On Public Executions

 

 

I am speaking only about my personal moral intuition. If a U.S. state or if the federal government is going to execute a person, at the conclusion of the judicial process, as a punishment for a crime, I believe the execution should be held in public. A town square. The largest city park. The place of the crime if the crime happened on public property.

A society that supports the death penalty should not hide from it when it is to be imposed. Moreover, the key figures involved in imposing the death penalty—e.g., the trial court judge and chief prosecutor—should be in attendance. If the judge and prosecutor from the trial are no longer in office at the time of the execution, then their successors should be in attendance.

Subject to pragmatic constraints, justice, including punishment, is traditionally in public and open to the public. Court rooms, for example, are open to the public. If executions are not part of the justice system, then ….

Seth Barrett Tillman, ‘On Public Executions,’ New Reform Club (Oct. 9, 2026, 12:57 PM), <https://reformclub.blogspot.com/2026/10/on-public-executions.html>;