Dead Men Walking, Revisited: Don’t Stream It. Own It.

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!

Compiled with aid of  Claude AI 

---

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.

If this work means something to you, you can support it at Ko-fi. Tips are always welcome and go directly toward keeping independent documentary work possible.

 

Cannabis as American as Apple Pie

This is a rerun of a very popular blog I wrote back in July 2, 2012. It has gotten so many hits that I thought I might run it again for those who are new to my blogs to have a chance to see it. Have fun!

I found a video on The Power of Raw Cannabis that I found very interesting. It talks about using Cannabis as raw food, as a vegetable with medical qualities far exceeding almost anything we have seen to date. They say that once you burn it, you get a different quality out of Cannabis, which should make those phobic about it feel all warm and fuzzy. But they are taking a different tact in their research by juicing Cannabis and using it as an actual natural remedy for disease.

From The Power Of Raw Cannabis

Now watch this video, especially if you are fully anti Cannabis. This is not hype, it's very reasonable in what it has to say and it has a very good point. If Cannabis had never been heard of and was today discovered in the Amazon river basin, it would be called out as a miracle medicine and hailed around the world.

But Cannabis is as American as apple pie. Albeit a rather abused American, on multiple levels and for multiple reasons.

All this made me look for some interesting and famous quotes and images on hemp and cannabis and this is what I found. I broke out some photos for you that I will comment on, and at the bottom is a link to the actual video which includes fifty and some comments at the end of it. Here are some of my favorites, for various reasons. I've done my best to vet them at least to some degree. Let's start at the beginning.

It's well known that Washington was a hemp farmer and it was actually illegal not to grow hemp if you had a farm. However it was mostly for it's other qualities such as rope, clothes, paper, etc. Still, it's hard to believe there would be an active hemp market and no one knew about smoking it. Have you ever, as a kid, "smoked" on a piece of tall grass?

Typically you didn't inhale as it was harsh, but it's reasonable that someone figured it out back in the slaves days as slaves were made to work closely with hemp. Still, did any of the founding fathers smoke pot? Probably not though it would make a great case for modern pro Cannabis individuals. Napoleon brought hashish to France when his army returned from the Egyptian campaign (1798-1801). America had emmisaries in France over the years, so it's possible some of them tried hash. Hash comes from Cannabis, which was all over the United States. These were smart guys, so it's possible they put two and two together.

This would be great except that Lincoln wasn't known to be a smoker, although I know many people who smoke cannabis but wouldn't touch a ciggarette or pipe, otherwise. It is however plausible that Lincoln had a harmonica.

I would say it's reasonable Lincoln said that one. Abraham Lincoln (1809-65), U.S. President.
Speech, 18 Dec. 1840, to Illinois House of Representatives.

 

"In the mid-19th century, French writers including Baudelaire and Dumas met regularly to use cannabis. In this extract from his new book, Jonathon Green describes the Club des Hachichins." From an article in the Guardian UK.

I can find nothing to back this up, and he doesn't actually mention "hemp", other than a reference around the internet of a "Dr. Burke" with the "American Historical Reference Society" who doesn't seem to have a presence on the internet.

So you have to be careful about some of these kinds of quotes and references. Since they Founding Father's either left no record of smoking hemp or hash that I can find, it still has very good qualities for production and use in so many other areas. Lately we have been discovering that officially, that being by scientists and medical researchers not under the thumb of government relgulations or the American judicial systems, so that is mostly outside America but also inside prestigeous American institutions, there are incredible uses for Cannabis as you could see in the video above.

So we need to look at other things. Just like with a black hole out in space, if you can't see it, you can tell it exists by circumstantial evidence. In this case, it would be in the areas of prohibition and the "War on Drugs" (and U.S. citizens).

Leave it to a rational and logical thinker (so not a politician or law enforcer), to think, uh, rationally and logically.

So prohitition seems like not a smart thing? I wonder if the Alcohol Prohibition years support that claim at all?

Well, that pretty much jumps right to the point of things. Did Carl say this? Well, he has spoken out about it and there is video to prove it where he asks, "Is it rational, to [keep dying patients in discomfort, from it]."

"Village Voice jazz critic and Crosby biographer Gary Giddins says that Louis Armstrong's influence on Crosby "extended to his love of marijuana." Crosby smoked it during his early career when it was still legal, and "surprised interviewers" in the 1960s and 1970s by advocating its decriminalization." - Wikipedia

I think that pretty much speaks for itself. Now from a couple of politicians.

"Nuff' said" there.

This may hurt the President in some ways, but what would you pay for an honest politician? Well, it would seem we got one, at least to some point.

It's been alleged that British commissioner in India, Mr. J.M. Campell in "Note on the Religion of Hemp, British Indian Hemp Drugs Commission Report 1839-1894" was the one to actually say this. Considering the format of the words, I would say this would sound more like Campell than Carter.

What he HAS said was this:

"In a message to Congress in 1977, I said the country should decriminalize the possession of less than an ounce of marijuana, with a full program of treatment for addicts," Carter wrote. "I also cautioned against filling our prisons with young people who were no threat to society, and summarized by saying: 'Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself.' "

"Those ideas were widely accepted at the time," Carter wrote. "But in the 1980s President Ronald Reagan and Congress began to shift from balanced drug policies, including the treatment and rehabilitation of addicts, toward futile efforts to control drug imports from foreign countries."

"One result has been a terrible escalation in drug-related violence, corruption and gross violations of human rights in a growing number of Latin American countries," Carter wrote.

"Maybe the increased tax burden on wealthy citizens necessary to pay for the war on drugs will help bring about a reform of America's drug policies," Carter wrote. "At least the recommendations of the Global Commission will give some cover to political leaders who wish to do what is right."

Okay, enough already. Let's hear what some other entertainers have to say. Right?

Okay, did Arnold really say that? It would seem so: Mail Online UK October 2007.

Kind of shoots downn that highly addictive thing, don't you think?

This from a woman who is pretty productive in her life and doesn't seem to be drawing attention to herself because she's out of control or a drug addict.

Nice to hear someone just spit it out how he reallys sees it.

That my friends, is a very viable point. It's the type of comment I have heard from many people over the years. They didn't like the harsh drugs their doctor gave them, with the side effects, when they could just use cannabis as it was lighter on their systems, cheaper, and seemed to do a far better job in many cases without the side effects which in some cases, are actually, death.

Obviously we had a couple of indivduals who simply had to be mentioned here. Willie, of course, but also....

I've been saying for years that I cannot understand how Cannabis can be illegal for an entertainment drug when you have things out there that are legal like Lord King, Alcohol. Makes you wonder doesn't it (it should). When you consider the size and money involved in the alcohol industry and they size of their lobby, how is it cannabis is still illegal? Alcohol is very similar in affect to cocaine, it numbs you out, you can easily overdose on it, it leaves you feeling like crap after using it and especially over using it, it can put people into a rage where they hurt or kill people, you can't drive very well on it and it can kill you simply by using it.

Let's jus point out that the Declaration of Indepence is written on parchment which is treated animal skin. However, the drafts I believe were very likely written on hemp paper.

Hmmm... is there an echo in here?

The "War on Drugs" is an embarrassment and should be wiped off the face of the judicial branch. Even if you consider it now dead, which many don't, it is still being enforced under the Obama Administration and has been a shameful effort perpetrated on the American people by the judicial branch for decades now and have caused many indivduals and their families great pain and suffering.

And finally....

We should be listening to the man holding the highest office in the United States when even he thinks this. See the full quote at Reuters April 2012.

There is no doubt that we need to rethink and reinstitue our laws on Cannabis. No matter how you view the subject, if you are pro, question if you should be such an advocate; if you are against cannabis, question if you should be so against it. Ask yourself why you feel how you do and if you know everything to be as sure of yourself as you are. No one knows everything. America has made legislative mistakes before. What makes America great is when we see our mistakes, and do some thing to change them. To make our country greater, to make our citizens not just happier, but better off. Sometimes what makes our life better, makes us unhapy, until we see just how wrong we had been.

Have an open mind. Educate yourself. Then, make an informed decision and share it with those who used to look at things how you used to. Don't let America be ignorant, but more so, seek out that ignorance and help remove it.

Video with full run of photos and audio.

To finish up, here is another video of a very good argument for legalizing Cannabis, given by a Judge! If you are anti Cannabis, at least listen to this Judge making his plea to help the citizens of his state.

We can make things better, one step, one state at a time. But it all starts with removing the ignorance that is running rampant around our country, by making ourselves more informed and seeking out changing our opinions when necessary. Especially if your feel adamant that you are right about something, really vet it, check it out. Things change. Maybe you were right once. But new information is in. People are different today than in, say the 1960s. Don't listen only to people who agree with you.

America is a great country, but not as great as we once thought we were. We can again be that Greatest nation in the world. But we need more education, understanding, compassion and action.

Let me leave you with this last, scary quote and think about this for a moment. This man, in charge of police, is talking not just about people who use drugs, but American citizens. That seems to be something we forget in these talks about who is right or wrong. The subjects of these things are people. Consider too by the definition used for cannabis usage, having a drink after work is also a casual drug use, having a cigarette is a casul drug use, and even some would argue coffee or tea as caffeine could be therefore considered a drug. How would you like those people in charge of who should be charged with casual drug us, or as Daryl says:

Finally, if you really found that too depressing, watch a nice little history of "Marijuana".

Cannabis and Apple Pie

I found a video on The Power of Raw Cannabis that I found very interesting. It talks about using Cannabis as raw food, as a vegetable with medical qualities far exceeding almost anything we have seen to date. They say that once you burn it, you get a different quality out of Cannabis, which should make those phobic about it feel all warm and fuzzy. But they are taking a different tact in their research by juicing Cannabis and using it as an actual natural remedy for disease.

From The Power Of Raw Cannabis

Now watch this video, especially if you are fully anti Cannabis. This is not hype, it's very reasonable in what it has to say and it has a very good point. If Cannabis had never been heard of and was today discovered in the Amazon river basin, it would be called out as a miracle medicine and hailed around the world.

But Cannabis is as American as apple pie. Albeit a rather abused American, on multiple levels and for multiple reasons.

All this made me look for some interesting and famous quotes and images on hemp and cannabis and this is what I found. I broke out some photos for you that I will comment on, and at the bottom is a link to the actual video which includes fifty and some comments at the end of it. Here are some of my favorites, for various reasons. I've done my best to vet them at least to some degree. Let's start at the beginning.

It's well known that Washington was a hemp farmer and it was actually illegal not to grow hemp if you had a farm. However it was mostly for it's other qualities such as rope, clothes, paper, etc. Still, it's hard to believe there would be an active hemp market and no one knew about smoking it. Have you ever, as a kid, "smoked" on a piece of tall grass?

Typically you didn't inhale as it was harsh, but it's reasonable that someone figured it out back in the slaves days as slaves were made to work closely with hemp. Still, did any of the founding fathers smoke pot? Probably not though it would make a great case for modern pro Cannabis individuals. Napoleon brought hashish to France when his army returned from the Egyptian campaign (1798-1801). America had emmisaries in France over the years, so it's possible some of them tried hash. Hash comes from Cannabis, which was all over the United States. These were smart guys, so it's possible they put two and two together.

This would be great except that Lincoln wasn't known to be a smoker, although I know many people who smoke cannabis but wouldn't touch a ciggarette or pipe, otherwise. It is however plausible that Lincoln had a harmonica.

I would say it's reasonable Lincoln said that one. Abraham Lincoln (1809-65), U.S. President.
Speech, 18 Dec. 1840, to Illinois House of Representatives.

 

"In the mid-19th century, French writers including Baudelaire and Dumas met regularly to use cannabis. In this extract from his new book, Jonathon Green describes the Club des Hachichins." From an article in the Guardian UK.

I can find nothing to back this up, and he doesn't actually mention "hemp", other than a reference around the internet of a "Dr. Burke" with the "American Historical Reference Society" who doesn't seem to have a presence on the internet.

So you have to be careful about some of these kinds of quotes and references. Since they Founding Father's either left no record of smoking hemp or hash that I can find, it still has very good qualities for production and use in so many other areas. Lately we have been discovering that officially, that being by scientists and medical researchers not under the thumb of government relgulations or the American judicial systems, so that is mostly outside America but also inside prestigeous American institutions, there are incredible uses for Cannabis as you could see in the video above.

So we need to look at other things. Just like with a black hole out in space, if you can't see it, you can tell it exists by circumstantial evidence. In this case, it would be in the areas of prohibition and the "War on Drugs" (and U.S. citizens).

Leave it to a rational and logical thinker (so not a politician or law enforcer), to think, uh, rationally and logically.

So prohitition seems like not a smart thing? I wonder if the Alcohol Prohibition years support that claim at all?

Well, that pretty much jumps right to the point of things. Did Carl say this? Well, he has spoken out about it and there is video to prove it where he asks, "Is it rational, to [keep dying patients in discomfort, from it]."

"Village Voice jazz critic and Crosby biographer Gary Giddins says that Louis Armstrong's influence on Crosby "extended to his love of marijuana." Crosby smoked it during his early career when it was still legal, and "surprised interviewers" in the 1960s and 1970s by advocating its decriminalization." - Wikipedia

I think that pretty much speaks for itself. Now from a couple of politicians.

"Nuff' said" there.

This may hurt the President in some ways, but what would you pay for an honest politician? Well, it would seem we got one, at least to some point.

It's been alleged that British commissioner in India, Mr. J.M. Campell in "Note on the Religion of Hemp, British Indian Hemp Drugs Commission Report 1839-1894" was the one to actually say this. Considering the format of the words, I would say this would sound more like Campell than Carter.

What he HAS said was this:

"In a message to Congress in 1977, I said the country should decriminalize the possession of less than an ounce of marijuana, with a full program of treatment for addicts," Carter wrote. "I also cautioned against filling our prisons with young people who were no threat to society, and summarized by saying: 'Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself.' "

"Those ideas were widely accepted at the time," Carter wrote. "But in the 1980s President Ronald Reagan and Congress began to shift from balanced drug policies, including the treatment and rehabilitation of addicts, toward futile efforts to control drug imports from foreign countries."

"One result has been a terrible escalation in drug-related violence, corruption and gross violations of human rights in a growing number of Latin American countries," Carter wrote.

"Maybe the increased tax burden on wealthy citizens necessary to pay for the war on drugs will help bring about a reform of America's drug policies," Carter wrote. "At least the recommendations of the Global Commission will give some cover to political leaders who wish to do what is right."

Okay, enough already. Let's hear what some other entertainers have to say. Right?

Okay, did Arnold really say that? It would seem so: Mail Online UK October 2007.

Kind of shoots downn that highly addictive thing, don't you think?

This from a woman who is pretty productive in her life and doesn't seem to be drawing attention to herself because she's out of control or a drug addict.

Nice to hear someone just spit it out how he reallys sees it.

That my friends, is a very viable point. It's the type of comment I have heard from many people over the years. They didn't like the harsh drugs their doctor gave them, with the side effects, when they could just use cannabis as it was lighter on their systems, cheaper, and seemed to do a far better job in many cases without the side effects which in some cases, are actually, death.

Obviously we had a couple of indivduals who simply had to be mentioned here. Willie, of course, but also....

I've been saying for years that I cannot understand how Cannabis can be illegal for an entertainment drug when you have things out there that are legal like Lord King, Alcohol. Makes you wonder doesn't it (it should). When you consider the size and money involved in the alcohol industry and they size of their lobby, how is it cannabis is still illegal? Alcohol is very similar in affect to cocaine, it numbs you out, you can easily overdose on it, it leaves you feeling like crap after using it and especially over using it, it can put people into a rage where they hurt or kill people, you can't drive very well on it and it can kill you simply by using it.

Let's jus point out that the Declaration of Indepence is written on parchment which is treated animal skin. However, the drafts I believe were very likely written on hemp paper.

Hmmm... is there an echo in here?

The "War on Drugs" is an embarrassment and should be wiped off the face of the judicial branch. Even if you consider it now dead, which many don't, it is still being enforced under the Obama Administration and has been a shameful effort perpetrated on the American people by the judicial branch for decades now and have caused many indivduals and their families great pain and suffering.

And finally....

We should be listening to the man holding the highest office in the United States when even he thinks this. See the full quote at Reuters April 2012.

There is no doubt that we need to rethink and reinstitue our laws on Cannabis. No matter how you view the subject, if you are pro, question if you should be such an advocate; if you are against cannabis, question if you should be so against it. Ask yourself why you feel how you do and if you know everything to be as sure of yourself as you are. No one knows everything. America has made legislative mistakes before. What makes America great is when we see our mistakes, and do some thing to change them. To make our country greater, to make our citizens not just happier, but better off. Sometimes what makes our life better, makes us unhapy, until we see just how wrong we had been.

Have an open mind. Educate yourself. Then, make an informed decision and share it with those who used to look at things how you used to. Don't let America be ignorant, but more so, seek out that ignorance and help remove it.

Video with full run of photos and audio.

To finish up, here is another video of a very good argument for legalizing Cannabis, given by a Judge! If you are anti Cannabis, at least listen to this Judge making his plea to help the citizens of his state.

We can make things better, one step, one state at a time. But it all starts with removing the ignorance that is running rampant around our country, by making ourselves more informed and seeking out changing our opinions when necessary. Especially if your feel adamant that you are right about something, really vet it, check it out. Things change. Maybe you were right once. But new information is in. People are different today than in, say the 1960s. Don't listen only to people who agree with you.

America is a great country, but not as great as we once thought we were. We can again be that Greatest nation in the world. But we need more education, understanding, compassion and action.

Let me leave you with this last, scary quote and think about this for a moment. This man, in charge of police, is talking not just about people who use drugs, but American citizens. That seems to be something we forget in these talks about who is right or wrong. The subjects of these things are people. Consider too by the definition used for cannabis usage, having a drink after work is also a casual drug use, having a cigarette is a casul drug use, and even some would argue coffee or tea as caffeine could be therefore considered a drug. How would you like those people in charge of who should be charged with casual drug us, or as Daryl says:

Finally, if you really found that too depressing, watch a nice little racist history of "Marijuana". Please, call it cannabis.