{"id":4899,"date":"2026-10-21T01:28:30","date_gmt":"2026-10-21T09:28:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/?p=4899"},"modified":"2026-10-14T09:31:26","modified_gmt":"2026-10-14T17:31:26","slug":"reprint-are-public-executions-true-to-american-values","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/2026\/10\/21\/reprint-are-public-executions-true-to-american-values\/","title":{"rendered":"[Reprint] Are public executions true to American values?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In newly independent US, Americans debated whether public executions taught a lesson or just showed off the state\u2019s power to\u00a0destroy<\/h3>\n
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\"A
A 1747 print of a public execution at the so-called Tyburn Tree, a gallows in London that served for hundreds of years as a site of hangings.
\nWilliam Hogarth<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Maurizio Valsania<\/a>, Universit\u00e0 di Torino<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

The proposed livestream of Nidal Hasan\u2019s execution<\/a> by a U.S. military firing squad gives an old question a new audience. Hasan, an Army psychiatrist convicted by a military court of killing 13 people at Fort Hood in Texas in 2009, is scheduled to be executed on Dec. 3, 2026.<\/p>\n

Explaining the plan to make his death public, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that \u201cpeople need to understand \u2026 there\u2019s serious consequences for these types of things<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whether the broadcast will proceed remains uncertain. But as a historian of the early American republic<\/a>, I recognize a familiar expectation behind it: that watching someone die will teach a useful lesson. Americans at the republic\u2019s founding debated that premise \u2014 and doubted what the lesson might be.<\/p>\n