By Phil Huber, ADVANCE COLUMNIST
If the government executes someone in our name, should we be able to watch? And if we should, does that mean the government should broadcast the death live to the world?
Those are different questions. The proposed livestream of Nidal Hasan’s firing-squad execution deserves more than an instinctive yes or no. It requires weighing what the public would learn against what making a death publicly available would set in motion.
The Pentagon announced plans to livestream the December 3 execution of Hasan, convicted of killing 13 people at Fort Hood in 2009. The BBC reported the announcement; subsequent statements by President Trump have left the broadcast decision uncertain, according to CBS News, though just yesterday he said he was killing the plan. We’ll see what happens.
The strongest argument for public viewing is accountability. Citizens who support capital punishment should understand what they authorize. “Death sentence” is an abstraction; an execution is a physical act performed by people acting for the government.
Concealing that reality because it is disturbing can insulate policy from informed judgment. Seeing an execution might strengthen support for capital punishment or weaken it. Neither response should be assumed, and neither should determine whether accurate information is available.
Nor should supporters of viewing automatically be dismissed as bloodthirsty. Some may want independent scrutiny, not entertainment. A recording could reveal whether an official description matches what happened.
The strongest argument against livestreaming is not simply that death is unpleasant. It is that accountability does not necessarily require unrestricted, real-time exposure of someone’s final moments.
In 2001, the Justice Department arranged closed-circuit viewing of Timothy McVeigh’s execution for designated Oklahoma City bombing survivors and victims’ relatives. Attendance was restricted to adults, and recording devices were prohibited to prevent public distribution. That was controlled access, not an invitation to the world.
The BBC interviewed Fort Hood survivor Alonzo Lunsford, who supports Hasan’s execution and viewing by affected families and survivors, but questioned allowing everyone to watch. Supporting a sentence and supporting a public broadcast are separate positions.
The distinction matters when considering footage of ICE encounters, shootings, or vehicles striking people. Such recordings may test official accounts and identify questions requiring investigation. But incidents need individual examination; a clip cannot establish everything outside the frame. A witness recording an unfolding encounter differs from a scheduled execution whose setting and broadcast the government controls.
There are potential harms to viewers. The Department of Veterans Affairs reports a relationship between watching traumatic-event coverage and stress symptoms. It cautions that the relationship is not fully understood: distressed people may seek more coverage, rather than exposure alone causing distress. This does not establish that one execution broadcast would traumatize every viewer.
The VA also notes that media attention can burden families, while repeated viewing may reinforce images of death and damage for people already affected. Public curiosity is not the same as public necessity.
The soldiers carrying out the sentence deserve consideration, too. A 2002 study of 50 Louisiana correctional officers involved in executions found conflicted feelings and emotional difficulty; the officers generally were not clinically depressed. The VA identifies killing or harming others as potentially morally injurious when the experience conflicts with deeply held values. Neither source predicts these soldiers’ reactions.
What does the Army owe personnel whose actions could become permanent public footage? Identity protection and confidential support should be part of planning. The military must consider whether broadcasting reinforces professional accountability—or turns soldiers into performers in a display of power.
Then comes the recording’s afterlife. Footage could support journalism, historical documentation, or criticism of government conduct. It could also become mocking clips, celebratory compilations, propaganda, or commercial entertainment. Government should not promise control over every subsequent use.
Prediction markets raise another question. No market specifically tied to Hasan’s execution or its broadcast has been verified for this column. If such markets emerge, officials should distinguish contracts about broadcast authorization from those tied to execution timing, complications, or manner of death. Predicting policy and creating a financial stake in someone’s dying process deserve different scrutiny.
These possibilities make “Why live?” central. Independent witnesses and a verified recording might provide scrutiny without immediate worldwide distribution. Recording, releasing footage, and livestreaming are three decisions—not one.
American values do not supply an automatic answer. Accountability argues against concealment; human dignity and restraint argue against making death a public attraction. Justice for victims should not become a promise of closure or an invitation to celebrate suffering.
Before approving a broadcast, Trump should require a clear public purpose, legal review, meaningful safeguards, and an explanation of why alternatives are insufficient. That explanation should address the original audience, families, participating soldiers, and people encountering edited copies long afterward. The broadcast’s intended purpose cannot be the only consideration in weighing its effects. The question is whether watching would help us understand government power—or turn its exercise into something we consume.
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Phil Huber is a retired Army Reserve colonel and former federal civil servant who writes about civic education, public accountability and national security. He lives in Fredericksburg.
Readers would like to know the writer's own opinion on these issues--public execution and the death penalty.
A good article.
Points I think are worth considering.
This article is well thought out, rational, objective and appears a sober assessment of the question(s) being considered. I would be surprised if anyone could disagree with that statement.
But because of it, it brings up other facts and questions.
I have seen no evidence that either Secretary Hegseth, nor President Trump made similar assessments.
Doesn't the fact that is the not only the case here, but the normal procedure for most of their decisions call into question not only their judgement, fitness, and character - but also that of those who have continued to actively support them and their party/cult's power?
Glenn Youngkin, Jason Miyares, Tara Durant, Deuantey Diggs all still proudly display an R by their name, don't they? Seems that choice should reflect on them as well, and the folks that keep choosing them and him.
You made this sober assessment of a life and death decision that not only has the effects you mention, but also ripples into America's prestige when our policies only align with despots such as Iran and Saudi Arabia.
And even those two horrible examples of totalitarianism can both maintain the moral high ground in that at least their policies are long standing and uniformly applied, not whims which are to provide spectacle and to stir our basest instincts.
A spectacle which doesn't appear to be coincidental in its timing just before an election.
Further, we should question how we endanger any Americans captured by our enemies in the future. Are we no better than Al-Qeada when we publicly display the killing of an enemy?
Is it wise to create a public martyr of a paralyzed man? Where's the evidence that a sober assessment was performed based on these questions as you've done above?
What does it say when one man, or two men - not in an emergency -but on a whim; can make such momentous decisions for our society with little oversight, checks, or balance?
How can that not be the definition of a totalitarian state?
And as someone who has witnessed death on multiple occasions as a hunter, fisherman, and former paramedic with 15 years of service - I feel there is another aspect that has not been adequately covered.
We, as a society, have made another change we no longer recognize. As anyone else with such experience, such as a nurse, doctor, farmer will tell you; should they pause to consider it.
Which, I suspect for many, not only have they considered it, they've spent long times thinking about it. I know I have. Their humanity requires it.
In that watching a filmed recording of a death or suffering is not the same as experiencing it.
We shouldn't forget that.
It inures us to real violence and death in a way that leaves us indifferent. Some end up even taking pleasure in it. Or think they do. Until they actually do experience. it
Oftentimes, they ain't so perky after that.
Secretary Hegseth is one that strikes me as not quite as tough as he makes out. Could be his makeup, I dunno.
Though for both him and Trump, there is every evidence of sufficient cruelty there. They have shown to them, some lives are much, much cheaper than others. Particularly their own.
Still, difference between having it done and doing it yourself. Easy to talk tough when you'll be sending better men and women to do it for you. Getting to be that that's the American way, ain't it?
Anyway.
There's a cost to a society in that as well.
In that it becomes easier to lessen the value of a life when you don't have to truly experience what witnessing, causing, or attempting to prevent death entails.
How many of our police shows have one or more scenes of violence per hour? Per minute? Often with the reality and gruesomeness blithely skipped over because it IS upsetting.
True death is anything but sanitary. No matter how many shows you've watched, books you've read.
Not only the images, but the smells, the sounds, the feel of rigor and cold in what was once living.
A burnt body, the putrefaction of a 3 day old body, agonal breathing, a drowned child, the pleas and agony of the dying, the pleas and agony of their loved ones.
Watching the body of a man who you used to deliver newspapers to raising his hand a foot above his hospital bed 10 minutes after the emergency room doctor called his death, and 3 hours after you started giving him CPR. Because parts of his brain haven't the message yet.
I've spent the better part of 40 years trying to forget such memories. Or at least understand them. Respect them. Learn from them.
But one of the most lasting lessons I've learned is there is a true difference between watching an image of a death, particularly one where it is edited to fit a narrative by someone with an agenda of glorifying it; and actually being present for one.
So, with the exception of those who were related to the victims, those with the duty to perform the act, or who are there as witnesses for the public such as journalists, scholars, etc., I don't believe anyone should see these things.
And certainly not casually or for political gain.
As with so many of the actions of this cult, we find that the main things we do when we follow them is cheapen and harm ourselves. You'd think we'd all learned by now.....anyway, thanks for writing.