In Grim Company: Execution as a Prime-Time Event
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US DEFENCE SECRETARY PETE HESGETH , IMAGE: US SECRETARY OF WAR
I woke up the other morning to the news that the United States may livestream an execution.
According to The Associated Press, the Pentagon announced that Nidal Malik Hasan would be executed by firing squad at Fort Hood, Texas, on December 3. Pete Hegseth, former Fox News host turned Secretary of Defence, assured the media outlet Real America’s Voice that the execution would be public and accessible for the public to watch. Hegseth shrugged off questions about Hasan's final requests and any contact with the Trump administration, replying bluntly: “Don't care. We'll see him on December 3rd.”
Ninety years ago, Rainey Bethea’s hanging in Kentucky is widely regarded as the last legally sanctioned public execution in the United States. What became “a spectacle to shame the nation” put pressure on the state to follow the national shift towards private executions. The state law was subsequently amended, completing the transition in 1938. Fast forward to today.
Covering the judicial use of the death penalty, Amnesty International recorded in 2025 the highest number of executions carried out globally since 1981. The United States is listed as one of the 17 countries worldwide that continue to enforce executions, with about 40% of them taking place in just one state: Florida. Not only within the broader Western world but even within the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, which comprises 57 countries from Europe, North America, and Central Asia, the United States stood apart in 2025 in its continued imposition of capital punishment. Put the other way around, the USA finds itself in the company of authoritarian regimes it most routinely condemns.
US ARMY TROOPS, IMAGE: OLEG IVANOV
According to the Amnesty International report, nine countries in 2025 utilised shooting as a method of execution: Afghanistan, China, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Taiwan, UAE, USA, and Yemen. Moreover, Afghanistan and Iran are the only two countries recorded as having carried out public executions in violation of international human rights laws and standards. While the full details of the Pentagon’s planned execution remain unclear, I am deeply shocked that in 2026, as it celebrates its 250th anniversary, the self-proclaimed Land of the Free is considering joining this exclusive club of the world’s most reprehensible executioners. But can I really be shocked when the nation's Commander-in-Chief and the Secretary of Defence are both products of the broadcast era?
Ironically, Pete Hegseth publicly presents himself as an evangelical Christian. He cites the Bible, hosts prayer circles, and monthly worship services at the Pentagon. I will not go into whether he knowingly recited Pulp Fiction’s famous monologue at a religious service. Nor will I dwell on whether he modified a briefing room into a makeup studio for his television appearances. But it is more than obvious that the Head of the Pentagon remains a performer, and the planned execution offers another opportunity to attract publicity. A Secretary of Defence who reportedly asked God to ensure that every bullet fired at the enemy hit its target might also believe that Americans have a macabre appetite for a livestream of a man's final moments. Whether you are religious or not, whatever your position on the death penalty is, livestreaming an execution raises questions about the message this administration wants to send. Is it about state power? The defeat of evil? Or, as Hegseth claims: to understand the consequences of such crime? Will Americans be reassured that justice has been served? Will they feel national pride? Or public shame?
In an age where global figures across politics, activism, and science speak increasingly about human dignity and rights, there is something particularly dark and grotesque in turning an execution into a spectacle. Ninety years after the last public state-sanctioned killing, Americans woke up today to a revived, chilling reality.
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