (Multiple state supreme courts have ruled the electric chair to be cruel and unusual punishment, citing examples like six-inch flames erupting from the head of an electrocution victim.) Tennessee State House Speaker Cameron Sexton said, “I don’t think there’s any method that’s off the table at this point.” And in a cameo that should shock no one, Former Deputy Assistant Attorney John Yoo, infamous for authoring the Torture Memos, said on Fox News, “Tennessee is trying to use what is considered the most humane method of capital punishment, which is lethal injection. The court has allowed, and Tennessee could use, far more … hurtful, you know, methods like firing squad.”

These pro-cruelty statements mark a chilling counter-trend regarding the death penalty. Throughout the early 21st century, thanks to the efforts of an enduring anti-death penalty movement, executions significantly declined, pharmaceutical companies fled the execution-drug market, and medical professionals overwhelmingly refused to participate in executions.

Tennessee Attempted to Execute a Sexual Assault Victim

This week, Trump approved the first U.S. military execution in more than 60 years, and the Pentagon plans to livestream it.

This week, Trump approved the first U.S. military execution in more than 60 years, and the Pentagon plans to livestream it.

These shifts, of course, never went far enough, and states’ insistence that the alternative must be a lifelong prison sentence — death by incarceration, as dedicated organizers have termed it — has ingrained the use of endless punishment, marking another uphill battle.

Yet even these changes are on thin ice. The last two years have witnessed a pronounced resurgence of executions. In the U.S., more people were killed by the state in 2025 than in any year since 2009. And by July of this year, Trump had already begun more capital prosecutions than he’d launched in his whole first term in office. This week, Trump approved the first U.S. military execution in more than 60 years, and the Pentagon plans to livestream it.

Throughout his second presidency, Trump has pushed the death penalty both rhetorically and policy-wise, beginning with his day one executive order, which claimed that “only capital punishment can........

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