In Grateful, Loving Memory:

Jerry Givens, a former executioner who dedicated his life to ending the death penalty, died of COVID-19 on April 13, 2020. As a founding member of Death Penalty Action’s Board of Advisors, he traveled to work with us every time there was an opportunity. The death of Jerry is a great personal loss to DPA and to our abolition movement - and we will miss him deeply.

Read The Intercept's Article

Watch the New York Times's "Cause of Life: Jerry Givens" 

Jerry Given’s family has asked that tribute gifts in Jerry’s memory be made to Death Penalty Action as a way to continue Jerry’s legacy and work to end executions. Make your gift here. Funds raised will be used to lift up Jerry's message and those of other voices of experience on the death penalty.

Jerry’s patience, humor, wisdom and above all his faith in God drove him to do right, and to create change as his own way of healing himself and the world. Your tribute gift in Jerry’s memory will ensure his legacy lives on long after the death penalty is abolished in the United States.

Read more about Jerry:

CNN's coverage

Obituary in the Washington Post

Associated Press's article on his life and death

NPR's coverage

BBC Sounds - "Last Word" program (segment on Jerry starts around minute 14:00)

Tribute by Rick Stack and Maggie Burnette Stogner, producers of “In the Executioner’s Shadow”

Jerry Givens, speaking outside the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, DC in 2011 as part of the annual Fast and Vigil to Abolish the Death Penalty.
Both photos on this page by Scott Langley.