The public execution is off, but it never should have gotten this far

The last high-profile public execution in the U.S. was the 1936 hanging of Rainey Bethea — a Black man convicted of raping a white woman.

According to a recent NPR report, “Roughly 20,000 people gathered in the western Kentucky city of Owensboro, where workers built gallows near the riverfront.” The night before, in what “historians describe as a festive atmosphere,” attendees “celebrated with ‘necktie’ parties” and “sipped soft drinks.”

“They sold sandwiches and they sold Coca-Cola, and you’d have thought it was a big picnic or something,” said an attendee during a 2013 oral history interview with the county library. 

Despite the celebratory mood in Owensboro, the national outrage was clear. There have been no public executions in the U.S. since 1938. Eighty-eight years later, this administration came within weeks of ending that streak.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that the firing-squad execution of Nidal Hasan on Dec. 3 would be livestreamed for the public, and President Trump said he “absolutely” approved. Hasan, a former Army psychiatrist, murdered 13 people and wounded 32 at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009.

On Thursday, after bipartisan backlash, Trump reversed course. The execution will not be streamed, and I’m glad. But we should be honest about what happened: They didn’t change their minds; they just lost the argument. 

Even in retreat, Trump insisted that broadcasting a man’s death “might have been a strong deterrent.” It is worth........

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