There really are two separate questions here, and the debate gets muddled when we pretend they’re the same one.

First: Should Nidal Malik Hasan, the former Army major convicted of murdering 13 people and wounding 32 others in the 2009 Fort Hood shooting, face the death penalty?

Second: Assuming the execution goes forward, should the United States government livestream it for the world to watch?

The Pentagon initially said Hasan’s December 3 execution by firing squad would be livestreamed, after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said people should be able to watch because they need to understand that such crimes carry serious consequences. Since then, the administration has sounded considerably less certain. Vice President Vance questioned whether the livestream would happen and said he wouldn’t watch it, while President Trump strongly defended Hasan’s execution but later indicated that a determination on livestreaming was still being made.

So, the firing squad may be settled. The camera apparently isn’t.

Sunlight, even in the Death Chamber

There’s a serious argument for allowing the public to see exactly what the government does when it executes someone. The strongest version of that argument isn’t bloodlust. It’s transparency.

Capital punishment is among the gravest powers any government can exercise. The state is deliberately taking a human life under authority of law. If Americans support that power, proponents of a livestream can reasonably argue that they shouldn’t be permitted to sanitize it in their minds while government officials carry it out behind closed doors.

Fordham law professor Deborah Denno made essentially that point, arguing that livestreaming could increase transparency and force the public to understand what capital punishment actually entails. That argument has particular relevance after recent controversies surrounding execution methods, including botched lethal injections.

There’s something intellectually consistent about that position. If the government is going to execute people in our name, why should the reality be hidden behind prison walls?

Executions already permit witnesses, including victims’ relatives, attorneys, officials, and journalists. In 2001, victims of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh were permitted to watch his federal execution remotely by closed-circuit television. A livestream would dramatically broaden the audience, but the basic principle—that executions aren’t completely secret government activities—is hardly revolutionary.

Supporters also make a deterrence argument. Hegseth has framed publicity as part of the punishment’s message: commit an atrocity like Hasan’s and there will be unmistakable consequences. Hasan entered a Fort Hood medical processing center in 2009 and opened fire on soldiers preparing for deployment, ultimately killing 13 and injuring 32. He admitted at trial that he was the shooter and said his actions were intended to stop soldiers from deploying to Afghanistan.

For those who believe punishment has a legitimate public and instructive purpose, broadcasting the consequence is seen as reinforcing a simple message: murder innocent Americans, and justice won’t be embarrassed about answering you.

There’s also a case that hiding executions creates an odd kind of moral insulation. People may enthusiastically support capital punishment as an abstraction while never confronting what capital punishment actually means. A livestream removes the abstraction. Maybe that strengthens support for the death penalty. Maybe it weakens it. But either way, Americans would be debating the real thing instead of the sterile phrase “carrying out the sentence.”

And historically, executions were once quite public in the United States. They were eventually moved behind prison walls largely because public executions increasingly became unruly spectacles, but their public character was once understood partly as a warning to society. So, advocates aren’t inventing the idea that punishment can be publicly witnessed. They’re taking an old principle and adding broadband.

There’s Transparency, and Then There’s Pay-Per-View Justice

The case against livestreaming, however, starts with an important distinction. Government transparency doesn’t require turning punishment into mass entertainment.

There’s an enormous difference between allowing journalists, official observers, victims’ relatives, and other witnesses to observe an execution and placing a firing-squad killing on the internet where millions of people can watch, record, clip, meme, repost, remix, and circulate it forever. Once it’s online, the government loses meaningful control of the context.

Sen. Tillis supports Hasan receiving the death penalty but called livestreaming his execution “beyond disgusting,” arguing that public executions belong more naturally to regimes such as Iran and Afghanistan than to the United States. Republican Rep. Austin Scott made a similar distinction: support the sentence, reject the spectacle. Republican Sen. John Curtis warned that a civilization diminishes itself when executions become entertainment.

That distinction strikes at the heart of the issue. Justice is supposed to be sober. An execution shouldn’t resemble the halftime show at a particularly grim Super Bowl.

The Propaganda Problem Nobody Should Ignore

There’s also a national-security argument against broadcasting Hasan’s death. Hasan has previously spoken of the possibility of becoming a “martyr” if executed. Broadcasting footage of a wheelchair-bound Muslim prisoner being killed by an American military firing squad could hand Islamist propagandists precisely the imagery they would want: stripped of context, edited for emotional effect, and circulated around the world as recruitment material.

That doesn’t mean America should allow terrorist propaganda concerns to dictate its criminal justice system. But we also don’t have to gift-wrap the footage. Critics including lawmakers from both parties have warned that a public execution could be exploited by terrorist organizations and potentially increase threats against Americans or service members overseas. A livestream intended to demonstrate American strength could therefore accomplish something closer to the opposite: giving extremists professionally produced visual propaganda courtesy of the Pentagon.

When Justice Becomes Content

Then there’s the cultural question. What exactly are we encouraging people to do? Watch? Cheer? Share reaction videos? Create countdowns? Argue about camera angles?

Those may sound like intentionally ridiculous examples, but this is the internet we’re talking about. If someone livestreams themselves assembling a bookshelf, within twenty minutes someone somewhere has clipped it, added dramatic music, and started an argument in the comments. Now imagine an execution.

American public executions largely disappeared nearly a century ago partly because they had developed an ugly carnival atmosphere. The last widely recognized public execution in the United States, the 1936 hanging of Rainey Bethea in Kentucky, reportedly drew thousands of spectators. Eventually the country concluded that whatever legitimate purpose capital punishment served, transforming death into communal entertainment wasn’t one of them.

Modern technology wouldn’t eliminate that problem. It would put it on steroids. And unlike a crowd that eventually goes home, a livestream can live forever. Children could encounter it. Terrorist organizations could archive it. Extremists could glorify it. Opponents could weaponize it. Supporters could celebrate it in ways that make justice look disturbingly like vengeance.

Army regulations already prohibit anyone under 18 from witnessing a military execution, raising another obvious question about what happens when the government places the event on an internet connection available in virtually every American home. Legal experts disagree about whether that creates a viable legal challenge, but the tension is hard to miss.

The Sword Isn’t a Spectator Sport

Here’s where I land. Hasan committed an extraordinarily grave crime. Thirteen people were murdered. Dozens more were wounded. I have no difficulty believing that government possesses legitimate authority to impose capital punishment for murder in appropriate cases.

Scripture doesn’t treat civil punishment as inherently un-Christian. Government is entrusted with real authority to punish wrongdoing. Romans 13:4 describes the civil ruler as one who “beareth not the sword in vain.” Genesis 9:6 likewise treats the deliberate shedding of innocent human blood with extraordinary seriousness.

That doesn’t mean every execution is wise, every capital statute is just, every conviction is flawless, or every possible method of carrying out a sentence is morally equal. And it certainly doesn’t mean Christians should enjoy watching somebody die. That’s the part I think the livestream idea gets badly wrong.

Justice and vengeance are not the same thing. Neither are punishment and spectacle. The state may bear the sword, but it doesn’t need to sell tickets to the execution. Hasan’s victims deserve justice. Their families deserve remembrance. American service members deserve to know that the country takes the murder of their fellow soldiers seriously. None of that requires millions of people watching bullets strike a condemned man in real time.

In fact, livestreaming could distract from the victims by turning Hasan himself into the center of an international media event. The conversation would inevitably shift from the 13 people he murdered to footage of the government killing him. That seems exactly backward.

There’s also something worth preserving about the solemnity of punishment. A government that reluctantly carries out a lawful death sentence communicates something very different from a government that seems eager to display it. One says, this crime was so terrible that justice demands the ultimate penalty. The other risks sounding like, pull up a chair and watch what happens next. Those aren’t morally interchangeable attitudes.

Nor am I persuaded by the deterrence argument for broadcasting it. Even Americans who broadly believe the death penalty is morally justified have considerable doubts that capital punishment deters crime in the first place. There’s even less reason to assume adding a webcam suddenly transforms it into an effective anti-terrorism strategy. And in Hasan’s particular case, where martyrdom appears to have figured into his thinking, putting his death before a worldwide audience may produce exactly the kind of notoriety he wanted.

So, carry out justice if the lawful process concludes that his death sentence should stand. Allow appropriate witnesses. Permit independent journalists to report what happened. Document the procedure. Provide the public with enough information to hold the government accountable. But don’t turn an execution into streaming content.

There are some things a civilized society may decide are necessary without deciding they ought to become a show. This is one of them.