Getty ImagesThey came in their thousands from near and far. Men, women and children lined up on a Kentucky riverfront for the public hanging of a black man convicted of raping and killing an elderly white widow.
It was 14 August 1936 in Owensboro, Kentucky, a sweltering Friday in the middle of a legendary heat wave. Some slept overnight near the gallows to preserve their spots. Others held “necktie” parties the previous evening, arriving hungover as teenagers sold popcorn and soda to the spectators.
By the execution time of 5am, the crowd had swelled to an estimated 20,000.
That’s when Rainey Bethea, an orphan in his 20s, stepped up to the gallows – sentenced to death after allegedly confessing to robbing, raping and killing Lischia Edwards, 70.
Many of those gathered – including press from as far away as Chicago and New York – came to see the rumoured “Lady Executioner;” the local sheriff had died four months earlier, and his widow became the unlikely female replacement. She declined to pull the trip lever herself, however, and it was hired hangmen who instead sent Bethea to his death.
That moment marked the last high-profile public hanging in America. The circus surrounding Bethea’s death embarrassed many in Kentucky, and the governor outlawed public executions 18 months later.
By then, most states had abolished capital punishment in view of the masses as societal attitudes sought more humane and private methods. Another hanging was attended by a few hundred in Missouri in 1937, but that was lesser known and marked America’s final public execution – until now.
FPG/Staff/GettyA little more than 90 years after Bethea’s killing, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced that the military would publicly execute Nidal Hasan, who killed 13 unarmed fellow soldiers in 2009 at the Fort Hood military base in Texas.
The Pentagon followed up by saying the execution by firing squad would be live-streamed.
“People need to understand that there’s serious consequences for these types of things,” Hegseth said.
University of Colorado professor emeritus Michael Radelet, a long-time scholar of capital punishment, was shocked.
“I never imagined [another] public execution,” he told BBC.
He noted how public support for the death penalty in general has been steadily declining; it was 80% in 1994, for example, but now stands at 52%.
“It’s gone down precipitously, especially when you give the alternative of life without parole,” he said.
It’s too soon to know what the American public thinks of the idea of livestreaming an execution. But it’s nearly certain that millions or more will tune in.
With Hegseth’s announcement, Radelet said, “the justification for the death penalty becomes entertainment … bring your popcorn, invite your friends”.
Sonya Lea, who just last year published a book about Bethea’s execution, “felt absolute horror for our descendants” when she heard of the announced firing squad livestream.
“What they called it in 1936 was a carnival of sadism,” she said. “That we now have the technology that can make it go wider than the 20,000 people who showed up … to witness in Owensboro, Kentucky, it just makes it even more horrific.”
Lea’s grandparents were teenage newlyweds among that 1936 crowd. She only found out after her grandmother’s 2002 death, when she read an account her late grandma had given detailing how they were close enough to hear Bethea’s neck snap.
The author’s subsequent years of research taught her that many Kentuckians were “haunted” by that execution.
“I really thought, with all my heart, that we had put this in the rearview mirror, this level of grotesquery that only a few countries in the world engage in – Iran, North Korea, Afghanistan,” she said. “Are we now, as the United States of America, considering ourselves to be part of that kind of government? It’s just horrific.”
But the polarisation and rhetoric in American politics may have, in some way, perhaps set the stage for such an announcement, said Kurt Gray, a social psychology professor at Ohio State University.
“Some Americans might thirst for blood, but I think a lot of Americans don’t, and, if anything, I think a lot of other Americans are just kind of maybe desensitised,” he said. “So it’s not like they’re cheering a public execution; they’re just like, ‘Oh, yeah, I guess that’s where we’re at now.'”
Other research indicates that Hegseth and the administration may be reading the country wrong.
Garen Wintemute, director of the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California, Berkeley, said survey data points to a declining appetite for violence in the US.
“This morning, the chair of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops labeled this [livestream execution announcement] as barbaric,” he said. “And I think he speaks for a lot of people.”
“I think it’s this: A public execution is not who we are,” he added. “It’s not who we aspire to be as a country.”
Vice-President JD Vance, a Catholic, has said he would not be watching the execution.
President Donald Trump dodged the question of whether he’d tune in himself – but confirmed he approved the decision to livestream Hasan’s death.
“I really don’t care how he goes as long as he goes,” Trump said. “And I think that the death penalty is a very worthy way of going for him.”
