Executions Should Not Be Livestreamed

In 2009 at Ford Hood in Texas, Nidal Hasan killed twelve of his fellow soldiers and one civilian, and wounded more than thirty other people. For this act of murderous betrayal, he has been sentenced to death. Last week, the Pentagon announced that the execution would be livestreamed, a decision that has generated enormous controversy. Among those who have condemned it is Archbishop Paul S. Coakley, the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin has also spoken out against the decision. In the wake of the controversy, President Trump has now decided not to livestream the execution.

That the death penalty can be a morally justifiable punishment for the worst offenders is the longstanding position of the natural law approach to ethics represented by thinkers like St. Thomas Aquinas. It is also the clear teaching of Scripture, and has consistently been taught by the Catholic Church for two millennia. I have defended this teaching in print for fifteen years, at greatest length in By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed: A Catholic Defense of Capital Punishment, a book I co-authored with political scientist Joseph Bessette. Longtime readers will recall that I have also defended it in several essays here at Public Discourse.   

Unsurprisingly, then, I will not argue here against executing Hasan. He is certainly getting his just deserts. I also allow for the sake of argument that some forms of public execution can under certain circumstances be justifiable.   

However, those circumstances are manifestly not met in the case of livestreaming an execution. Indeed, livestreaming this execution would be seriously wrong—certainly from the point of view of Christian morality, or so I will argue. For it is certain to promote attitudes that are contrary to the solemnity and spirit of Christian charity with which we ought to approach the death of any human being, even those guilty of the worst crimes. 

What is crucial here is the motivation of those involved in an execution, both those carrying it out and those witnessing it approvingly. As Aquinas writes: 

In a case of exacting retribution the mindset of the one who exacts retribution must be taken into consideration. For if his intention is directed mainly toward what is bad for the one on whom he is taking vengeance and it rests there, then this is altogether illicit, since delighting in what is bad for someone involves hatred, which is incompatible with the charity by which we are obligated to love all men. Nor is one excused if he intends evil for someone who has unjustly inflicted evil on him, just as no one is excused for hating someone who hates him. (Summa Theologiae II-II.108.1, Freddoso translation) 

As Aquinas goes on to say, for punishment to be licit, then, there must be a proper motivation, such as upholding justice, protecting society, or encouraging the repentance of the offender. Similarly, in Summa Contra Gentiles, Aquinas writes that “the killing which results from anger is prohibited, but not that which stems from a zeal for justice” (Book III, Chapter 146). 

So punishment, including execution, can be legitimate when motivated by justice, defense, or rehabilitation, but it is sinful when motivated by hatred, revenge, or anger. Naturally, Christian morality teaches that it is wrong for anyone to harbor such motivations, whether or not he is the one actually inflicting a punishment. 

For this reason, the Christian tradition has always emphasized that even when an offender is executed for the gravest crimes, Christians should not delight in this and ought to earnestly hope and pray that the offender repents and finds salvation while he still has time. After all, the same Old Testament that sanctions the death penalty for certain offenses also says: “I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way” (Ezekiel 33:11). 

Hence, while the Fathers of the Church are agreed that the state has the right in principle to make use of capital punishment for the worst offenders, they also reject any suggestion that a Christian can ever take pleasure in killing. For example, in Book VI, Chapter 8 of his Confessions, St. Augustine laments the corrupting effect on the soul of taking pleasure in watching gladiatorial combat. He does not suggest that such pleasure is healthy as long as the gladiators are condemned criminals who deserve to die. The Church Father Athenagoras of Athens, responding to those who falsely accused Christians of cannibalism, writes:  

For when they know that we cannot endure even to see a man put to death, though justly; who of them can accuse us of murder or cannibalism?  Who does not reckon among the things of greatest interest the contests of gladiators and wild beasts, especially those which are given by you?  But we, deeming that to see a man put to death is much the same as killing him, have abjured such spectacles. (A Plea for the Christians, Chapter 35) 

Another Church Father, Lactantius, teaches: “He who reckons it a pleasure, that a man, though justly condemned, should be slain in his sight, pollutes his conscience as much as if he should become a spectator and a sharer of a homicide which is secretly committed” (Divine Institutes, Book VI, Chapter 20). Then there is the Council of Rome of 382 A.D., which lamented: 

It is obvious that those who have obtained secular power and administered secular law cannot be free from sin. For while the sword is unsheathed either unjust judgment is conferred, or tortures administered in the prosecution of cases, or they plan for executions to be titillating, or derive titillation from them when they are planned. (Epistola X, quoted in E. Christian Brugger, Capital Punishment and Roman Catholic Moral Tradition, at p. 89) 

In line with this ancient teaching, moral theologians even before Vatican II welcomed the modern tendency to do away with the practice of making a public spectacle of executions. As Fr. John McHugh and Fr. Charles Callan wrote in their once widely used manual Moral Theology: 

The killing of offenders is, therefore, unlawful … when the mode of killing or the circumstances are repugnant to Christian feeling. Today capital punishment is generally inflicted in a humane manner, but history records many cruel forms of execution, as when men were … put to death among the jeers and curses of the populace. (Volume II, pp. 102-3) 

Some will point out that there were public executions even in the Papal States. But “jeers and curses” were precisely the opposite of what the Church approved of in the case of such executions. As Bessette and I note in our book, a special order of monks was devoted to catering to the spiritual needs of the condemned man, encouraging his repentance and offering the sacraments. The faithful were asked to pray for his soul. St. John Henry Newman gives a moving description of the attitude taken by those attending such executions: 

Oh the difference … in the execution of the extreme sentence of the law, between a Catholic State and another! We have all heard of the scene of impiety and profaneness which attends on the execution of a criminal in England … Well, England surpasses Rome in ten thousand matters of this world, but never would the Holy City tolerate an enormity which powerful England cannot hinder …The Blessed Sacrament is exposed in all the churches all over the city, that the faithful may assist a sinner about to make a compulsory appearance before his Judge. The crowd about the scaffold is occupied in but one thought, whether he has shown signs of contrition … When the news is brought of a change; that … [the] criminal … has confessed with all his heart, and placed himself at the disposal of his Priest, to make such amends as he can make in his last hour to God and man … it is communicated through the vast multitude all at once; and, I have heard from those who have been present, never shall they forget the instantaneous shout of joy which burst forth from every tongue, and formed itself into one concordant act of thanksgiving in acknowledgment of the grace vouchsafed to one so near eternity. (Certain Difficulties Felt by Anglicans in Catholic Teaching, Volume 1, Lecture 8) 

Now, consider a modern audience of possibly several million people who might watch the livestream of an execution. Which sorts of attitudes are likely to be more common among them? A dispassionate concern for justice and a pious worry for the good of the condemned man’s soul? Or the hatred, revenge, and anger Aquinas warns against; the pleasure in execution the Church Fathers condemned as depraved; the “jeers and curses” lamented by McHugh and Callan; and the “impiety and profaneness” decried by Newman? 

The answer is obvious. Even apart from the question of livestreaming, few people possess the calm rationality and charity with which one ought to approach these matters. But the toxicity of online culture massively exacerbates the problem. It encourages simplistic and emotional thinking. It stokes division, rewarding discourse of the relentlessly hostile and sarcastic kind and transforming every issue into a proxy for partisan hatreds. Its meme culture treats everything as a subject for mockery, and its wide dissemination of pornographic and violent imagery deadens any sense of shame or propriety. 

The bottom line is that execution is a matter that must be approached with sober rationality, charity, and solemnity. But online culture instead fosters emotionalism, hatred, and frivolity, and livestreaming executions would put them at the center of this toxic culture. From an ethical point of view, then, the very idea of livestreaming executions is a non-starter, certainly for anyone sympathetic to Christian morality. 

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