Politicians are calling for the restoration of executions in live broadcast. In a situation where some condemned prisoners have been waiting for death for 30 years or more
The first military execution in more than 65 years that is to be public is scheduled to take place in the United States. All of this is happening at a time when the botched execution of American murderer Christa Pike has revived debates about the death penalty.
The execution by shooting of former army psychiatrist Nidal Hasan, who in 2009 killed 13 people and injured 32 others at a base in Texas, is to be broadcast live. The army also announced that Hasan will be shot by a firing squad on December 3rd at Fort Hood base, where he himself committed his act 17 years ago.
Although the killer can request a stay of execution, given his behavior in court, he may not even want to. When he rejected his lawyers and defended himself, he declared before the jury that he was the shooter. For the following three weeks he said almost nothing, which convinced his court-appointed substitute defense attorneys that his only goal was to achieve the death penalty.
Military executions are exceptional in the country. If the firing squad does indeed shoot Hasan, it will be the first military execution since 1961. At that time, the execution was carried out by hanging. The last known execution by firing squad in the United States was carried out in 1945.
"God is Great"
Major and army psychiatrist Hasan, who is a Muslim born in the United States, entered a medical facility at Fort Hood on November 5, 2009, where soldiers were standing in lines for vaccinations and medical examinations before being deployed abroad. Shouting "God is great" in Arabic, he opened fire with a laser-sighted pistol, shooting even at the backs of fleeing soldiers. In court, he declared that his act was retaliation for the deployment of American soldiers in Afghanistan and that he wanted to prevent others from going to a country where, according to him, they would kill his fellow believers. Hasan remained paralyzed in the lower half of his body after being shot in 2009 and is confined to a wheelchair.
According to Americanist Tomáš Klvaňa, the decision about the public execution is politically motivated.
"It's purely an initiative of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and I think that Donald Trump went along with it because he knows it will stir up discussions that will divert attention from topics such as the weak economy or the failure in Iran,"
this expert told Czech Radio.
The Execution Failed
The aforementioned announcement came perhaps somewhat paradoxically at a time when the failed execution of Christa Pike occurred. The woman survived despite the administration of both the first and second doses of pentobarbital.
After being transported to the hospital, she was connected to a ventilator for several days and gradually began to recover. After being discharged from the hospital, she was transported back to the women's prison in Nashville, where she had been held before the attempted execution.
Now 50-year-old Pike was sentenced to death thirty years ago for a murder she committed as an 18-year-old in 1995 with her 17-year-old boyfriend. They lured their 19-year-old classmate Colleen Slemmer into the woods, where they tortured her and before killing her, carved a pentagram into her chest. Pike's then-boyfriend received a life sentence due to being a minor.
Pike's legal team wants her sentence to now be changed to life imprisonment without the possibility of early release.
Return to the proven electric chair?
A lengthy system of reviews and appeals has so far prevented the execution from taking place. Her lawyers filed numerous appeals concerning disputed points from the original trial, her age at the time of committing the act, and the question of whether the state had previously properly assessed her serious childhood trauma and abuse, as BBC reported.
"In cases where the death penalty is at stake, it is common for the defense to raise last-minute objections, even after decades of court proceedings in many courts. We are asking the US Supreme Court to overturn the stay of execution,"
the BBC quoted Tennessee's Attorney General in this context.
Republican gubernatorial candidate Marsha Blackburn stated regarding this case that executions should resume using the electric chair. In doing so, she essentially aligned herself with her party colleagues Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth, who have already expressed support for the execution of Nidal Hasan.
They are joined, for example, by the conservatively-oriented Czech publicist Roman Joch.
"All great thinkers of Christianity, philosophers and saints alike, accepted the death penalty. Saint Paul, Saint Augustine, Saint Thomas, great non-Catholic thinkers like Emmanuel Kant, statesmen like Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, who himself signed several death sentences, and also Charles de Gaulle,"
as Joch stated for Czech Radio.
However, priest Marek Orko Vách opposes the death penalty.
"The first thing that comes to mind is the possibility of a miscarriage of justice. If a serious criminal is running around free somewhere, not yet in prison, that is a mistake that can be corrected. On the other hand, if we execute an innocent person, that is irreversible. Secondly, the possibility of conversion is between that person and God. We should not take away their time. As long as they are alive and if we are capable of ensuring life imprisonment, they have a longer opportunity to do something with themselves. But I will not be the one to shorten their life."
he said on the radio.
There are quite a few reasons both for and against the death penalty. It always depends primarily on current social moods and the attitude of politicians who conform to them. The current United States, under the leadership of Republican politicians, is in favor of executions once again becoming a common part of life there.
Sources: original article, ČTK, BBC, Czech Radio
