Executions Are Rising in the US. This Reverend Witnesses Them.

Reveal

The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX

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4.7 • 8K Ratings

🗓️ 12 November 2025

⏱️ 41 minutes

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Summary

More To The Story: About 2,100 people are on death row in America. Some have been there for decades, in part because executions have been on the decline in the US. But that’s changing. So far this year, 41 people have been executed, up from 25 last year, and six more executions are scheduled. Early in his second term, President Donald Trump signed an executive order reinstating federal executions while encouraging states to expand the use of capital punishment. One man has seen many of these executions up close. The Reverend Jeff Hood is an Old Catholic Church priest, an ordained Baptist minister, a racial justice activist, and something of a go-to spiritual adviser for many currently on death row. On the day of the execution, he goes inside the chamber for the final moments of people’s lives. On this week’s More To The Story, Hood sits down with host Al Letson to describe his work as an advocate for death row inmates, what it’s like being a white Southern reverend vocally advocating for racial justice, and how capital punishment in the US today illustrates American society’s increasing movement in a more violent direction.

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Listen: In Bondage to the Law (Reveal)

Read: Louisiana Is Executing Prisoners Again. His Case Shows the Costs. (Mother Jones)

Read: The Last Face Death Row Inmates See (Rolling Stone)

Learn more: Death Penalty Information Center

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Transcript

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0:00.0	We're in a society right now where, you know, we're getting undocumented folks being pulled
0:09.5	out of the houses, drug through the streets.
0:13.5	And, you know, and I hear all the time, we'll pray for you.
0:16.9	I don't need your damn prayers.
0:18.6	I need your help.
0:19.9	I need you there in the streets with me. I need your help. I need you there in the streets with me.
0:22.1	I need your bodies.
0:23.9	And, you know, it's the same way with these guys on death row.
0:28.7	And I encounter churches all the time who say, well, we'll pray for you.
0:34.0	This guy is about to literally be killed.
0:40.2	On this week's more to the story, priests, activists,
0:46.4	and death row spiritual advisor Jeff Hood. We talk about his years as a white southern reverend advocating for racial justice and how he became the guy death row inmates turned to in their final moments
0:52.6	at a time when executions in the U.S. are climbing.
0:56.8	This conversation went places I never expected. Trust me, you don't want to miss it.
1:05.0	Malcolm Gladwell here. This season on Revisionous History, we're going back to the spring
1:13.6	of 1988 to a town in northwest Alabama, where a man committed a crime that would spiral out
1:19.1	of control.
1:20.2	There was this joke that said that it was easier to get forgiveness in the Church of Christ
1:26.4	for murdering somebody than it was to be
1:29.6	divorced.
1:30.0	From Revisionist History, this is The Alabama Murders.
1:34.3	Listen to Revisionous History, the Alabama murders, wherever you get your podcasts. This is more to the story. I'm Al Letson. There are roughly 2,100 people on death row in the U.S.
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