** This is the ninth in a recurring series, in which I offer some modest proposals – in the venerable tradition of Jonathan Swift – for American and international politics. **
Capital punishment has been all over the news in America lately, with two major stories involving the death penalty getting significant traction in media and online. First was the botched execution of Christa Pike, where the woman convicted of the heinous 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer was given a lethal injection that turned out to be not so lethal after all. Instead of being the first woman executed in the state of Tennessee in 200-plus years, she became the first person to be administered purportedly-lethal drugs and survive. At this point, it is unclear whether Tennessee will attempt to put her to death again, but this is not the first time that a ‘lethal’ injection procedure was bungled. The other big story revolves around the upcoming military execution of Nidal Hasan, the Islamist terrorist and former Army major who murdered 13 people at Ford Hood in 2009, which Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth has said will be made public and livestreamed online. Naturally, this has been less-than-favorably received among most of the public, given the widespread aversion to public executions, despite the overall favorability toward capital punishment.
These stories have reinvigorated the debate over the death penalty and have clearly shown the highly uncomfortable side of the practice, even for its advocates. Most Americans would rather avoid looking at the deed directly, even if they find it necessary for public order or otherwise justifiable. There just aren’t that many people out there in the mainstream clamoring for public executions.
But my modest proposal is this: if we’re going to be in the business of execution, why shy away from reality? Why try to sanitize it? Why not lean into it? Why not make it fun?
There simply is no need to pussyfoot around the issue: the State is taking a life, in non-exigent circumstances, for punitive and deterrent purposes. So why are we trying to pretend that this isn’t what is happening? Why the euphemism, the hiding, the attempts to make death comfortable for the vilest criminals in our society? Instead of obfuscating the truth of the matter, we should embrace it. Enough with the carefully administered drug cocktails intended to eliminate pain in death. Enough with the decades spent on death row awaiting the inevitable. Enough with the closed-off, ‘private’ means of doing the public’s business. We’re choosing to take a life as punishment for a horrific crime. We should stop trying to muddy that.
Drop the overcomplicated lethal injection nonsense. It is not only ridiculously costly and hard to source; it is an unbecoming way to kill someone who has earned that fate via their own criminal actions. There are plenty of ways to end someone’s life, most of which are guaranteed to work. Firing squad, electric chair, hangman’s noose, impaling, burning at the stake, drawing and quartering, beheading (via Madame la Guillotine or otherwise), dropping an anvil on the head, burying alive, crucifixion, and exposure all work like a charm and have a long, storied history of effectiveness. Unorthodox methods would surely work as well. Drowning, catapulting, explosion, animals (both marine and land-based), robots, total vacuum, launching into outer space; basically, anything you can come up with. If you’re lacking inspiration, may I suggest watching some classic cartoons?
You could even turn it into a game show akin to the classic 1987 film The Running Man, but with a predetermined outcome – it’s not like we’re going to just let a death row inmate out because he won a contest. You could even go further back in popular culture for inspiration, all the way back to ancient times. We already have enormous football stadia – the modern equivalent of the Colosseum – scattered across the nation; why not utilize them to stage gladiatorial games? Donald Trump could play the role of the emperor, giving the apocryphal ‘thumbs up’ or ‘thumbs down’ to decide whether convicts could live another day. (I’m sure he’d actually love that idea, so please, nobody tell him.)
As for the public aspect, we should similarly lean into it and end this ridiculous habit of hiding what our government is doing in our name. Livestreaming the Hasan execution is child’s play; we should have it plastered on every major network, if not celebrated with a series of primetime specials. Public gladiatorial shows surely fit this bill as well, as would any sort of televised reality competition, whether The Running Man or a rigged version of Survivor. America has plenty of remote wastelands into which we could drop some sorely unprepared convicts, filming their eventual demise via drone for ease and public broadcast. It would probably be more interesting and novel than recent iterations of the real show, anyway. But not every execution will be a national spectacle. Some will be decidedly more local. After all, the vast majority of death row inmates are in state prisons, not federal ones. So let’s bring the entertainment to the masses, and what better way to do that than to stage these judicial killings at the state fair?
State fairs are a longstanding American tradition, showcasing the best that every state has to offer, from cultural and culinary traditions to prize-winning livestock/produce and entertainment for all ages. Almost every state has its own dedicated fair, with the others either banding together to put on an annual regional fair (New England) or doing it intermittently (Hawaii). People travel from across the state – a big job in places like California and Texas – and around the country to visit these fairs and experience the slice of Americana that they represent. You know what else fits the bill for state fair Americana? Public executions! They use firearms (we love those), are a huge public spectacle (we really love those), and involve someone getting their comeuppance for an evil deed done against a fellow American (if 1980s action movies are anything to go by, that’s as American as apple pie). It could be the capstone of the whole fair, perhaps even including audience participation – with the signing of a 100-page-long waiver, of course.
Some would argue that staging public executions at the state fair is a terrible idea guaranteed to traumatize fairgoers. (Spoilsports.) But watching a firing squad operate is not close to the most traumatizing thing one might see at a state fair. Have you seen the things they deep fry? The creepy uncanniness of extremely large vegetables? I mean, just look at what happened at the Texas State Fair this past Saturday; surely, watching #1 Texas lose to unranked Oklahoma in the Red River Rivalry is more upsetting than seeing justice be done. Would Texans rather watch Arch Manning launch inaccurate passes that end up being intercepted or watch gunslingers with some actual accuracy hit their intended target? Hell, you could make it a win-win by having Oklahoma’s death row prisoners be executed in Texas and have Texan murderers killed by Oklahoma! Then everyone comes out happy. Well, almost everyone.
As I’m sure you can see, there really is no reasonable case not to wholly embrace what we’re doing here – ending a life at the hands of the State in retribution for a heinous crime – and go all-in on capital punishment. Swap the lethal injections for firing squads and electric chairs. Trade the secrecy for spectacle. Exchange euphemism for frankness. Stop trying to pretend that this isn’t called the “death penalty.” Lean in. Don’t just Make Capital Punishment Great Again, make it fun!
And if that makes you uncomfortable, maybe we shouldn’t have the State kill inmates.