Northern Yearly Meeting Statement on the Proposed Livestreaming of Public Execution

October 14, 2026

Northern Yearly Meeting Friends are greatly troubled by plans of the U.S. military to conduct and live stream an execution by firing squad, currently scheduled to occur December 3rd. We find ourselves in unity with the following statement from Friends Committee on National Legislation opposing the execution. We have asked our constituent Monthly Meetings and Worship Groups to share this statement with their members and encourage them to contact their Senators, Representatives and the President and ask them to insist these plans be cancelled. We ask others reading this statement to do the same.

The Friends Committee on National Legislation statement is as follows:

“We are deeply disturbed and sickened by the U.S. military’s plan to broadcast a public execution. As a Quaker organization, our opposition to the death penalty is rooted in our belief in the inherent dignity of all people. Carrying out a public execution as if for entertainment would inflict a terrible and shameful wound on the moral soul of our nation. 

Our faith teaches us that violence harms all those who partake in it, and we are dismayed by all the ways that life is cheapened and discarded by state violence carried out in all our names – from police killings of Black people, to lawless ICE violence in our streets, to the endless wars our government inflicts on people abroad. 

We call on members of Congress to strongly oppose this execution, and to act to abolish the death penalty for good.”