That opinions differed on whether the execution of mass murderer Nidal Malik Hasan should be live-streamed to a global audience was confounding to saner minds. There was only one rational answer to the public execution question: absolutely not.
Even President Donald Trump agrees. After wrestling with his own concerns about the live stream, Trump on Thursday morning reversed his earlier support of the idea, saying in a social media post: “I think streaming the execution for all to see might have been a strong deterrent for the World to witness how America deals with Terrorists and SCUM like Hasan but, many very good and well meaning people would rather not watch him die, through streaming, or through any other visual device.”
Interesting choice of words — “good and well meaning people.” On both sides?
Though this episode affords Trump credit where due and a reprieve from criticism, it has also been a reminder of the dubious judgment of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who, in announcing his idea for the live execution, said in an interview with “Human Events Daily”: “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.”
Trump, too, mistakenly thought that a broadcast execution would deter future terrorists from attacking Americans when we know otherwise. Terrorists don’t seem generally dissuaded from attacking their perceived enemies under threat of death. As we remember too well, true believers welcome death as a show of devotion to their religious beliefs. If anything, Hasan’s public execution probably would have served as a recruiting tool.
Hasan, a former Army psychiatrist at Fort Hood in Texas, shouted “Allahu akbar,” meaning “God is great,” as he fatally shot 13 people, including a pregnant woman, and wounded 32 others in a shooting spree in 2009. He, too, was shot and is paralyzed. Following his conviction and death sentence, Hasan has been residing on death row at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
Few killers are less sympathetic than Hasan. Evidence presented at trial showed that he planned the attack well in advance, purchasing a semiautomatic handgun and accumulating ammunition he bought from “Guns Galore.”
The shooting wasn’t treated as a terrorist attack because, at the time, the Uniform Code of Military Justice did not have a punitive article for “terrorism.” Hasan said during a court proceeding in 2013 that he was acting in support of the Taliban and its leadership.
Speaking of the devil, the United States came uncomfortably close to becoming peers with Afghanistan and Iran, where public executions are still held. Public executions in the U.S. fell into disfavor after the 1936 hanging of a Black man, Rainey Bethea, who confessed to raping and killing a 70-year-old White woman, Lischia Edwards. Bethea’s execution in a Kentucky parking lot attracted up to 20,000 spectators who, photos show, seemed poised for a carnival.
With social media and other platforms, billions of people could have watched Hasan die. The viral impact of such an event would have been staggering, and the question quickly became: What are we doing to ourselves? And why? In theory, we punish murderers to achieve justice, not revenge. Not for entertainment. If anything, had the live stream come to pass, the rest of the world would have seen that America’s once-moral core had eroded beyond recognition. This impression is already popular for good reason, but Trump’s decision was bracing and, if only briefly, psychologically stabilizing.
Pressure to cancel the broadcast of Hasan’s death had been growing. Somewhat surprisingly, Christendom was divided. Some pastors quoted scripture to justify the live stream. Dallas megachurch pastor Robert Jeffress told CBS News that there was no moral or biblical objection to live-streaming the execution. The Catholic Church voiced objections to this escalation in the culture of death.
The idea that billions of people could have tuned in to Hasan’s execution was especially alarming, knowing that children and teens would have been among them. Tech-savvy minors may be accustomed to video violence, but watching a real man being killed in real time is an entirely different experience. Tens of millions of people have watched the shooting of Christian activist Charlie Kirk. The video was available across social media, including Truth Social.
The effects are not yet known, but this sort of “entertainment” can’t be good for anyone, adults included. Numbing ourselves to brutality becomes an adaptive mechanism to protect the psyche from further violence. But such numbing can also dissociate the developing mind from the real-life consequences of violence.
Hegseth said that having a live-streaming of the Dec. 3 execution at Fort Hood at 1 p.m. on a Thursday — the approximate time and day of the shooting — was a “no-brainer.”
I couldn’t agree more.
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