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

BySheila Flynn Senior US Reporter.

Key points

• It was 14 August 1936 in Owensboro, Kentucky, a sweltering Friday in the middle of a legendary heat wave.
• A little more than 90 years after Bethea's killing, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth confirmed that the military would publicly execute Nidal Hasan.
• He observed how public backing for the death penalty in general has been steadily declining; it was 80% in 1994, for example, but now stands at 52%.
• Garen Wintemute, director of the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California, Berkeley, remarked survey data points to a declining appetite for violence in the US.
• By the execution time of 5am, the crowd had swelled to an estimated 20, 000.

They 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.

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.

Notably, the previous afternoon, he'd eaten a last meal of fried chicken, pork chops, mashed potatoes, pickled cucumbers, cornbread, lemon pie and ice cream.

Plenty of 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, nevertheless, 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 plenty of in Kentucky, and the governor outlawed public executions 18 months afterwards.

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.

Meanwhile, a little more than 90 years after Bethea's killing, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth confirmed that the military would publicly execute Nidal Hasan. This person killed 13 unarmed fellow soldiers in 2009 at the Fort Hood military base in Texas.

Notably, 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 remarked.

University of Colorado professor emeritus Michael Radelet, a long-time scholar of capital punishment, was shocked. "I never imagined public execution, " he informed BBC.

"It's gone down precipitously, especially when you give the alternative of life without parole, " he remarked.

It's too shortly to know what the American public thinks of the idea of livestreaming an execution. But it's almost certain that millions or more will tune in.

With Hegseth's announcement, Radelet remarked, "the justification for the death penalty becomes entertainment. Bring your popcorn, invite your friends".

Sonya Lea, who just last year published a book regarding Bethea's execution, "felt absolute horror for our descendants" when she heard of the unveiled firing squad livestream.

"What they called it in 1936 was a carnival of sadism, " she remarked. "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. When she read an account her late grandma had given detailing how they were close enough to hear Bethea's neck snap, she only discovered out after her grandmother's 2002 death.

For context, the author's subsequent years of research taught her that plenty of 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 remarked. As the United States of America, considering ourselves to be part of that kind of administration?, "Are we now. 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, remarked 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 remarked. "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.

"This morning, the chair of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops labeled this as barbaric, " he remarked. "And I think he speaks for a lot of people."

"I think it's this: A public execution is not who we are, " he continued. "It's not who we aspire to be as a country."

Vice-President JD Vance, a Catholic, has remarked 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 remarked. "And I think that the death penalty is a very worthy way of going for him."

In short, public executions in the US stopped nearly a century ago is the central thread here, and readers can expect follow-up reporting as the picture becomes clearer.