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A few minutes with Ed ~
10/14/2026
The government has announced an intent to live stream the firing squad execution of Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood killer. Hassan was shot by law enforcement officers during his arrest and remains paralyzed from the waist down. Presumably, he can just be rolled in front of the firing squad in his wheelchair to be shot, and the body rolled away.
Hasan killed 13 people and wounded 31 other people at Ft. Hood in 2009. Hasan’s crime was horrible, but the question is not whether he should be punished appropriately, but whether his execution should be made a public spectacle.
An execution by firing squad has not been done by the United States since World War II. The last public execution in the U.S. was in 1936 in Kentucky when a black man was publicly hanged, and an estimated 20,000 people gathered in Owensboro, Kentucky, to watch. It is unknown how many hot dogs were sold. In 1938, Kentucky was the last state to abolish public executions.
Researchers cannot establish that the death penalty acts as a deterrent to individuals or reduces the overall murder rate more than incarceration. It is known that in the 18th century, when pickpockets could be sentenced to death, pickpockets worked the crowd at public executions. Hasan could not have expected to survive his act of terror and obviously was not deterred by the likelihood of his death.
What could possibly be the reason for making Hasan’s execution into a public spectacle? Robert Jeffress, Pastor of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, is quoted as saying that public execution will demonstrate the sanctity of human life. I’m not so sure that publicly killing people is the best way to show respect for human life. Public execution has been used from the Roman Empire to Nazi Germany to most, if not all, authoritarian regimes to terrorize and control the general population. I don’t know of any other real purpose. I believe it further normalizes violence in a nation that already leads the world in violence by an astounding margin.
A large majority of Christian Churches in the world oppose capital punishment in general, much less public executions. Churches including Catholic, United Methodist, Presbyterian Church USA, Evangelical Lutheran Church, American Baptist Churches USA, Episcopal Church, Reformed Church in America, and Church of the Brethren all oppose the death penalty. Both the United Methodist Church and the Presbyterian Church USA have issued public statements condemning the proposed public execution.
“As leaders of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church USA, we feel compelled to speak because the taking of a human life as a public spectacle, both historically and currently, is an atrocity from which we are called to repent…. (Excerpt from a statement by the Stated Clerk of the General Assembly of the PCUSA.)
“An eye for an eye” was given to limit vengeance, not to license it. In Matt 5:38-48, Jesus calls us further still; do not answer evil in kind; love your enemies; pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of God…. Our Lord himself died by public execution, staged by an empire to display its power and frighten the watching crowd….” (Excerpt of a Statement of the Council of Bishops of the UMC.)
Please pray for our nation and our elected leaders.
~~Ed
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