Trump Presidencies See Return of Federal Executions

A federal execution scheduled for December 3 by the Trump administration has caused controversy due to the announcement that the event would be livestreamed. On Thursday, the White House canceled plans for the live coverage of the firing squad execution of Nidal Hasan, who killed 13 people in a mass shooting at the Hort Hood army post in Texas in 2009. Still, the initial announcement caused shock among many Americans as well as people around the world and brought the issue of still rare federal executions back into the spotlight.

Data collected by the Death Penalty Information Center shows that federal executions were carried out only infrequently throughout the 20^th century and became even fewer and further between after the reinstatement of the federal death penalty in 1988. This changed when the first Trump administration at the end of its term ordered the execution of 13 federal inmates in the span of just six months between July 2020 and January 2021. Hasan’s is the first federal execution scheduled in Trump’s second term and would also the first of military execution in more than 60 years due to his status as an army major. After commutations by President Joe Biden, there are only three people left on federal death row including Boston marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, even though some are fighting their commutations in order to continue proving their declared innocence. Four are on military death row, including Hasan.

While public executions have been a thing of the past for a long time in the United States, prison personnel, family members of both the victim and the perpetrator, spiritual and legal council as well as selected media representatives can usually attend them. Several states require official citizen witnesses to watch executions as a stand-in for the general public, although changes to these laws are ongoing amid pushback against executions becoming too closed off to the public.

NPR reports that President Donald Trump changed his mind about the livestream by being convinced that it would go against American values and additionally could feed Islamist propaganda due to Nidal Hasan’s status as an army major turned violent Islamist.