US President Donald Trump backtracked on his approval for livestreaming ex-US Army Major Nidal Hasan’s execution by firing squad on Thursday (October 15). Just days ago, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth proposed livestreaming the execution for public viewing, approved by the Pentagon for December 3.In a Truth Social post, Trump called Hasan “a very bad and evil man”. In 2009, Hasan shot and killed 13 people at the Fort Hood US Army post in Texas, following which a military tribunal sentenced him to death.“I think streaming the execution for all to see might have been a strong deterrent for the World to witness how America deals with Terrorists and SCUM like Hasan but, many very good and well meaning people would rather not watch him die… He will die, as scheduled, by firing squad, but this event will not be streamed,” Trump wrote.What would have been the country’s first public execution in exactly 90 years — and the first military execution of any kind since 1961 in the US — had invited strong reactions from across the political spectrum.In much of history, however, public executions were commonly wielded as instruments of state power.Punishment as a display of authorityAround AD 33, Pontius Pilate of Judea authorised the execution of a man earlier found to have no charge against him. The convicted was flogged and publicly crucified, as was the norm, in what is one of history’s most widely recognised public executions — the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.Capital punishment has long been codified, including in ancient Babylon and Athens, where death was the punishment for all crimes in the 7th century BCE. Executions in the Roman Empire were known for their flamboyant approach, organised as spectacles that incited great delight among their audiences.Story continues below this adAlso Read | Christa Pike execution fails after 2 attempts: How do lethal injections go wrong?Many pre-modern polities also viewed a serious crime as much an affront to the supreme ruling authority as it was a violation of the social contract. As such, any punishment was expected to carry a demonstrative purpose, acting as a public deterrent.This strategy was not without criticism. Roman philosopher Seneca the Younger argued in the ‘Moral Letters to Lucillius’ that being a part of such events had adverse effects on the individual psyche. In the 20th century, French philosopher Michel Foucault argued that the condemned individual’s body became the site on which the State exercised its influence, with measurably visible violence projecting a larger message.Such executions could also reinforce a moral and religious worldview. Ceremonies, public proclamations and the condemned person’s final words helped frame death as the restoration of an established moral order. The execution was represented as justice being carried out, rather than arbitrary violence.This model was also based on maintaining a certain dynamic between the crowd and the State, where a condemned person garnering sympathy from the crowd could result in an active pushback against the State’s theatre of power.Story continues below this adShift over 18th and 19th centuriesThrough the last millennium, save for a brief period during William the Conqueror’s reign (1066-1087), public executions were the norm across Europe.Around 1571, gallows were erected in London for tens of thousands of paying spectators to witness hangings from open galleries, or in rented upper-story rooms of nearby houses and pubs.In Paris, death took the form of the guillotine — then championed as a humane form of execution. Its zenith was marked by the executions of King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette in 1793, following popular revolt in the form of the French Revolution. Eyewitness accounts described a crowd of 40,000 armed men lining the streets, culminating in the executioner holding the severed head aloft while the crowd tore the king’s coat to pieces as souvenirs.In colonial settings, particularly British India, public executions were instruments of subjugating subjects of a foreign land. After the mutiny of the Bengal Army, part of the Revolt of 1857, British forces hung 144 Indian rebels from a sacred Banyan tree. By utilising flora sacred to the natives, the State deliberately sought to desecrate indigenous cultural spaces.Story continues below this adAlso Read | Hanging, lethal injection, beheading: How countries carry out executionsThe 19th century brought about the legacy of the Enlightenment — a movement of philosophy, science and art that began two centuries prior in Europe, stressing rationalism over blind faith. A growing middle class internalised these ideals of humanism and viewed the theatricality of punishment as a spectacle that threatened civic order. This added to a waning appetite for public executions. Foucault observed that the State shifted its approach to the “discipline of the penitentiary’ around this period.In the UK, the Tyburn tree of London that housed wooden gallows was dismantled in 1783, and executions transitioned from public festivals to administrative procedures. By 1868, the British Parliament had formally abolished public executions. In the US, Pennsylvania became the first state to move executions behind closed doors starting in 1834.The 1936 hanging of Rainey Bethea, a Black man who allegedly confessed to the rape of a White woman, drew a rowdy crowd of 20,000 and is considered the last legal public execution in the US.What US courts have ruled on viewing public executionsIn the US, the First Amendment guarantees the freedom of the press and the right to access government proceedings. The Supreme Court has recognised that trials are open to the public.Story continues below this adThe limits of these guarantees were determined in 1977, when a TV reporter sought permission to film the first execution in Texas since the reinstatement of the death penalty the previous year. The court ultimately reasoned that because the general public of Texas was statutorily barred from attending or filming executions, the press had no constitutional right to do so.Similarly, in 2001, a US District Court in Indiana ruled that filming an execution conveys nothing of substantive fact that cannot be conveyed through written and verbal journalistic accounts.US govt backtracks amid criticismWithin the US, too, the earlier announcement to livestream Hasan’s execution invited mixed reactions. Vice President JD Vance said he “would not be watching it”, while many in the Republican Party voiced reservations about the idea. Democratic senator Jeanne Shaheen called for Hegseth’s removal from office.Also Read | Before the 2027 state elections, we must ask: Can our democracy still deliver dignity?Hegseth had argued that people “needed to understand that there’s serious consequences to these kinds of things”, referring to Hasan’s actions. The announcement came as the American State, under the Trump Administration, has sought to project a more aggressive and muscular image — particularly involving the military. Hegseth’s own title reflects this: his Department was renamed from “Department of Defense” to “Department of War” in September 2025.Story continues below this adThe reversal could have been driven by the recognition of the global shift away from such practices, and questions about whether they would yield the same support among the masses in the modern era. Notably, it comes as the US government’s use of the death penalty is already under scrutiny following the botched execution of Christa Pike earlier this month, as the ethics of awarding the death penalty itself have come into question