Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has proposed livestreaming the military execution of Nidal Hasan, convicted of the 2009 Fort Hood shootings, which would be the first U.S. military execution since 1961 and still requires presidential approval.

Critics call the plan barbaric and a degrading spectacle, yet the article notes that closed-circuit viewing for victims’ families was already arranged for Timothy McVeigh’s 2001 execution and that courts have consistently upheld prison bans on public recording or broadcasting of executions.

The piece recalls prior judicial rulings that limited witness observation of lethal-injection procedures for staff safety, suggesting Hegseth could frame global access as an expansion of the limited First Amendment interests courts have already recognized.

On December 3, two traditions risk combining in foul if remarkable fashion.  In the United States, an execution is set to take place with a ghoulish offering of livestreaming through the World Wide Web.  This, at least, is the sprightly proposal from Pete Hegseth, the US Secretary of Defense (or War, depending on the mood) regarding the fate of Nidal Hasan.  The former ex-US Army major and psychiatrist was sentenced to death by a military jury in 2013 for the premeditated murder of 13 people at Ford Hood on November 5, 2009.  This will make it the first US military execution since 1961, though it needs final approval from President Donald Trump.

The announcement has produced jittery indignation in various quarters. “This is an unprecedented, barbaric decision that makes the killing of a man a point of sordid spectacle,” growled the Legal Defense Fund.  “The government’s opportunistic use of a man’s brutal killing turns an already grotesque injustice into a national spectacle that degrades our country and degrades us all.”  Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, spouse of a man who knew a thing or two about........

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