🇺🇸 The plan to publicly livestream the execution of Nidal Hasan, the former U.S. Army major convicted of killing 13 people at Fort Hood in 2009, could mark a turning point in America's relationship with the death penalty.
The December firing-squad execution comes as Washington struggles with the war against Iran and its consequences in the Strait of Hormuz.
Executing a convicted Islamist terrorist could provide a morale boost and a political distraction from those difficulties.
But the larger significance goes far beyond the war.
America has spent decades maintaining capital punishment in law while increasingly avoiding its implementation.
California is perhaps the clearest example. Despite retaining the death penalty and voters repeatedly rejecting abolition, the state has not executed anyone since 2006.
This arrangement allows politicians to avoid the political consequences of either abolishing capital punishment or actually enforcing it.
Across the country, lengthy appeals, execution moratoriums and disputes over supposedly cruel and unusual punishment have created an enormous divide between what the law permits and what the government is willing to do.
Even lethal injection reflects America's discomfort with capital punishment, presenting an inherently violent act as something resembling a medical procedure.
A publicly broadcast firing-squad execution would reject that sanitization entirely.
There is a serious argument that laws, once democratically established and upheld by the courts, should be enforced rather than quietly abandoned through political avoidance.
That does not eliminate the need for due process or constitutional protections. But retaining the death penalty while making its implementation practically impossible raises questions about the credibility of the law itself.
And that is why Hasan's execution could become a defining test.
If capital punishment is to survive as a meaningful part of American law, its supporters may have to defend its actual implementation openly rather than hiding behind increasingly sanitized procedures.
The reaction to a livestreamed firing squad could reveal whether America still has the political and institutional willingness to enforce the ultimate punishment.
Writer: Mhedi
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