Will Trump stream an execution to the world?
Sam Hawley: We know by now that Donald Trump loves a spectacle, but live streaming an execution by firing squad. Will he agree to that? And will Australians be able to watch it? Today, law and capital punishment expert Austin Sarat on the proposed public execution of a former US army major, botched execution of Christa Pike and whether Americans still support the death penalty. I’m Sam Hawley on Gadigal Land in Sydney. This is ABC News Daily. Austin, in Australia, the last execution took place in 1967.
Archival news report: Ryan’s execution at Pentridge for the shooting of George Hodgson, a prison officer, sparked off a wave of protest. Ryan was to be hung at eight o’clock. On this day, at least, he was to make his mark in the annals of Victorian justice.
Sam Hawley: And then over subsequent decades, the death penalty was abolished altogether across the country. Now, that was the case in many Western nations, wasn’t it?
Austin Sarat: That is true. And from the outside, it may look like the United States is an outlier in its enthusiasm for capital punishment. But actually, nothing could be further from the truth. By that, I mean the United States is in the midst of a period of national reconsideration of capital punishment. Support for the death penalty is way down from what it was three decades ago. The number of people being sentenced to death is way down from what it was three decades ago. And that many states in the United States that have the death penalty on the books haven’t executed anyone in more than a decade. Developments like what happened to Christa Pike or the desire of the secretary of defence to have a military firing squad. Those are not leading indicators of where the death penalty is in the United States. They are a reminder of the vestige that capital punishment is in this country.
Sam Hawley: But there was a shift, was there not, when Donald Trump returned to the White House, because one of the first things he did was to sign an executive order relating to executions.
Austin Sarat: Well, the federal government has actually not a whole lot to do with capital punishment in the United States. Most death penalties, most death sentences where they are imposed occur at the state level. Yes, Donald Trump would like to revive the death penalty, as he’s done at the federal level. He’s, I think, eager now to have this firing squad execution. But if you go back 30 years, in 1998, we, the United States, executed a total of 99 people across the whole year. It’s gotten as low as in the 20s and in the last couple of years has spiked up a bit, but got nothing near what it was three decades ago. And even more important, the number of death sentences is way down. Last year, it was in the 20s.
News report: The US state of Tennessee has suspended all executions after a woman survived two lethal injections.
News report: A desperate attempt to save a life after two failed attempts to end it.
Nashville journalist: This is an enormous dose of a sedative. That should not ever need to happen twice, but it did, and then she stayed alive.
Sam Hawley: Well, since Christa Pike’s disturbing case, as you mentioned, there has been another very troubling development with Pete Hegseth announcing a military execution, which has been approved by Donald Trump, should be live streamed. Now, just remind me who this involves and what Pete Hegseth wants.
Austin Sarat: In 2009, a man named Nidal Hasan committed a mass murder at a military base in Texas. He murdered 13 soldiers. He himself was in the military, and he has been on the military death row since then. The authority to authorize an execution in the military rests with the president. Pete Hegseth requested that authority. Donald Trump has granted it. They have chosen as the method of execution the firing squad. The firing squad is rarely used in the United States. And then Hegseth has come up with this idea that it should be live streamed. The president has said two or three different things about it. Most recently, that no decision has been made. He’s going to hear arguments on both sides about whether it should be allowed.
Donald Trump, US President: There are two thoughts. Don’t show it and show it. Because, you know, by showing it, maybe other people won’t be doing what he did. So I’ll make a decision ultimately. I know what the military would like to do, but we’ll make a decision.
Austin Sarat: It’s a moral horror, the idea that a death sentence and execution would be live streamed. It bespeaks a kind of cruelty that fits with the administration’s overall policy, which seems to be to display cruelty wherever it can, whether it’s in massed ICE agents on American streets shooting unarmed people or whether it’s in the bombing and airstrikes of boatloads of defenceless people off of Venezuela. It seems that the display of cruelty is very much part of this administration’s governing philosophy.
Sam Hawley: Well, Pete Hegseth, he spoke to Real America’s Voice about this decision of his that he wants to live stream this execution.
Pete Hegseth, US Secretary of War: We know what it is. It was a radical Islamist attack in uniform inside the ranks. And so he’s going to get a firing squad of soldiers, as it should be. And we’ll make sure that people are able to watch it. That is public, because people need to understand that this is a there’s serious consequences for these types of things.
Sam Hawley: But do we have any more details? Who’s going to live stream this and who wants to watch it?
Austin Sarat: Well, I think live streaming the execution is not itself a technological problem. They can live stream it and post it to one or another social media platform, including the president’s own truth social. And I think the question of who wants to watch it is a really important one. Vice President J.D. Vance has said he wouldn’t watch it.
JD Vance, US Vice President: So whatever the controversy is about the method of the execution, I hope that people don’t forget that this is a guy who brutally murdered a lot of innocent people. Now, that said, I mean, look, if it’s all through live stream, I’m not going to be watching it.
Austin Sarat: I think that’s an indication that he understands the extreme indecency of live streaming an execution.
Sam Hawley: Well, Austin, this is causing huge concern here. Politicians across the spectrum do not want this showing in Australia if it does end up being live streamed.
Anthony Albanese, Prime Minister: I find the idea of live streaming the death of anybody completely abhorrent. We should do whatever we can to stop that occurring.
Barnaby Joyce, One Nation MP: This is Roman amphitheatre stuff. No, I don’t. I don’t agree with that.
Tim Wilson, Liberal MP: My basic principle is we shouldn’t be promoting that sort of violence. And
Sarah Hanson-Young, Greens senator: I think this is incredibly shocking and barbaric, and it shouldn’t be live streamed here. Australians don’t want this on our screens.
Sam Hawley: But the e-safety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, she says her office, it just doesn’t have the power to proactively block the live streaming. There are many nations, I’m sure, around the world that do not want this shown in their countries.
Austin Sarat: Well, I understand that and and fully support it. I don’t think that this execution, should it go forward, should be live screened. I mean, look, for as long as there was a death penalty, the United States, going back to the beginning of the republic here, executions were held in public. The last public execution in the United States was in 1936. So almost a century ago. And they were thought originally to be kind of educational events that they would convey a moral message to see someone pay the price for a serious crime. By the beginning of the 20th century, it was clear that there was no moral message being sent. They were forms of popular entertainment, if you will. They were spectacles. And that was the end of public executions in the United States. So what Hegseth is proposing to do is a kind of back to the future moment. And I hope it does not happen.
Pete Hegseth, US Secretary of War: I hadn’t been since World War Two since we’ve done that. Well, I kind of like the mentality we had in World War Two, which was win.
Sam Hawley: All right, well, Austin, let’s turn to the case of Christa Pike now and the debate around her failed execution attempt. Now, she has been released from hospital and is now back in prison, where she has spent three decades for the 1995 torture and murder of a classmate. What do we know about her condition at this point?
Austin Sarat: What we know is that Christa Pike survived a near death experience in a miraculous way. Her lawyers thought that she was going to be brain dead as she was being kept alive on a ventilator. So that the idea that she is now talking and walking, I think no one would have predicted. The question, of course, becomes now what? You have someone who was sentenced to death, whose execution failed, who survived that execution. And I wonder and worry that the state of Tennessee may try to execute her again. That in of itself, I think, would be indecent and inhumane.
Sam Hawley: Wow. Yes, because her lawyers have asked that she be granted clemency at this point. But it is very political, isn’t it, in the lead up to the midterms in Tennessee?
Austin Sarat: It is very political. The current Republican nominee for governor of Tennessee, a woman named Marsha Blackburn, soon after the debacle that happened on September 30th in Tennessee, came out publicly and said, well, let’s just use the electric chair.
Marsha Blackburn, US Senator: It is important that that be done. If there are these issues with lethal injection, the electric chair is something Tennessee can use. Then maybe we need to use the electric chair.
Austin Sarat: And a congressman from Tennessee, again, soon after Christa Pike’s failed execution, said, let’s prop her up and shoot her.
Tim Burchett, US Congressman: They prop her up and bring her to a firing squad. The firing squad and hanging her 100 percent. I’ve never heard of them not being. And let’s just let’s get to something that works and let’s do it.
Austin Sarat: So there’ll be momentum at the political level in Tennessee to complete the job, if that’s the right way to put it. But if the state, if the government, if any government is going to use the death penalty, and in my view, none should. I think we could all say as a matter of human decency and humanity, you get one try. There should be no do-overs in the grim business of execution.
Sam Hawley: Well, Donald Trump and his defense secretary, Austin, they’re clearly supporters of the death penalty. As you say, the polling among American people shows something quite different. How do you think the American people feel about what is unfolding at this point in terms of Christa Pike? And then, of course, in terms of this idea to live stream an execution?
Austin Sarat: So interesting and important things are happening here. So if I were to say to you, are you in favour of capital punishment? And let’s say you said, yes, you were. And then I said, but are you in favour of executing people who might be innocent? You would likely say no. Or if I said, are you in favour of the death penalty? And you said, well, as a general matter, yes. And I said, are you in favour of executing people because of their race or the race of their victim? I suspect that you or anyone that held that view would say no. So the death penalty system in the United States is broken. It is widely understood that we have convicted and sentenced to death row people who are actually innocent, that people are sentenced to death for all because of their race and the race of their victim. And now with the publicity around Christa Pike’s execution and the indecency of the proposal to live stream a military execution, I think more Americans are going to say this is beneath us, but we should not be doing this. There’s no way that we can do this and be true to the values that we want to teach our children and that we want to say exemplifies the country in which we live and the country that we love.
Sam Hawley: So do you then think, Austin, that there is a chance sometime, perhaps in the near future, that Americans will agree to abolish the death penalty or will it be around for a while yet?
Austin Sarat: Well, I believe we’re on the road to abolition. I believe that abolition will come slowly because we have a federal system. States will make their own decisions. More and more states are deciding not to have the death penalty. More states have abolished the death penalty in the last two decades than at any other comparable period in American history. But abolition will not be smooth or fast. There’ll be progress and then there’ll be steps backward. But I think that Donald Trump, notwithstanding that the United States will, if not in my lifetime, certainly in the lifetime of my children, end up joining the European Union, Australia, New Zealand and other democracies in ending the death penalty.
Sam Hawley: Austin Sarat is a professor of law and politics at Amherst College and the author of “Life After Death, what happens when someone survives an execution” This episode was produced by Ilaria Brophy and Louise Miolin. Audio production by Sam Dunn. Our supervising producer is Sydney Pead. I’m Sam Hawley. Thanks for listening.
