Have you ever killed somebody? The question in and of itself is haunting.

Have you ever killed somebody? Each word rattles my soul.

Have you ever killed somebody? The more times I ask the question, the more times I'm brought face-to-face with my own complicity in killing.

Most people don't think about it like that. The more times I ask the question to others, the more times I get adamant denials of ever being involved in killing anyone. Yet in the midst of a quickness to absolve ourselves of any evil, there is our death penalty. Each time the State of Texas kills someone, the citizens are responsible. Since 1982, we have killed 538 people.

There is no hope to be found in what we are. There is only hope to be found in what we can become.

Recently, the Pew Research Forum reported that support for the death penalty has hit its lowest point in four decades. I grabbed my heart and almost fell over. Though I'd known that support for the death penalty has been declining for years nationally, this was the first time that I'd realized it had fallen so low.

Just under half of Americans now support the death penalty (49 percent), while 42 percent oppose it. Support is down from a high of 80 percent in 1994. Support has even dropped 7 percentage points since March of last year.

The death penalty is dying. How could this be? We've had that killer instinct for so long. People are changing. While I can't say for sure why, three possible reasons are worthy of deep thought.

1. The death penalty is not a deterrent to crime. How do you teach someone not to kill by killing? The death penalty is supposed to be a deterrent to killing. But how could it be? Capital punishment teaches people that there are ethical ways of killing. We can't persuade people to stop killing by showing them how to do it again and again. The Death Penalty Information Center has consistently reported that the murder rates in death penalty states are higher than in states that don't have the death penalty. The death penalty is not a deterrent to murder. Some people are finally figuring out they are less safe with a death penalty than they are without one.

2. The death penalty costs too much. A Dallas Morning News article in 1992 showed that the death penalty costs multiple times the amount that it would cost to put someone in a maximum security prison for life. And the cost isn't going down, as the newspaper reported a few years ago that the cost of execution drugs had skyrocketed. Pharmaceutical companies don't want to sell drugs meant to save lives to people dedicated to taking lives. The cost to carry out these executions is only going to continue to grow. The bottom line is that we know it is far more expensive to execute someone than to put them in prison for life. The death penalty is starting to earn a reputation for being another expensive failed government program.

3. What if we execute someone who is innocent? That's a question that eats at the souls of those with knowledge about the death penalty. I think we already have. Surely out of the hundreds, there's got to be at least one. Was it Carlos De Luna? Was it Cameron Todd Willingham? Or was it someone else entirely? In 2014, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences released a study concluding 1 in 25 sentenced to death in the U.S. is innocent. Despite recent exonerations, Texas has still probably executed many innocent people. There is no way to stop the execution of the innocent without stopping executions entirely.

The three reasons to abolish the death penalty meet to form one question.

Is the death penalty worth it?

Jeff Hood is a Baptist pastor and activist in Dallas. Website: revjeffhood.com