Are public executions legal in the US? Hegseth announces plan to livestream firing squad
Por Joe Sommerlad — – World RSS Feed
Are public executions legal in the US? Hegseth announces plan to livestream firing squad
Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan’s death will be broadcast, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says, making it the first public exhibition of the death penalty in the U.S. in 90 years
Joe Sommerlad Friday 09 October 2026 11:19 BST
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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has announced that the upcoming execution of Nidal Malik Hasan will be available to view via livestream, making it the first public exhibition of the death penalty in the U.S. in almost a century.
Hasan, 56, a U.S. Army psychiatrist, was convicted of killing 13 people and injuring 32 others during a rampage at Fort Hood military base in Killeen, Texas, in 2009 and will be put to death by firing squad on December 3.
Announcing the broadcast to right-wing activist Jack Posobiec Thursday, Hegseth said: “He’s gonna get a firing squad of soldiers, as it should be. 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.”
The debate surrounding capital punishment in the U.S. has reignited over the last week following the botched execution of murderer Christa Pike in Nashville, Tennessee, who survived twin doses of a lethal injection on September 30 and had to be raced to hospital for life-saving treatment.
Against all odds, Pike, 50, woke up Tuesday and has since begun talking and even walking. Dr Joel Zivot, a medical expert advising her legal team, told The Independent she retains no memory of her ordeal but her attorney, Randy Spivey, said she was “angry and confused” about what had happened to her.
open image in galleryResponding to the bungling of Pike’s execution, former deputy assistant U.S. attorney general John Yoo told Fox News last week it was time for Tennessee to revive the use of the firing squad if it does ultimately decide to try again to execute the killer, rather than commute her sentence to life without the possibility of parole.
Currently, five states allow firing squads as a method of execution – Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Utah – although doubts linger as to the humanity of the practice, particularly as the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution bars “cruel and unusual” punishment.
South Carolina executed three people by firing squad in 2025 and, in the case of Mikal Mahdi, eyewitnesses reported him crying out and groaning as the bullets struck him. An autopsy subsequently found that none of the shots fired struck Mahdi’s heart, as intended, and his attorneys claimed he suffered “excruciating conscious pain and suffering” and a prolonged death.
The U.S. military last executed someone by firing squad in the Second World War: Army Private Eddie Slovik faced 12 riflemen from his own unit, armed with M1 Garands, on January 31, 1945 after being court-martialed for desertion. Four shots were fatal.
The military’s last execution took place April 13, 1961, when Army Private John A Bennett was hanged for the rape and attempted murder of an 11-year-old girl while stationed in Austria.
open image in galleryAccording to the Death Penalty Information Center, the last verified public execution in the U.S. was the hanging of rapist Rainey Bethea in Daviess County, Kentucky, on August 14, 1936, which was witnessed by 20,000 people, according to a contemporary newspaper account by Owensboro’s Messenger-Inquirer. The state abolished death by hanging two years later.
Public executions began to be phased out thereafter as the federal government and the states moved towards more “humane” means of killing death row prisoners such as gas, electrocution and drugs, shifting them behind closed doors and taking a more solemn, procedural approach, rather than catering to an appetite for ghoulish spectacle.
In the 21st century, executions are typically carried out privately within correctional facilities, away from cameras and the general public, except for a small audience of officials, families and members of the press.
However, as the Pike case proved, the process is by no means foolproof. The members of the media who witnessed what took place at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution emerged expressing their horror while the mother of the killer’s victim said she did not believe justice had been served.
Hegseth’s announcement comes amid a sharp rise in executions under President Donald Trump, with 47 carried out last year – the highest annual total since 2009 – and another 28 so far in 2026.
open image in galleryThat compares to the four years of Joe Biden’s presidency, in which the death penalty was carried out 11 times in 2021, 18 times in 2022, 24 times in 2023 and 25 times in 2024.
The Biden administration also imposed a moratorium on federal capital punishment while the Department of Justice carried out a review and ultimately commuted the sentences of 37 of 40 people on death row.
Trump, by contrast, has expressed support for the penalty, signing a slew of executive orders relating to it within hours of taking his oath of office, including one directing the attorney general to “take all necessary and lawful action” to help states obtain lethal injection drugs for the purpose of carrying out executions.
As an influential private citizen, Trump notoriously called for the death penalty to be administered to the Central Park Five in a series of New York newspaper editorials in 1989, only for the quintet to be completely exonerated of the crime of which they were accused.
As president, he has called for anybody convicted of murder in Washington, D.C., to be killed, despite the district not practising capital punishment, calling the threat “a very strong preventative.”
However, 59 percent of the American public said in a recent Pew Research poll they do not agree with Trump’s conviction that the threat of execution serves as a meaningful deterrent, saying they did not believe it would dissuade people from committing serious crimes.
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