Letter To The Editor: A So-Called Lesson We Don’t Need

When I was still teaching high school English, we read The Kite Runner. Toward the end of the book, there was a public execution in a soccer stadium, carried out by the Taliban. It sparked discussions about the brutality of making a spectacle out of an execution. In the book, the couple is accused of adultery and is stoned to death. Obviously, in our culture we don’t stone people to death, and we don’t enforce the death penalty for things other than murder.

For years, many in favor of the death penalty still held it in solemnity, arguing that a life is sacred and the state must uphold that boundary. As a result, the boundary-keeping, or the execution, was seen as a darker part of the duty of the state. As such, it was held as an affair where there were witnesses, but no fanfare. In the eyes of the most sane people I know who uphold the death penalty, it is a serious, even sad action, necessarily done because of the serious nature of the crime. It’s true that in the past people have celebrated executions, but they were not part of the action of the state.

Here’s where the issue of live streaming an execution crosses over into the area where both sides of the capital punishment debate can and really should agree. When the state puts it out as a streaming event, it is not a lesson but a form of entertainment. And when the taking of a life is entertainment provided by the state, we will cross over into an institutional level of cruelty. I am not excusing those who murder, and mass murder is simply more obvious. But an execution online, via the government, assumes there is some sort of mass lesson that needs to be learned.

Putting aside those on the internet who are making a living off of rage baiting or trying to get more listeners to their podcast, the average American does not see murder as a vague legal or moral issue. The average American is deeply disturbed by mass shootings, and probably weary of hearing about them as often as we do. The average American also understands the mystery that surrounds truly evil acts that our psychological explanations can’t pin down. None of that leads anyone to genuinely believe that televising an execution will somehow deter mass shootings.

Are those who are mentally ill and delusional enough to think they are doing something good by shooting tons of people going to be deterred by a stream of someone they may even consider a martyr being shown for the world to see?

The Taliban executed people publicly because they truly believed in what they were doing. They also believed holding people in fear was a righteous act necessary for a just society. If we move forward to public executions, won’t we be acting like the Taliban? Will the difference be beards and uniforms?

John Cabascango

John Cabascango is the author of Throwing Moses Under the Bus: A High School English Teacher Looks at the Ten Commandments, and Off the Rails: Evangelicals, Power and Politics