Explainer: Why does America want to publicly execute someone?

The plans to broadcast the death by firing squad of Nidal Hasan later this year mark a return to the spectacle of a public execution, which most countries abandoned decades ago.

America hasn't held an execution in public for nearly 100 years, while New Zealand last had one in 1858.

Here's what we know so far.

Why does the US want to have a livestreamed execution?

US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth announced last week that he planned to make the execution of Nidal Hasan public, including livestreaming it on the internet.

Hasan is a former US Army psychiatrist who killed 13 people and wounded 32 others at an army base in 2009.

"We'll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it's public. Because people need to understand that... there's serious consequences for these types of things," Hegseth said.

Hasan's execution by firing squad is scheduled for 3 December.

President Donald Trump has said he "absolutely" approved the idea of livestreaming Hasan's execution, but then on the weekend said he was yet to make a final decision.

"By showing it, maybe other people won't be doing what he did. I'll make a decision, ultimately."

Waikato University international law professor Alexander Gillespie said the call is likely acting as a distraction from Trump's other actions.

"I really do not see this public execution as being about justice - rather, it is about entertainment," he said.

The plan would likely face quite a few legal challenges, and Trump or Hegseth could end up reversing course.

"It is impossible to predict with Mr Trump what he will do next," Gillespie said. "But in this space, knowing the reaction he is going to get, it would not surprise me if it goes ahead."

America's history of public executions

If it actually happens, it would the first public execution in the US in decades, the first military execution since 1961, and the first military death by firing squad since World War II, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

America's use of the death penalty is already under closer scrutiny followed the botched execution on 30 September of convicted murderer Christina Pike in Tennessee, who was given two doses of a fatal drug and survived.

Today, 52 percent of Americans support the death penalty, according to a 2025 Gallup poll. That's down from a high of 80 percent in 1994.

In 2001, convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh was executed over the 1995 attack that killed 168 people and his death was broadcast to 232 survivors and family members of the victims over a special closed-circuit telecast, but it was not made public.

The last high-profile public execution in the United States was in 1936, when Rainey Bethea, a Black man accused of raping and murdering a 70-year-old woman in her home, was hanged in Kentucky. Bethea was convicted of the rape but never charged with murder.

More than 20,000 people gathered to watch Bethea's death. The morning of the hanging, vendors sold popcorn and cold soft drinks to the waiting crowd, Kentucky public radio station WKMS recalled in a story looking back at the case.

One last man, Roscoe Jackson, was hanged in Missouri in 1937 before a far smaller crowd of about 400 people, but the public spectacle and media coverage around Bethea's hanging was a key turning point in America moving away from such displays.

There were also many unofficial, mob-led public executions of Black Americans through torture and lynching, primarily in the American South, up into the 1980s.

The execution call by Hegseth has attracted wide criticism, including from his fellow Republicans.

"Hasan should face the death penalty, but making his execution public and streaming it? Beyond disgusting," Republican Sen. Thom Tillis wrote on X. "Public executions are what oppressive dictatorships like Iran and Afghanistan do. It should not be happening in America."

"We as a country cannot condone livestreaming a man's death for entertainment," Democrat Sen. Patty Murray said in a statement.

"My immediate reaction is this has taken us back to medieval times," Jon Yorke, a professor of human rights at Britain's Birmingham City University, told The Washington Post.

Could people in New Zealand watch this?

Something livestreamed over the internet would be practically impossible to police, even if it was something classifiable as objectionable content here, the Chief Censor's office told Reuters.

"The Classification Office cannot classify a livestream event as it is taking place, and we, nor any other body, has the authority to block access to a livestream event," a spokesperson for New Zealand's Classification Office said in a statement.

America's Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr said he would defer to the Pentagon over whether to potentially broadcast the execution on television networks, The Washington Post reported.

Has a public execution ever happened in New Zealand?

Yes, but it's been nearly 150 years since there was one.

"We had stopped public executions in the 19th century," Gillespie said.

"We - like others - worked out at that point they had become unruly affairs, more of a carnival than a solemn occasion, and could encourage local violence."

Executions were carried out by hanging, according the Ministry for Culture and Heritage's NZ History database.

The first known legal execution under British rule was Wiremu Kingi Maketū, who was convicted of killing five people in Northland, including three children. He was convicted and hanged on 7 March 1842.

It's believed the last public execution in New Zealand was of John Killey in 1858. The New Zealander newspaper of 20 March 1858 wrote: "The Convict Killey was executed on Thursday morning in front of the Gaol. On the scaffold he protested his innocence - a protestation not at all compatible with the evidence."

NZ history's website says there were a total of 84 executions recorded in New Zealand before the death penalty was ultimately banned.

The very last execution in New Zealand happened in 1957, when Walter James Bolton was hanged at Mount Eden prison for the murder of his wife Beatrice, reportedly through poisoning her tea with arsenic.

The death penalty for murder was ended in New Zealand in 1961. All remaining capital punishment, including for treason, or treachery in the Armed Forces, was ended with the Abolition of the Death Penalty Act 1989.

What other countries still do public executions?

Afghanistan and Iran have had public executions in the past few years, and Yemen did as recently as 2021.

According to Amnesty International, which keeps yearly statistics on executions, there were at least 2707 executions in 2025 in 17 countries, an increase of 78 percent from the 1518 known executions in 2024. It's the highest figure recorded by Amnesty since 1981.

China is the world's leading executioner, Amnesty reports, but "the true extent of its use of the death penalty remains unknown as this data remains classified as a state secret".

"Even China, which kills more of its own citizens with their death penalty than any other nation, does it in private," Gillespie said.

There were more than a thousand executions recorded in China and Iran, while 47 were recorded as carried out in the United States.

"The others who execute with (a) live stream are terrorists, done to outrage, provoke reactions and show the power over the defenceless they have," Gillespie said.

Livestreaming Hasan's execution could backfire, he believes.

"A public execution will make the terrorist famous, giving them increased notoriety. This will make him a martyr.

"It will, in short, increase, not decrease violence and terror."