‘I’m not going to be watching it’: JD Vance Backs Firing Squad Execution But Won’t Watch Livestream — Catholic Bishops Call It ‘Barbaric’

Vice President Vance says he supports the execution by firing squad of the Fort Hood shooter but that he won’t watch the livestream of the execution.Former US Army major and admitted jihadist Nidal Malik Hasan will die by firing squad on December 3 in an execution the Defense Department will broadcast via livestream.“If it’s ultimately livestreamed, I am not going to be watching it,” Mr. Vance said Friday.President Trump on October 2 ordered the death sentence carried out, which would be the US military’s first execution in over 60 years. At a White House event Friday, the President doubled down on the firing squad but did not mention the livestream.This comes amid a chorus of bipartisan condemnation for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s decision to livestream the execution – which now includes the Catholic church.The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops spoke out against the move in a statement Friday, sharply condemning the planned livestream “with shock and great sorrow.”“The public execution even of one of us who has done grave harm will only further undermine the moral fabric of our nation and be a blight on the conscience of its people,” said Archbishop Paul S. Coakley of Oklahoma City, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.Mr. Hasan, a former US Army major, will be executed by firing squad at Fort Hood, Texas on December 3. It was on that base that Mr. Hasan, then an Army psychiatrist, committed a terrorist attack on Nov. 5, 2009 that killed 13 people.“Our God is the God of love,” Mr. Coakley said. “In no way can Hassan’s actions be condoned but this decision is a barbaric promotion of a culture of death and must be reconsidered.”The US Senate called the Fort Hood shooting “the worst terrorist attack on US soil since September 11, 2001.”Shouting “Allahu Akbar” – “God is great” in Arabic – Mr. Hasan opened fire on unarmed soldiers. He killed 13 people and wounded more than 30 before Army police officers shot him multiple times. Mr. Hasan is paralyzed from the waist down and uses a wheelchair due to those injuries.He represented himself at the court martial, admitted he was the attacker, and admitted he had “switched sides” to the Islamist “jihad.” He was convicted and sentenced to death in August 2013.Experts expressed concern that a public, livestreamed execution would be playing directly in the hands of Mr. Hasan and terrorist sympathizers across the globe.“Anyone who knows anything about militant jihad grasps that jihadi extremists crave “martyrdom” in the public eye and maximum publicity,” Dr. Elizabeth Kendall, the President of Girton College at Cambridge University who is an Arabist and Middle East specialist, wrote on social media. “Hegseth’s decision to livestream Nidal Hasan’s execution plays right into their hands.”No one in the US has been executed publicly since the 1930s.Ten men were executed by the U.S. military by firing squad during World War II. Among them was Private Edward Slovick, the only man in World War II executed for desertion and the first since the Civil War. His story was made into a television movie in 1974 starring Martin Sheen that has been praised as “quietly outraged” and one of the best television films ever made.The last execution by the US military was in 1961, when Army Private John Bennett was hanged in Kansas for the rape and attempted murder of an 11-year-old girl, the Associated Press reported.“I pray for the intercession of Our Lady of Good Counsel that we as a nation may always choose life even in the most trying times and circumstances,” Mr. Coakley said.In the 19th Century, popes governed several kingdoms in central Italy called the papal states, which carried out public executions.Giovanni Battista Bugatti, “Mastro Titta” – the executioner – was the chief executioner for the papal states from 1796 to 1864. He carried out over 500 executions during that time through beatings, hangings and decapitations by guillotine.

‘I’m not going to be watching it’: JD Vance Backs Firing Squad Execution But Won’t Watch Livestream — Catholic Bishops Call It ‘Barbaric’

‘I’m not going to be watching it’: JD Vance Backs Firing Squad Execution But Won’t Watch Livestream — Catholic Bishops Call It ‘Barbaric’

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