Public execution in the US: Pentagon to stream Hasan firing squad

The Pentagon intends to broadcast live online the execution of former army psychiatrist Nidal Hasan, who in 2009 shot dead 13 service members at a base in Texas and wounded about thirty others. The decision raises a question: does a public execution really deter criminals, or is the death penalty turning into ordinary spectacle?

A firing squad is due to carry out the sentence on December 3 at the very base where Hasan committed the killings. It will be the first US military execution in more than 65 years. The Pentagon said it will show it online, but has not yet named the platform.

Execution as spectacle

“I consider this utterly reprehensible and a step in the wrong direction,” said priest, theologian and ethicist Marek Orko Vácha. He recalled times when people went to watch executions as a matter of course. “It is high time we closed this page of the Middle Ages. Even if the death penalty is justified, the state must separately explain why it is justified to turn a human death into a public spectacle,” he said.

US politics expert Jakub Lepš, who teaches at the University of New York in Prague and works in politics for the TOP 09 party, notes that the US abandoned public executions decades ago: the last one took place roughly 90 years ago. According to him, a live internet broadcast of an execution would be an absolute novelty in American history.

Does death on screen deter?

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth defends the public broadcast by saying it should show people the grave consequences of such crimes. However, according to Vácha, it is not even clear whether the death penalty itself deters crime, and the effect of a public execution is even more contested and hard to measure.

Moreover, watching an execution may change society’s attitude to violence. “A public execution can teach viewers to see the death penalty as an acceptable and, in a sense, glorified response to evil, and in some cases it can even turn criminals into martyrs and advertise them and their supporters,” Vácha believes.

Americans themselves doubt the deterrent effect. According to a July Pew Research Center survey, 66% of respondents support the death penalty for convicted murderers, but 59% believe it does not deter serious crime. “The same Americans support the death penalty, but doubt its deterrent effect and are not quite sure that its application will be free of judicial error,” Lepš summed up.

Although Hasan’s guilt is not in doubt, Vácha points to another problem: once recordings of the execution reach the internet, it will be impossible to control how they are used. They could be edited, mocked or used for all sorts of purposes, and the state will lose control over them. Vácha himself opposes the death penalty, but stresses that even if society considers it just, it does not follow that people should watch it being carried out. “The justification of a punishment does not imply the justification of broadcasting it.”

From pardons to executions

Hasan can still challenge the execution by filing a petition in a civil court to review the lawfulness of his detention. According to military law specialists, this could noticeably delay the carrying out of the sentence.

Former US President Joe Biden, at the end of his term, spared 37 of the 40 inmates awaiting execution in American prisons, but his successor Donald Trump takes a different approach. According to Lepš, this reflects the current administration’s conservative course and the traditional Christian understanding of justice with its principle of “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth”. The conviction of Secretary Hegseth, who advocates the broadcast, may also play a role: “His position does not surprise me. It is also tied to his religious views,” says Lepš.

The debate on the death penalty was recently fuelled by the case of Christa Pike. The convicted murderer survived an attempted execution by lethal injection in Tennessee on September 30: the two doses administered did not kill her, and she ended up in hospital. The state’s governor then suspended all executions until the end of the year. Could this case have influenced the decision to show Hasan’s execution by firing squad? Lepš does not rule out the possibility: “Perhaps they see this as a chance to rehabilitate the death penalty in the eyes of the public.” A direct link between the Pike case and Hasan’s planned execution has not, however, been confirmed.

Around Prague, based on reporting by seznamzpravy.cz