With less than one week until the scheduled execution of death row inmate Curtis Windom, Deacon George Kain highlights injustices in the US justice system that led to his sentencing, as well as the inhumane practice of capital punishment.
By Francesca Merlo
The death penalty is justified as serving justice for the victims. Its advocates say it brings victims closure. But so often, the very people capital punishment is supposed to serve say the opposite. Victims’ families come out of execution chambers not feeling healed but empty. “I was told it would make me feel better. Why, instead, do I feel so much worse?” they ask.
What seems to be happening, according to Deacon George Kain, is that the states carrying out executions are using victims as scapegoats to justify a bloody, legalised murder – one that, just as every other murder, does no good to anyone.
On the 28th of August 2025, in just a few days, Florida is scheduled to execute Curtis Windom, a Black man who has spent 33 years on death row. He grew up in poverty, lives with intellectual disabilities, and has long shown signs of brain damage. His legal defence was riddled with failures. The Florida Supreme Court itself acknowledged that his lawyer chose not to present evidence of his mental illness or brain damage, for fear it might complicate the case. As a result, jurors never heard crucial mitigating evidence. And the jury that sentenced him to death did so by an 8 – 4 majority, a verdict that would not stand in most other states, or in the eyes of the US Supreme Court, which has said capital sentences should be unanimous.
The victims speak
What makes Windom’s case especially striking is that the victims for whom the state claims to act are asking for clemency. Windom’s daughter – whose mother was killed in the crime – was an infant at the time. Now an adult, she has built a relationship with her father and wants him spared.
“If we say that we’re doing this for the victims,” Kain reflects, “and the victims are now saying they don’t want this done, then what are we really doing? Are we really saying it’s for the victims, or are we just carrying out our bloodthirsty desire for vengeance and revenge?”
Far from offering peace, executions often re-traumatise families. Kain recalls his years as a probation officer and a researcher: “From the very first day, victims are promised closure – that they’ll feel better once the killer is executed. But I’ve met family members who watched executions, and they walked out saying: I don’t feel better. I feel worse. Don’t kill for me, because all this does is prolong my agony.”
In Windom’s case, this re-traumatisation is happening in real time. His daughter, now grown, pleads for his life, but the state insists on executing him in her name. “The system claims to act for victims,” Kain says, “but in reality, it ignores them when they ask for mercy.”
Curtis Windom with his daughter, Curtisia
A contradiction
Florida has carried out more executions this year than any other state. Its governor, Ron DeSantis, identifies as a pro-life Catholic.
“There was a time in history when the Church tolerated capital punishment,” explains Deacon Kain, “not as revenge, but as protection of society from a dangerous aggressor. But that time has passed. Today we can secure people in prison for life. We no longer need executions. Our last three popes have said so clearly. Pope Francis even changed the Catechism to declare the death penalty inadmissible.”
For Kain, the Catholic position is rooted in one principle: dignity. “We are all more than the worst thing we’ve ever done. Every person has a God-given dignity that cannot be taken away.” To him, the persistence of the death penalty alongside a pro-life ethic represents a contradiction that is impossible to reconcile.
A broken system
Windom’s story is one among many marked by failures: inadequate defence, racial bias, and non-unanimous verdicts. Florida’s new law lowering the threshold for a death sentence from unanimous jury verdicts to an 8–4 majority is, Kain argues, “a red flag for justice itself.”
His appeals raised other troubling facts: that a key prosecution witness had a pending felony charge the jury never knew about; that Florida did not require capital defence lawyers at the time to meet the standards now in place; that the families of victims themselves asked for mercy at a 2013 clemency hearing. Each of these was dismissed by the courts as “untimely” or “procedurally barred.” In the end, judges declared they were “confident in the outcome” and refused to entertain even a petition for rehearing.
The injustice is compounded by haste. Windom’s lawyers were given just five days after the Governor signed his death warrant to file motions, despite restrictions on prison visits and difficulties securing expert testimony. The courts insisted this was not a violation of due process. For Kain, this expendience is deliberate – designed to prevent society from pausing long enough to see the flaws.
It also places the United States in sharp contrast with other Western democracies, almost all of which have abolished the death penalty. “It undermines America’s credibility when it speaks about human rights abroad,” he says.
A personal journey
Kain himself once stood firmly in favour of capital punishment. “I was a Catholic who believed in the death penalty,” he recalls. “I thought I was protecting victims. But what really shook me was when I listened to victims’ families. The overwhelming majority told me the death penalty only made their pain worse. That’s when I realised I was not helping them – I was compounding their suffering.”
That testimony, along with his faith, transformed him.
A life of witness
Since his conversion, Kain has made the abolition of the death penalty part of his vocation. Before his ordination, he testified in state legislatures; worked with the Community of Sant’Egidio in Rome, and spoke at conferences in Italy, Japan, the Philippines, and Norway. Each year, he travels to Rome for the Community’s November 30th “Cities for Life” gathering against the death penalty.
Now a deacon in the Diocese of Bridgeport, he continues that mission in his ministry. He preaches about cases like Windom’s, linking them to the Gospel call to mercy and reconciliation. “I am not surprised,” he says, “that I find myself in Florida at this moment, called again to stand against an execution. It’s not an accident. It’s a blessing – and a responsibility.”
George Kain (centre) along with Brother Dale Recinella (L) death row chaplain in Florida and Carlo Santoro (R) from the Community of Sant’Egidio
Justice, mercy, and life
For Kain, the lesson of Curtis Windom’s case is not just about one man, but about the very meaning of justice.
“It wasn’t justice that the offender killed,” he says, “and it’s not justice that the offender is killed. In God’s great economy, we all have an obligation to one another – to pray for victims, yes, but also to pray for those who kill. Justice is not vengeance. Justice is rooted in mercy.”
Windom’s daughter is pleading for her father’s life. She wants to continue a relationship with him. Yet the state of Florida is determined to extinguish that life – not in the name of justice, but despite it. “If we truly listen to victims, if we truly respect human dignity,” Kain concludes, “we will see that executions do not serve life. They diminish it.”
Join the thousands of people appealing to stop Curtis Windom’s execution. Sign the petition here.
