Public executions in the US were once a community spectacle and then they stopped

For about nine decades, executions in the U.S. have been private affairs, often shrouded in secrecy. The stunning Pentagon announcement Thursday that the first military execution in more than 65 years will be livestreamed could change that.

Allowing the world to watch Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan face the firing squad in December would make it the first public execution since two hangings in the 1930s in Kentucky and Missouri drew crowds.

In 1936, a man who reportedly confessed to the rape and murder of a woman was hanged in front of thousands in Owensboro, Kentucky, while the following year, hundreds watched a man in Missouri be hanged.

A livestreamed execution is reminiscent of a bygone period in America's history in which public executions were seen as deterrents to crime as well as popular ceremonies, said Michael L. Radelet, professor emeritus at the University of Colorado Boulder, who has done extensive research on executions.

Parents and teachers would often bring children along to teach them a lesson. The events would sometimes feature a choir, a preacher giving an “execution sermon” and the condemned, who was typically a man being hanged, giving a long speech to the crowd.

In an execution in Leadville, Colorado, in the late 1800s, Radelet said Cyrus Minich, who was being put to death, told the crowd, “Therefore I apologize and I’m ready to go. Goodbye, goodbye.”

The crowd reportedly responded: “Goodbye Cy, goodbye Cy.”

“This is in the days before TV, so not much going on often in big cities, certainly in rural areas, too, so they were there just for the spectacle,” Radelet said, adding that sometimes it would draw a crowd because the person was so hated.

The 1936 hanging in Kentucky of Rainey Bethea is often considered the last public execution in the country, said Radelet.

Bethea was a Black man who reportedly confessed to the rape and killing of a 70-year-old white woman, but was never charged with murder, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Thousands of people attended the event, which was held in a parking lot so the courthouse lawn wouldn’t be damaged by the crowd, according to the center.

But there was also one the following year in which Roscoe “Red” Jackson in Missouri was hanged. The Los Angeles Times reported that some people were given passes to watch, while others climbed trees or cut peepholes to catch a glimpse of the morning execution.

States started to change the policy as an increasing number of people witnessed botched hangings and as broader concerns grew over the events, Radelet said.

“Instead of promoting the sanctity of life and how solemn the circumstance was, with people applauding and having a carnival-like atmosphere, that really turned people off," he said.

Robin Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said they have no record of any execution being livestreamed.

The closest came in 2001, when Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh was executed at a federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana. Then-U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft announced that victims could attend in person or view it through a closed-circuit television

But will the Army's announcement about livestreaming the execution of Hasan, who was convicted of killing 13 people and wounding many others in a 2009 shooting at Fort Hood , change the situation?

Maher said she sees Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's comments as “simply aspirational.”

“There is currently no regulation or precedent for an execution to be livestreamed on the internet or otherwise made widely available to the public,” she said in a statement.

Hasan could choose to resist execution and file a habeas petition — a legal request to review the legality of a detention — in civilian court, which could significantly delay the execution, experts said.

Elisabeth Semel, co-director of the Death Penalty Clinic at UC Berkeley Law, said the announcement raises many legal and public policy questions, including concerns for the dignity of the defendant, who will be eligible to view the execution and what the Trump administration has in mind in opting for an unusual spectacle.

“This is a president who’s about spectacle and that’s, I think, precisely the message that he intends to deliver,” Semel said, adding that she was skeptical that the administration had given a second thought to the legal and social questions being presented by the decision.

Deborah Denno, a death penalty expert and law professor at Fordham University, said livestreaming an execution could make the process “much more transparent” and inform the public about all that capital punishment entails. Those are benefits that she said would be useful at a time when a botched execution in Tennessee has raised fresh questions about the manner by which criminal defendants are put to death for their crimes.

“I think it could possibly be a good idea because it would be transparent and the public would be fully aware that it’s happening,” she said.