U.S. plan to live-stream execution by firing squad draws bipartisan, international outrage
asserted
plan → stream → outrage
-
Click here to listen to this article -
- Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the Pentagon plans to live-stream the Dec. 3 execution of Nidal Malik Hasan, who killed 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009.
-
asserted
who → click → 2009
Republicans and Democrats, human rights officials, religious leaders and legal experts condemned the broadcast plan.
asserted
Republicans → condemn → plan
In confirming his plans to live-stream Fort Hood mass shooter Nidal Malik Hasan’s military execution by firing squad on Dec. 3, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called it a “no brainer” punishment for a “radical Islamist terror attack” on U.S. service members.
asserted
Hegseth → confirm → members
“We’ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it’s public, because people need to understand [that] there are serious consequences for these types of things,” Hegseth said in an interview with the Real America’s Voice network.
asserted
Hegseth → make → network
Others across the country and around the world — Democrats and Republicans, human rights experts, legal scholars and military and religious leaders — condemned it as a barbaric throwback to an era when executions were cast as entertainment, and as the world’s leading democracy adopting a form of punishment carried out in modern times only by authoritarian regimes and terrorist organizations.
asserted
executions → condemn → regimes
“Hasan should face the death penalty, but making his execution public and streaming it?
asserted
execution → face → it
Beyond disgusting,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) wrote on X. “Public executions are what oppressive dictatorships like Iran and Afghanistan do.
asserted
dictatorships → write → Iran
It should not be happening in America.”
asserted
It → happen → America
“I absolutely support the sentence of death, but live-streaming executions is what jihadists do.
asserted
jihadists → support → what
America is better than that,” Rep. Austin Scott (R-Ga.) wrote.
asserted
Scott → write → that
The United Nations’ High Commissioner for Human Rights said that “the livestreaming of an execution is tantamount to a public execution and would breach the absolute prohibition of torture.”
asserted
livestreaming → say → torture
The head of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said it would “further undermine the moral fabric of our nation and be a blight on the conscience of its people.”
asserted
it → say → people
The suspect, stable after being shot himself, is accused of killing 13 and wounding 30 at the Texas Army base.
asserted
suspect → shoot → base
It’s not clear whether he is the author of inflammatory comments on the Web.
asserted
he → ’ → Web
Matthew Robinson, a criminal justice professor at Appalachian State University and author of a book on U.S. capital punishment titled “Death Nation,” said he was “appalled” by the plans.
asserted
he → title → plans
“It strikes me as meant to be entertaining.”
asserted
It → strike → me
He said the last military execution was in 1961, and the last by firing squad was in 1945.
asserted
last → say → 1945
Hasan was an Army psychiatrist and major who in 2009 entered a medical building on the Texas military base with a laser-sighted handgun, shouted “Allahu akbar” — Arabic for “God is great!” — and opened fire, killing 13 people and injuring 32 others.
asserted
God → enter → others
He has since spoken of being a “martyr” if executed.
asserted
He → speak → ?
President Trump, an outspoken proponent of the death penalty for years but also a past critic of public executions in places like Iran, has signed off on Hasan’s execution but not addressed Hegseth’s plans.
asserted
Trump → sign → plans
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
asserted
House → respond → comment
Vice President JD Vance, who is Catholic, said Friday that people should remember that Hasan “brutally murdered a lot of innocent people.”
asserted
Hasan → say → people
But he also said he would not watch a live-stream of the execution, and expressed doubt that is “actually going to happen.”
asserted
that → say → doubt
On his first day in office this term, Trump issued an executive order requiring federal agencies to restore the death penalty to prominence.
asserted
Trump → issue → prominence
In April, the U.S. Department of Justice announced it had taken steps to do so, including by “expanding the protocol” to include firing squads.
asserted
it → announce → squads
Five states currently allow firing squads to carry out executions: Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Utah.
asserted
squads → allow → executions
The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly turned down appeals contending such executions amount to “cruel and unusual punishment,” which is barred under U.S. law.
asserted
which → turn → law
South Carolina executed three men by firing squad last year.
asserted
Carolina → execute → squad
When the Supreme Court last year rejected an Alabama inmate’s request to be killed by firing squad rather than with nitrogen hypoxia, liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor — joined by fellow liberal Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson — dissented, writing, “Boyd asks for the barest form of mercy: to die by firing squad, which would kill him in seconds, rather than by a torturous suffocation lasting up to four minutes.
asserted
which → reject → suffocation
The Constitution would grant him that grace.
asserted
Constitution → grant → grace
Last week, a Tennessee inmate named Christa Pike survived what was meant to be a lethal injection of the barbiturate pentobarbital.
asserted
what → name → pentobarbital
Other states have also struggled with executions by lethal injection in recent years.
asserted
states → struggle → years
Much of the criticism of Hegseth’s plan for Hasan has centered not on the method of killing, but on the live-streaming of it.
asserted
Much → center → it
Robin M. Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said the center has “no record of any execution being live streamed,” and is “not aware of any regulation or precedent for a military execution to be live streamed on the internet or otherwise made widely available to the public.”
asserted
execution → say → public
Fox News commentator Howard Kurtz wrote: “I’m sensing revulsion on the left and right, not so much for killing a death row prisoner — although firing squad seems extreme in the modern age — but for the Pentagon to live-stream it, turning this into a horrifying TV show to entertain the masses.
asserted
Pentagon → write → masses
Daniel LaChance, an associate history professor at Emory University and author of the book “Executing Freedom: The Cultural Life of Capital Punishment in the United States,” said the last public execution in the U.S. occurred in 1936, when a Black man convicted of rape was hanged in Kentucky — which still allowed public executions after most states had abandoned the practice.
asserted
states → execute → practice
That execution was “by all accounts a grotesque carnival” and “sort of like a gladiatorial contest brought to life in the 20th Century, where the crowd was surly, shouting,” LaChance said.
asserted
LaChance → bring → Century
That the Trump administration is seeking to turn capital punishment into a public spectacle once more, LaChance said, is out of line with decades of thinking on the issue, but in line with Trump’s own ethos about crime and punishment.
asserted
LaChance → seek → crime
And when executions moved into the bowels of prisons in the early 20th century, they were really becoming bureaucratic affairs, run by experts, carried out in front of a small group of professionals and clergy,” LaChance said.
asserted
LaChance → move → professionals
…and 13 more, not listed.
The Aporia
