The close timing of two recent events has reignited a long-simmering debate over capital punishment: Tennessee's botched lethal-injection execution of Christa Pike and the announcement that former Army Maj. Nidal Hasan will be executed by firing squad. Hasan was convicted and sentenced to death in 2013 for killing 13 people — 12 of them soldiers — and wounding 32 others in a November 2009 shooting at Fort Hood, Texas.
Roughly two-thirds of Americans still support capital punishment under certain circumstances, although that support has slowly declined in recent decades. Support has held steadier in more conservative parts of the country than in places like the West Coast and the Northeast. While 27 states retain the death penalty, fewer than half of them have executed anyone in the last five years.
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth's announcement that Hasan would be executed by firing squad — and that the execution would be livestreamed — sparked considerable discussion. President Donald Trump has since overruled Hegseth on the livestream. It was the livestream order that drew the most attention and debate. Please allow me to be crystal clear: I support the death penalty.
In Romans 13, the Bible tells us that the divinely appointed civil magistrate: "beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil." (Romans 13:4) The word used for "sword" was the word for the sword the Romans used to execute Roman citizens.
Clearly, God granted the civil magistrate the continuing right, in punishing evildoers, to employ capital punishment at home and in military operations against aggressors. The suggestion of livestreaming an execution set off a lively debate among death penalty advocates. I support the death penalty when it is applied equitably to someone whom a jury