The Pentagon on Thursday confirmed plans to livestream an execution by firing squad in December—a revelation that came amid fresh calls for the United States to end the death penalty after Tennessee botched two attempts to kill Christa Pike with injections of pentobarbital.
The US Army announced Wednesday that Nidal Hasan—a former military psychiatrist convicted of killing 13 people and injuring 32 more in a 2009 mass shooting at Fort Hood—will be executed at the Texas base at 1:00 pm Central Standard Time on December 3.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth told the right-wing outlet Real America's Voice News that "we'll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it's public, because people need to understand that... there's serious consequences for these types of things."
Then, other outlets, including The Associated Press, reported that "officials in the Pentagon clarified Thursday that the execution would be livestreamed and that more details would follow."
The Washington Post reported that "if Hasan's execution iscarried out, it would mark the first US military execution since April 13, 1961, when Army Pvt. John A. Bennett was hanged after being convicted of rape and attempted murder, according to the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center, which monitors capital punishment. The military's last known firing squad execution was carried out by 'musketry' on November 9, 1945."
Hegseth's comments and the subsequent confirmation from the US Department of Defense were met with disgust and outrage.
"What a sick man," former National Nurses United communications director Charles Idelson said of the Pentagon chief on social media. "A. Executions have never been proven to be a deterrent to capital crimes. B. The spectacle of a public execution is morbid, it recalls the public lynchings so common during the Jim Crow era. C. If the shooter was white, I don't believe this would be public."
Hasan is a US citizen born to Palestinian immigrant parents. Just before he opened fire on soldiers who were set to deploy to Afghanistan, he shouted "Allahu akbar," an Arabic phrase commonly used by Muslims that translates to "God is great!"
While some critics called out Hesgeth, Obama administration speechwriter-turned-podcaster Jon Favreau took aim at Vice President JD Vance, who recently published a book about his faith journey, including his conversion to Catholicism. Favreau said that "I would like to hear our Catholic vice president explain why they're intentionally choosing to broadcast the death of a human being for the entire world to see, including children."
Producer and journalist Simon Thompson wrote: on social media: "Just when I think this administration couldn't get any worse. Livestreaming executions by firing squad? This administration, a Christian administration apparently, is making a snuff movie and treating it like a [pay-per-view] event."
Journalist Séamus Malekafzali similarly said, "Content with having desensitized the American public by broadcasting faceless images of Iranian sailors dying and buildings full of people leveled to the soundtrack to Halo, the government is now moving to live-streaming snuff films, faces and all."
"I know people hate when people make comparisons to American adversaries, but this is literally what ISIS did, save for the live aspect," he added. "Those executions were also done on camera under the auspices of nominally government institutions, just a different kind of government."
Although Trump left office the first time after overseeing a federal execution spree, American Immigration Council senior fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick said Thursday, "Jesus Christ, I didn't think we'd actually get to the 'public executions' stage of Trump's project to roll back the last 100 years of societal development."
Corbin Trent, co-founder of Justice Democrats, suggested it could backfire for the Republican administration. He wrote: "I'm completely in favor of this. I think more of this would go a long way to ending the death penalty."
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