Nearly 20 years ago, I opposed the execution of Saddam Hussein.
Not because I believed Hussein was innocent. His regime was responsible for brutality, repression, torture and death on a staggering scale. I opposed his execution because I could not understand how deliberately taking another human life could demonstrate the value of lives already taken.
Brian Henderson
There was another contradiction I could not escape. Hussein had been captured and held by the United States during a war in which tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians already had been killed. He ultimately was tried, convicted and executed by the Iraqi government, but another death seemed an especially impoverished way of demonstrating that human life mattered.
Twenty years later, I find myself confronting much the same moral contradiction.
Nidal Hasan committed an atrocity.
In 2009, Hasan, then a U.S. Army psychiatrist, opened fire at Fort Hood, Texas, killing 13 people and wounding 32 others. Those numbers cannot convey the enormity of what happened. Thirteen people had families, friends, colleagues, hopes and futures. Survivors have carried the wounds of that day for 17 years.
“Nothing about opposing Hasan’s execution diminishes what he did.”
Nothing about opposing Hasan’s execution diminishes what he did. Nothing excuses his actions. His victims deserve to be remembered, their families deserve our compassion, and Hasan should be held accountable.
But accountability and vengeance are not the same thing.
The United States military intends to execute Hasan by firing squad on Dec. 3. Even more disturbing, the Pentagon plans to livestream his execution. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has argued the public should be able to watch because people need to understand there are serious consequences for acts such as Hasan’s.
I cannot reconcile that logic.
We do not demonstrate the seriousness of killing by killing someone in front of an audience.
Justice does not require spectators.
An execution already represents the deliberate taking of a human life by the state. Broadcasting it crosses another threshold. It transforms punishment into spectacle and invites the rest of us to participate — not as jurors or people charged with protecting society, but as viewers.
What exactly are we supposed to learn by watching another human being shot to death?
“What exactly are we supposed to learn by watching another human being shot to death?”
That killing is wrong? That human life is precious? That violence has consequences?
Surely we can recognize the contradiction.
As a Christian minister, I cannot separate my response from my faith. Christianity makes the audacious claim that every human being bears the image of God.
Every human being.
That conviction matters most when it is difficult to maintain.
It is easy to speak about human dignity when considering a child, a beloved neighbor or someone who has suffered unjustly. The test comes when we are confronted with someone who has done something reprehensible. If human dignity depends upon good behavior, it is not inherent dignity at all.
Jesus repeatedly interrupts our appetite for retaliation. “An eye for an eye” gives way to a far more demanding ethic: Love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you. Resist the endless cycle in which violence becomes the answer to violence and vengeance masquerades as justice.
This does not mean abandoning accountability. It does not mean releasing dangerous people into society. And it certainly does not mean asking victims to pretend unspeakable harm has not occurred.
It means refusing to believe that killing heals killing.
Livestreaming an execution takes us somewhere darker still.
Public executions belong to a history we should have learned from, not one we should recreate with 21st-century technology. Americans once gathered in crowds to watch people hang. Death became punishment, warning and spectacle.
Moving the crowd from the courthouse square to a computer screen does not make the practice more civilized. It simply gives the firing squad an internet connection.
“Moving the crowd from the courthouse square to a computer screen does not make the practice more civilized.”
I opposed Saddam Hussein’s execution nearly 20 years ago because I did not believe his death could restore the people whose lives had been taken. I do not believe Nidal Hasan’s death will restore the 13 people he murdered either.
A government confident in the strength of its justice system should have no need to display a man’s death as evidence of its strength. A society committed to human dignity should not need an execution broadcast to remind us that murder is wrong.
And those of us who claim to follow Jesus should be particularly wary when vengeance is dressed in the language of justice and violence is offered as evidence of moral seriousness.
I will not watch Nidal Hasan die.
I hope millions of others will refuse to watch as well.
Better still, I hope our government reconsiders the execution altogether.
Because nearly 20 years after Saddam Hussein’s death, my conviction remains the same: We cannot kill our way into demonstrating that killing is wrong.
And justice does not require spectators.
Brian Henderson serves as executive director of the Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists. He is an ordained minister in the American Baptist Churches USA.
Related:
Go ahead and livestream that firing squad execution! | Opinion by Mark Wingfield