The last public execution in the U.S. was a hanging in Owensboro, KY in 1936. 20,000 people showed up. The U.S. was ridiculed internationally—and public executions stopped for 90 years. I wrote in my book The Executioner's Toll, about the execution of Rainey Bethea, a black man, who was hanged for the rape of a white woman. Now the U.S. military wants to bring public executions back.
The New York Times reported that the Army
officer convicted in the 2009 Fort Hood shooting would be executed in public, a
practice that ended in the United States nearly a century ago and is most
commonly carried out in a handful of countries, including Iran, North Korea and
Afghanistan.
The Pentagon said in a statement that the military
execution, scheduled for Dec. 3, would also be broadcast via livestream. Such a
broadcast has little precedent, and releasing video of executions is most often
associated with extremist militant groups like the Islamic State.
The announcement adds to the growing spectacle around the
planned execution of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who killed 13 people and
wounded 32 others when he brought a personal handgun onto the grounds of Fort
Hood, Texas. The rampage was the deadliest shooting at an American military
base and sent shock waves through the U.S. military.
There are few countries that hold public executions.
The human rights group Amnesty International has highlighted some cases in which public executions in Iran
and Saudi Arabia have been filmed by bystanders.
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