Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump Want To Reinstate Public Executions

A government that needs an audience for its executions has already confessed that it rules by fear.

On December 3 at 1 p.m. Central, the Pentagon plans to point a camera at an Army firing squad at Fort Hood and livestream the killing of a human being for the public to watch. Hegseth recommended the firing squad. Donald Trump approved it. Then Hegseth went on a conservative TV show and promised, “We’ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it’s public.” Pentagon officials confirmed the livestream and said details will follow.

The condemned man is Nidal Hasan, the Army psychiatrist who murdered 13 people and wounded 32 more at Fort Hood in 2009. I hold zero sympathy for him. A military jury sentenced him to death in 2013, and the Supreme Court declined to review his case. My concern is with the two men turning his death into a public broadcast, and with what that broadcast says to the world about our country.

We Settled This in 1936

America’s last fully public execution happened in Owensboro, Kentucky, on August 14, 1936, when somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 people packed the streets to watch Rainey Bethea hang, and the carnival atmosphere drew so much national disgust that Kentucky lawmakers moved executions behind prison walls by 1938. That was ninety years ago. Missouri, in 1937, hanged one more man before a crowd of about 400 at a county courthouse, and by 1938 Missouri had moved its executions inside a prison gas chamber.

No legal execution in American history has ever aired live. Army rules call for at least two media witnesses in the room, and the camera stays off.

Look at the Company We Would Keep

Amnesty International confirmed public executions in only two countries last year, Iran and Afghanistan under the Taliban, and North Korea and Saudi Arabia carry long records of the same practice. A United Nations inquiry found North Korea stages public executions to plant fear in its own people.

Now listen to Hegseth’s reason. He said people need to understand there are serious consequences. That is the exact logic those regimes use, the belief that a government earns obedience by forcing its citizens to watch blood spill, and it has no place in a nation that wrote the Eighth Amendment to forbid cruel and unusual punishment. Our European allies ended public executions generations ago. Britain stopped in 1868. France stopped in 1939.

Four Reasons the Camera Should Stay Off

One. Public killing trains people to cheer death, and of a lesson like that the crowd forgets nothing.

Two. The United Nations human rights office warned that livestreaming an execution is tantamount to a public execution and would breach the absolute ban on torture. Elected representatives from both sides of the aisle have called Hegseth’s idea un-American and beyond disgusting.

Three. Watching stops nobody. In 2012 the National Research Council reviewed more than three decades of deterrence studies and concluded they offer no reliable evidence that executions reduce murder, and a viral clip changes none of that math.¹

Four. It hands Hasan the ending he wanted. He called no witnesses at his trial and told investigators he might still become a martyr. His own court appointed lawyers worried he was chasing a death sentence. A public livestream gives his supporters a recruiting video produced and distributed by the United States Army, timed to the same weekday and the same hour he opened fire on unarmed soldiers lined up for immunizations and medical clearance before deploying overseas.

So What are Your Thoughts on Hegseth’s Idea?

I believe livestreaming a man’s death is disgusting, and it betrays everything this country stands for. America has kept the camera off its executions for nearly ninety years, through presidents of both parties, right up until a man convicted on 34 felony counts and found liable for sexual abuse by a civil jury moved into the Oval Office.

If you feel the same way I do, call your two senators today (202-224-3121) and tell them, in plain words, that you refuse to let the Pentagon turn a military execution into streaming content. Demand that America continue to lead by example instead of acting like Iran, Afghanistan under the Taliban, North Korea and Saudi Arabia.

Make that call soon. Because after December 3, it’s too late.

Mitch Jackson, Esq.

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1. In 2012 the National Research Council, the research arm of the National Academies, reviewed more than three decades of deterrence studies and found none could carry the burden of proof. The committee, chaired by Carnegie Mellon criminologist Daniel Nagin, concluded the research since 1976 tells us nothing reliable about whether executions move murder rates up, down, or at all, and told policymakers on every side to stop citing it. The studies ignored the alternative punishment, usually life without parole, and rested on unverified guesses about how killers perceive the odds of an execution that may come decades later. More than three decades of research outrank thirty seconds of video. When someone tells you a viral clip proves executions save lives, ask for the study, because the nation’s top scientific body already reviewed the evidence and that’s not what it showed.