Public executions in the US stopped nearly a century ago - why are they resuming now?

Public executions in the US ended nearly 100 years ago — so why are they coming back now?

An estimated 20,000 people gathered in Kentucky in 1936 to watch the public hanging of Rainey Bethea, who had been convicted of raping and killing an elderly woman.

Thousands traveled from near and far. Men, women and children lined a Kentucky riverfront to witness 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 notorious heat wave. Some people slept overnight near the gallows to keep their places. Others attended “necktie” parties the night before, arriving hungover while teenagers sold popcorn and soda to the crowd.

By the time of the execution at 5am, the crowd had grown to an estimated 20,000.

That was when Rainey Bethea, an orphan in his 20s, climbed the gallows — sentenced to death after allegedly confessing to robbing, raping and killing Lischia Edwards, 70.

The day before, he had eaten a final meal of fried chicken, pork chops, mashed potatoes, pickled cucumbers, cornbread, lemon pie and ice cream.

Many of those present — including reporters from as far away as Chicago and New York — came to see the rumored “Lady Executioner.” The local sheriff had died four months earlier, and his widow became the unlikely female replacement. She refused to pull the trip lever herself, however, and hired hangmen instead sent Bethea to his death.

That event became the last major public hanging in America. The spectacle around Bethea’s death embarrassed many in Kentucky, and the governor banned public executions 18 months later.

By then, most states had abolished capital punishment in front of crowds as public attitudes shifted toward more humane and private methods. Another hanging drew a few hundred people in Missouri in 1937, but it was less well known and became America’s final public execution — until now.

Just over 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 then said the firing-squad execution would be live-streamed.

“People need to understand that there’s serious consequences for these types of things,” Hegseth said.

Michael Radelet, professor emeritus at the University of Colorado and a longtime scholar of capital punishment, said he was stunned.

“I never imagined [another] public execution,” he told BBC.

He pointed out that support for the death penalty in general has been steadily falling; it was 80% in 1994, for instance, but is now 52%.

“It’s gone down precipitously, especially when you give the alternative of life without parole,” he said.

It is too early to know what Americans think about the idea of livestreaming an execution. But it is almost certain that millions, or more, will watch.

With Hegseth’s announcement, Radelet said, “the justification for the death penalty becomes entertainment … bring your popcorn, invite your friends”.

Sonya Lea, who published a book last year about Bethea’s execution, said she “felt absolute horror for our descendants” when she heard about 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 in that 1936 crowd. She did not learn that until after her grandmother died in 2002, when she read an account her late grandmother had given describing how they were close enough to hear Bethea’s neck snap.

Her later years of research showed 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 polarization and rhetoric in American politics may have helped create the conditions 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 suggests Hegseth and the administration may be misreading the country.

Garen Wintemute, director of the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California, Berkeley, said survey data shows 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 watch the execution.

President Donald Trump avoided answering whether he would watch it 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.”