It’s Tuesday, October 13. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: Tyler Cowen applauds African immigrants. Ashley Rindsberg on the tony California school that is driving away Jewish families. Jay Solomon on Carlos the Jackal—and his present-day heirs. And more.
But first: Why livestreaming an execution is a very bad idea.
Last week, Pete Hegseth announced that the firing-squad execution of Nidal Hasan, the former Army psychiatrist who carried out the 2009 Fort Hood massacre, would be livestreamed. According to Charles Fain Lehman, there is no question that Hasan deserves to be executed. Walking into a processing center on the Texas base shouting “Allahu Akbar,” he opened fire on soldiers waiting for medical screenings, killing 14 people, including a pregnant woman, and wounding more than 30 others. In explaining why he wanted a public execution, Hegseth said, “People need to understand that there’s serious consequences for these types of things.”
It’s not the only execution forcing Americans to confront how America puts people to death. Last month, Tennessee attempted to execute Christa Pike for the murder of a classmate 30 years earlier, but she survived two doses of pentobarbital and is now back in prison. That case set off a debate over whether the government can carry out executions competently. Hasan’s case raises a different set of questions: What does livestreaming an execution do to the nature of the act itself? And what does watching one online do to the rest of us?
Charles is a firm supporter of the death penalty. Its purpose, he argues, isn’t to deter future criminals or rehabilitate the condemned, but to deliver justice for crimes so heinous that prison alone can’t answer for them. But precisely because he believes in the death penalty, Charles thinks livestreaming Hasan’s execution is a grave mistake. Read his column on why.
—The Editors
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