Report an issue
Tell us what's wrong and we'll take a look.
Thanks – we got it. We'll review and follow up if needed.
Dusty Ray Spencer was seventy-four years old. He was a Marine. He was a man Florida decided to kill.
Too Old to Kill is Jeff Hood's real-time chronicle of the final weeks before Spencer's execution on June 25, 2026...the oldest person put to death in Florida's modern history. It moves from legal argument to open letter to sermon to grief. It shows a case built on a death sentence imposed without a jury...on mental illness the state's own experts could not dispute...on a man the courts remembered too late.
This is not a legal brief. It is a priest's account of walking beside a man in his final days...of dreams the night before...of the last conversation before a gurney...of what an execution does to the soul of the one who witnesses it. Hood does not ask readers to forget what Spencer did. He asks them to reckon with what killing an old man accomplishes.
Too Old to Kill stands as both indictment and elegy. It is a record of mercy denied and a call to remember that even the condemned grow old.
Jeff Hood
The Rev. Dr. Jeff Hood is a theologian and spiritual advisor to death row inmates nationwide. He has accompanied over a dozen men to their executions and was the first spiritual advisor to be present for a nitrogen hypoxia execution. Rev. Hood has been profiled widely, including in the Rolling Stone documentary The Spiritual Advisor. He is the Founder of the Execution Intervention Project.
More by Jeff Hood
Why Readwise Books?
Readwise Books is an ebook & audiobook platform that automatically logs how much you and your friends read, making it fun and easy to read more. Learn more →