Kelly McParland: How not to execute a killer

Whatever the reasons for cancelling plans to livestream the execution of Nidal Hasan, you can be sure neither compassion nor basic civility had anything to do with it.

The statement announcing the decision made no effort to suggest that perhaps American society had advanced beyond using public executions as a means of entertainment.

What the president said was that, while it might have been “I think streaming the execution for all to see might have been a strong deterrent for the World to witness how America deals with Terrorists and SCUM like Hasan but, many very good and well meaning people would rather not watch him die, through streaming, or through any other visual device.”

So sad, all those good and well-meaning people, too queasy to watch a killer get his just rewards. No such soft-hearted emotions cloud the offices of the White House or the Pentagon, where the plan to share Hasan’s demise was first cooked up. He’ll still face a firing squad at Fort Hood, Texas, on Dec. 3, but the world won’t get the chance to watch.

America will still get its fill of violence, whatever the case. There’s been lots of it to share around lately. Twenty-nine mass killings so far this year, according to a media database. Five so far this month alone.

In Bend, Oregon, a 16-year-old used his mother’s shotgun to enter an elementary school and kill a teacher and three kids aged 5, 8 and 11, wounding a seven-year-old and a second teacher before being killed.

A man in Erie, Pennsylvania killed eight people including his wife, their pregnant daughter, two sons and two grandchildren before killing himself in a shooting news reports took care to specify wasn’t the sort of mass killing in which the killer targets strangers, but a man wiping out his own family.

In Vienna, Georgia, a 17-year-old and two others were arrested after a shooting at a “late-night homecoming party” left two dead and 35 injured. The 17-year-old was charged with being too young to have the gun he allegedly used; all three faced charges related to gang activity.

In addition to the mass killings, which used to earn big headlines but are now fairly routine, there was the usual supply of goofy shoot-ups between people who don’t feel safe leaving home without their pistols. One such pitted a 55-year-old former marine and paramedic against an 80-year-old retired meat merchant who got into an argument about politics in an Ohio dog park and ended with both grabbing their guns and firing. 

The 80-year-old wasn’t hit but faces trial for felonious assault and a possible jail term. His lawyer says he’ll claim justification under the state’s “stand your ground” law that lets you shoot rather than trying to escape if you feel threatened.

When normal life involves the right to shoot it out at dog parks, why would it be a big surprise that the president and the Secretary of War would consider it reasonable, even desirable, to share the dispatch of a killer being sent to his death via firing squad? Was it good fortune or mere oversight that it didn’t occur to them to try and monetize it?

Nidal Hasan merits no sympathy. He was convicted of killing 13 people and wounding 32 others in a November 2009 shooting at Fort Hood. A former army major and medical corps psychiatrist, he wandered through a medical building shooting unarmed people. When asked of his motives, Hasan told the judge he did it in defence of the “leadership of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, the Taliban.”

According to the Christian Post, about two-thirds of Americans support capital punishment under certain circumstances, which is legal in 27 states though infrequent in many of them, though support has declined in recent decades. Just this month, attention was drawn to a botched attempt in Tennessee to execute Christa Pike, who was sentenced to death for the 1995 torture and murder of a 19-year-old woman she met at a job training camp.

Pike was given two lethal injections on Sept. 30, but somehow survived and is now back in prison while the state decides what to do with her.

The Christian Post quotes the Bible in justifying its own support for the death penalty, noting that the same source could be used to condone public executions. Nonetheless, the author indicates, turning death into a spectacle “cheapens and coarsens the public’s view of human life, whereas the intent of capital punishment is to underscore the uniquely horrendous nature of taking another human being’s life.”

America’s public views have been cheapened and coarsened relentlessly under the current administration. Perhaps a more civil successor will find a way to reduce the damage. But having advanced to the brink of public executions, there’s reason to be pessimistic.

National Post