I’ve written about capital punishment here before--going back to 2013 on this platform.
In June 2013, in “Dead men walking,” I argued that Americans tolerate executions because they are insulated from them, and proposed a condition: keep the death penalty, but an execution can proceed only if the governor personally walks into the chamber and carries it out.
When I began college in 1980, fresh out of the USAF, I got into a big debate in my philosophy class with our professor. The class went quiet. For the entire class. It was not the first time that would happen in that class.
Another time I won the debate with him, alone in the class with few comments/question from the class, but by the end of that session frustrated, he simply said that I could just leave class. So, I shut up.
But everyone knew, including him, that I'd won the debate.
This time it wasn't so much heated as intense. I had believed in capital punishment. I had never really given it much intellectual, ethical or moral consideration. It was Old Testament. It just seemed "right." Raised old Slovak Catholic, head altar boy at our small Slovak church (for those wondering about my Irish orientation, that's my dad's family, not mom's).
In the end after all our prof's arguments, the one that finally stunned me and won me over was this:
"It sets a bad precedent for a state to murder its citizens."
Note taken. That, along with the rest of his comments, had changed my orientation--forever.
In March 2025, in “An Ethical Framework for Last-Resort Capital Punishment Neutralization,” I went further and laid out a model where execution is off the table by default, stripped from politics entirely, and reserved for the rare person who remains an unavoidable danger even inside maximum security.
This week the Secretary of Defense managed to propose the opposite of both.
Nidal Hasan, the former Army psychiatrist who murdered 13 people at Fort Hood in 2009, is scheduled to die by military firing squad in December. Last week Pete Hegseth announced the execution would be made public, that people would be able to watch it. The backlash came from both parties.
House Speaker Mike Johnson warned the footage could become a recruiting tool for terrorists. Vice President Vance said he wouldn’t watch. Senator John Kennedy said he wouldn’t publicize it. Yesterday President Trump overruled Hegseth on Truth Social: no livestream, though victims’ families may attend in person. According to Reuters, the White House hadn’t known the plan was coming.
Watching is not owning
Hegseth’s plan and my 2013 proposal share one feature. Both drag the execution out of the dark. That is where the resemblance ends.
My proposal puts the weight on the person who authorizes the killing. His hands it to an audience. A livestream doesn’t cure detachment. It is detachment with a better camera. It turns a death into content and the viewer into a consumer who can close the tab and go make a sandwich.
We’ve tried this before. The last public execution in America, a 1936 hanging in Owensboro, Kentucky, drew thousands of spectators and a national press that treated it like a carnival. That embarrassment is why the practice ended. Public executions never proved to be a deterrent. They proved to be entertainment.
The President’s reason gives the game away
Trump said streaming might have been a strong deterrent, but that many good and well-meaning people would rather not watch Hasan die.
Sit with that. If decent people can’t bear to watch the thing, what exactly are they consenting to? The discomfort isn’t a side issue. The discomfort is the information.
What the 2025 framework would say
Run Hegseth’s plan through the principles I laid out last year and it fails every one.
The framework makes execution non-punitive. Its only legitimate purpose is neutralizing an ongoing danger, never retribution. A broadcast meant to show the world “how America deals with” anyone is pure retribution with a production budget.
The framework removes the decision from national politics. This plan came from a cabinet secretary on a cable interview and was settled by a social media post.
The framework keeps deliberations away from the public precisely so that crowds and politicians can’t steer them. A livestream invites the crowd into the room.
I’ll be honest about where Hasan fits. He arguably falls into a category I named in 2025, the ideological extremist whose influence can outlast his crimes. But the concern with that category is inspiration, and nothing would inspire his admirers more than a government-produced martyrdom video. Speaker Johnson saw that immediately. And under my own framework, the question isn’t what Hasan did in 2009. It’s whether he remains an unavoidable danger in custody today. The government hasn’t made that case. It has made a punitive one.
The hardest case
Hasan is exactly the kind of person both of my earlier posts conceded might deserve to die. His guilt is not in doubt. He represented himself at trial and made no real effort to deny what he did. The argument I called strongest in 2013, that executing even one innocent person is one too many, doesn’t apply to him.
So why do I still object to how this is being handled?
First, the soldiers. We are asking young service members to shoot a bound prisoner on command. A firing squad doesn’t lighten that burden. It spreads it across more people.
Second, martyrdom. Every bit of ceremony serves the story Hasan wants told. A cell at Leavenworth gives him obscurity, the one thing he can’t spin.
Third, the state itself. A government that kills its own citizens should do it reluctantly and soberly, if at all. Never as messaging.
Visibility or secrecy?
A careful reader will notice tension between my two earlier posts. In 2013 I wanted the official to be personally exposed. In 2025 I wanted the process shielded from public view. Both aim at the same target: take the theater and the politics out, and make whoever decides carry the full weight of the decision. What neither allows is what Hegseth proposed, where the decider stays comfortable and the public gets a show.
Half right is still half wrong
Trump made the right call, for half a reason. If officials want executions, let them sign the order and stand in the room. No cameras. No audience. No podcast appearance afterward. Better still, take the decision away from them entirely and leave it to people with no votes to win. Then watch how fast the enthusiasm fades.
Strength does not mean killing people. It is harder not to.
We still don’t need more dead men walking. We need fewer people comfortable watching them.
Cheers! Sláinte! Na zdravie!
JZ Murdock is a retired Senior Technical Writer/IT administrator, and an active award-winning author/ filmmaker, documentarian, and writer based in Bremerton, Washington.
He publishes commentary on the state of things at murdockinations.com and on his creative works over at Substack. He also posts on Slasher.com on the horror genre.
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