A Call for Mercy

Originally published on Gimme Some Torah by Rabbi Eli Garfinkel on October 12, 2026.

Florida’s death chamber

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Note: This is the sermon I delivered this Shabbat at Temple Beth El of Somerset.

The classic Jewish joke about an execution is the one about Shlomo and Yitzchak who are dragged by antisemites before a firing squad.

The first one cries out: “Stop! Stop! You’re murdering an innocent man.”

“Quiet,” says the second. “Don’t make trouble!”

Jokes aside, this news story about Christa Pike, the woman who survived her botched lethal injection in Tennessee is very disturbing. It got me thinking, what does our tradition say about such a case? If a condemned person is executed but doesn’t die, does the executioner get a second chance?

I’ll answer that question at the end, but the important thing to know is that the answer is theoretical. Capital punishment is fundamentally un-Jewish and forbidden, certainly in our day and age.

Even in ancient times, the Sages placed so many conditions on capital punishment that it was unlikely to ever occur. Rabbi Tarphon and Rabbi Akiva say in the Mishnah that if they had been on the Sanhedrin, they would have never executed anybody.

As I see it, the death penalty is alien to Jewish values for the same reasons that it ought to be declared unconstitutional. It is applied neither consistently nor fairly. Many murderers who have committed more heinous crimes regularly get sentenced to prison rather than death. For example, serial murderer Jeffrey Dahmer in Wisconsin was sentenced to fifteen consecutive life terms in prison. Had he committed his crimes in the deep south, he would have been executed.

Now consider the case of Doyle Skillern in Texas. He was executed for the crime of being an accomplice to the murder of an undercover narcotics agent. In other words, he sat in the car while his partner in crime shot the man. He himself killed nobody.

And what really gave me pause was that the shooter in the case was sentenced to life in prison with parole, while Doyle was sentenced to death. These are just two examples demonstrating the capricious nature of the capital punishment in America.

Justice, mishpat, is a fundamental Jewish value. I don’t think the death penalty is justice because, as we’ve seen, it’s applied in a haphazard fashion. Usually, the people who get capital punishment are the ones who don’t have any capital.

Rather than being just, executing a criminal is nothing but revenge, about which God said in the Torah, “Li nakam v’shileim,” Vengeance is mine. The right to vengeance does not belong to human beings, in belongs to God.

Capital punishment is also un-Jewish because human beings are imperfect. We see this most clearly in this week’s Torah portion. Under absolutely ideal conditions with no possible excuses, human beings were still unable to follow even one simple rule, don’t eat the fruit from that tree.

There is no question that our system has executed innocent people. We know that our system is not just imperfect but not even close to perfect. The Innocence Project estimates that five percent of our 2 million prisoners are factually innocent. That means we have tens of thousands of innocent people behind bars.

Now supporters of the death penalty say, “Wait, since when do we demand perfection in anything we do? Even our aviation system isn’t perfect, and people die, so should we not have airplanes?” This is a classic strawman argument.

There is a world of difference between the 1 in 20 million chance of dying in a commercial airplane and the chance of executing an innocent person. In the case of the airplane, the death is accidental. In an execution, the death is not only not accidental, it is completely deliberate and carefully planned.

The act of executing a murderer is more morally offensive than many of the crimes that we are supposedly punishing. We execute people who commit murders typically as a result of mental illness, drug abuse, or just plain old bad decision making. But then we kill them in cold blood, completely sober and clearheaded with every detail scripted.

If you’re not sure how you feel about the death penalty, you only need to read the vicious comments on the news stories about Christa Pike. Pages and pages of people with pitchforks calling for her death because of something she did thirty-two years ago at the age of 18.

A great many of these comments invoke the name of Christa’s victim, Colleen Slemmer. What Christa Pike and her seventeen-year-old friend did to Colleen was horrible and disgusting, full stop. It was so revolting that I can’t repeat it.

But the whole point of having a system of courts is that the victim in a criminal case is the state or the country, not the individual who was harmed. That’s why court cases are called State of Tennessee vs. Christa Pike or People of the United States vs. Elizabeth Holmes.

The alternative to this setup is called blood vengeance, where the family of the victim exacts retribution for the violence done to their family. That is what was practiced in ancient times and even today in some places. It’s not civilized, which is why we have courts. In fact, having a court system is one of the Laws of Noah, the laws that are incumbent on all human beings, not just Jews.

There is plenty of mitigation in Christa’s case that was never presented to the jury. She was exposed to alcohol in the womb, she was neglected by her parents, and she was raped as a toddler and as a teenager. This was a broken woman by any definition.

Her seventeen-year old accomplice, her boyfriend at the time, got life with the possibility of parole, but Christa got death because she was eighteen rather than 17.

We know that nothing biological happens between the ages of 17 and 18 that suddenly makes people more responsible for their actions. Typical 17 and 18-year-old kids are equally stupid!

In the Torah portion this week, Cain kills his brother Abel and is sentenced to wander as a nomad rather than suffer death. Mercy was called for because God had not yet told anyone that murder was not allowed.

Likewise, maercy is certainly called for in this case. The State of Tennessee should commute her sentence to life so that everyone can just move on. She will get her punishment as a convicted murderer, and the state can avoid the spectacle of trying to execute her again.

And speaking of a spectacle, I think we should be horrified that the government now wants to livestream the firing squad execution of Hassan Nidal, who murdered 13 fellow soldiers in a terror attack.

I am against the death penalty under all circumstances, so I don’t think he should be executed. That’s exactly what he says he wants, to become a martyr for his religion. I won’t weep when he dies, but I don’t think it’s the right thing to do, either.

If they do kill Nidal, they certainly should not livestream it. What are we, North Korea? Is this China? ISIS? Ancient Rome? Public executions are even more barbaric than the execution itself.

Will the government have a comment log so that all the bloodthirsty viewers can have their say? Will there be a button to give tips and reactions like thumbs up and the laughing emoji? What is happening to us?

As for the original question about re-doing a failed execution, the Mishnah is clear on the matter. The method of most capital executions stoning, but they stoned people by throwing them off a raised platform, not by pelting them with rocks.

The Mishnah says that if the condemned does not die on impact, they throw a rock at his heart. If he still doesn’t die, then everyone pelts him with stones.

So yes, theoretically speaking, I suppose an executioner does get a second chance. My point, however, is that he shouldn’t get a first chance.

Capital punishment is an affront to humanity and human life, the very human life that was created in our Torah portion. Shabbat Shalom.

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