USA: Execution to be broadcast live to the public

 

Martin Mederyd Hårdh/TT, Niklas Svahn/TT

 

Published 00:15 | Updated 10:37 

        

       US President Donald Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth have decided that an execution           will be broadcast live to an audience. The two appeared together in Maryland on Tuesday. Photo:               Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP/TT

A man who shot and killed 13 people at a US Army base is set to be executed.

The government has announced that the public will be able to watch the execution by firing squad via a live broadcast.

On December 3, a firing squad is scheduled to execute Nidal Hasan at the Fort Hood military base in Texas. It was at this base that Hasan—a 56-year-old former Army psychiatrist and major—shot and killed 13 people and wounded around 30 others in an attack in 2009.

"We will ensure that people can watch it, that it takes place publicly," Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth told the conservative TV channel Real America’s Voice.

Pentagon sources have confirmed to several media outlets that the event will be broadcast on live television.

Swedish Foreign Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard states that the death penalty is inhumane and irreversible.

"We oppose the death penalty everywhere, in all contexts, and naturally this instance as well. I could not be clearer," Malmer Stenergard told TT. 

"Could be a good idea"

Hasan was convicted of multiple murders and attempted murders by a military court, and the execution would be the first carried out by the US military since 1961. The court had ruled that it should be carried out via lethal injection, but US President Donald Trump intervened earlier this week and ordered execution by firing squad.

The last public executions in the US took place in the 1930s, when crowds gathered to watch two criminals being hanged in Kentucky and Missouri, respectively.

Having an execution take place before an audience is, in a sense, positive in this context, according to Deborah Denno, a law professor and death penalty expert at Fordham University.

"I think it could be a good idea, because it would be transparent and the public would be fully aware of what is happening," she told the AP.

As far as is known, the only states to have carried out public executions in recent times are Iran and Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.

Botched injection

The death penalty is the subject of renewed ethical debate in the US.

Last week, a high-profile attempt was made to execute murderer Christa Pike in the state of Tennessee. She was injected with two doses of lethal pentobarbital behind closed doors but survived, waking up in a hospital a few days later.

In this context, execution by firing squad can be viewed as more precise and less inhumane, according to experts consulted by the AP.

Nidal Hasan has the option to appeal, which could at the very least delay the carrying out of his sentence. Correction: An earlier version of this text contained incorrect information regarding what Nidal Hasan was convicted of.

Facts

Misslyckad injektion

The death penalty in the USA

The USA is the only Western democracy that regularly carries out executions.

Twenty-seven states retain the death penalty, though four of them do not actively use it. Additionally, federal courts can impose the death penalty for certain crimes.

Twenty-three states have abolished the death penalty.

Since the USA reinstated the penalty in 1977, 1,683 people had been executed as of September 29 of this year. Texas accounts for 602 of the executions carried out.

As of July 1 of this year, 1,973 prisoners were on death row. By September 29, 29 death-row inmates had been executed this year.

Source: Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC)