YOU ARE A MURDERER

Essays for Executioners

Jeff Hood has witnessed eleven executions. He has held the hands of condemned men while the state killed them. He has smelled what the cleaning crew can't scrub out. He has sat in hotel rooms afterward, unable to move.

This book is not for lawmakers. It is not for judges. It is not for people who debate capital punishment over dinner. This book is for the people who actually do it. The corrections officers. The execution team members. The people who strap bodies down, check the lines, fit the masks and watch human beings die because the state asked them to and they said yes.

Hood doesn't offer policy arguments. He doesn't cite studies. He speaks directly to the executioner's soul...the part that hesitates, that dreams, that can't explain this job to the kids. The part that might still be reachable.

Part confession, part sermon, part warning...these essays confront the people who carry out executions with a single unbearable truth: what you do is murder, and it is destroying you. But you can stop.