On August 20th, 2025, the State of Tennessee carried out an execution that should shake the conscience of every American. Byron Black, a 69-year-old man with documented intellectual disabilities, severe medical conditions including end-stage kidney disease and congestive heart failure, and a pacemaker-dependent heart, was killed by the state in what many are calling a flagrant violation of both U.S. and international law.
This execution wasn’t just an act of state-sanctioned killing—it was the silencing of a gentle, kind, and fragile man who should have been protected under the Constitution and the Americans with Disabilities Act. In truth, the State of Tennessee killed a gentle, kind, fragile, intellectually disabled man in violation of the laws of our country simply because they could. This grave injustice underscores the urgent need for reform, advocacy, and sustained public pressure to abolish the death penalty once and for all.
Learn more about the fight against the death penalty and what you can do to help: https://sustainableactionnow.org/death-penalty/
The Death Penalty in 2025: A System on Life Support
Byron Black’s execution is not an anomaly—it is part of a deeply broken and discriminatory system that continues to target the vulnerable, the poor, and disproportionately, people of color.
Across the country, states are not only maintaining capital punishment—they are inventing new and disturbing methods of carrying it out.
In Arkansas, ten death row prisoners recently filed a legal challenge to a new law that permits executions by nitrogen gas—a method that remains untested and potentially torturous. These individuals were originally sentenced to die by lethal injection, but Arkansas’s quiet shift toward nitrogen asphyxiation reflects a chilling trend: states scrambling for new ways to kill when traditional methods are increasingly unavailable due to ethical and legal pushback.
Florida has also emerged as a grim leader in capital punishment this year. On Tuesday, the state executed Kayle Bates (also known as Maud Dib Al Sharif Qu’un), a 67-year-old Black Muslim veteran. This marks Florida’s 10th execution in 2025 alone, revealing a disturbing pace that shows no signs of slowing.
Federal Escalation and Judicial Indifference
Even at the federal level, the machinery of death grinds forward. Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Justice, under the direction of Attorney General Pam Bondi, announced plans to pursue the death penalty in the case of a 21-year-old woman from Seattle who allegedly killed a border patrol agent in Vermont.
This case raises profound questions about prosecutorial discretion, political motivations, and the disproportionate application of the ultimate punishment. The message seems clear: the death penalty remains not a tool of justice, but a weapon of state control.
A Flawed and Discriminatory System
What’s most alarming is not just the persistence of the death penalty, but how deeply racial bias, ableism, and systemic inequities are embedded in its practice.
A recent article published in the St. Louis University Law Journal argues that death penalty states are “not driven by the desire to create humane execution; they are merely striving to keep state-sanctioned killing alive.” This sentiment is echoed by recent research from the ACLU, which found that “death qualification”—a legal process that allows prosecutors to exclude jurors who oppose capital punishment—disproportionately removes Black jurors from trial selection. Black Americans are more likely to oppose the death penalty, and this mechanism ensures they have less voice in the courtroom, perpetuating unjust convictions and skewed sentencing.
Courts Tinker While Lives Hang in the Balance
In August 2025 alone, courts from Massachusetts to Oklahoma have debated, delayed, or altered the execution protocols, but these bureaucratic adjustments only highlight the failure of the system. Small reforms in a fundamentally flawed structure are not justice—they are just the fine-tuning of cruelty.
The Moral Cost of Inaction
Every execution reflects a conscious choice by the state to end a human life. And in each of these recent cases—from Byron Black in Tennessee, to nitrogen gas lawsuits in Arkansas, to Florida’s rapid-fire executions—we see the same troubling patterns emerge: vulnerable populations sacrificed for political gain, legal corners cut, and fundamental rights ignored.
The death penalty is not justice. It is not deterrence. It is not safety. It is state-sponsored violence, upheld by a system riddled with racial and economic bias.
And it continues because we let it.
Take Sustainable Action Now
It is time to raise our voices and demand better from our leaders, our courts, and ourselves. We must:
- Advocate for the total abolition of the death penalty in every state and at the federal level.
- Support legal challenges against inhumane execution methods like nitrogen asphyxiation.
- Amplify stories like Byron Black’s, which reveal the human cost of this policy.
- Challenge racial and ableist bias in the criminal justice system.
- Push for alternatives rooted in restorative justice, not retribution.
Let Byron Black’s memory—and the lives of every person executed by a broken system—serve as a call to conscience for us all.
Join us in the fight to end the death penalty. Take action today.
Sustainable Action Now is committed to fighting for a more just, compassionate, and equitable world. Ending the death penalty is not just a policy change—it is a moral imperative.
#JusticeForByronBlack #EndTheDeathPenalty #SustainableActionNow
