The Trump administration’s push toward a public firing squad execution has raised troubling questions about government-sanctioned violence, the treatment of people with serious mental illness and whether the spectacle of an execution could undermine the very principles of justice the government claims to uphold.
Appearing on the Vanguard’s Everyday Injustice podcast, Marc Bookman, executive director of the Atlantic Center for Capital Representation, warned that the proposed public execution reflects a dangerous shift from the increasingly secretive administration of capital punishment toward an open display of government power.
“This is gloating. This is unseemly in a profound way,” Bookman said. “When you look at what Hegseth is saying and what Trump is saying, they’re punching down, is what they’re doing.”
The discussion comes amid renewed national scrutiny of execution methods following Tennessee’s failed attempt to execute Christa Pike, whose case has raised questions about lethal injection, constitutional protections against cruel and unusual punishment and the treatment of people sentenced to death for crimes committed at a young age.
Bookman argued that the controversy surrounding Pike’s attempted execution has obscured another fundamental issue: why someone who was 18 at the time of her offense, with a history of severe childhood trauma, was sentenced to death in the first place.
“I fear that almost a bigger story is missed because I think the press has missed the idea that we put an 18-year-old girl with a horribly traumatic background on death row in the first place,” Bookman said.
He argued that public discussion often presents execution as the only meaningful punishment for serious crimes, ignoring that life imprisonment represents an extraordinarily severe alternative.
Bookman also criticized the secrecy surrounding lethal injection procedures, including restrictions on information about execution drugs, medical practices and the process itself.
“What possible rational motive is there to keep this a secret?” he asked. “It’s a public policy that we presumably have voted on.”
He praised Pike’s attorneys for obtaining emergency judicial intervention during the attempted execution, while arguing that the problems they had warned about beforehand were foreseeable.
“This was a terrible botched execution, but it was hardly the first botched execution,” Bookman said. “And based on the reaction, it won’t be the last botched execution.”
The conversation then turned to the proposed public execution by firing squad of a military defendant convicted of a mass killing.
Bookman expressed concern that the defendant had not exhausted all available appeals and questioned the role of serious mental illness in the case.
He also pointed to the defendant’s decision to represent himself during portions of the proceedings, raising additional concerns about the fairness of the capital process.
While acknowledging the horrific nature of the underlying crime, Bookman argued that the severity of the offense does not resolve whether the government should carry out an execution, much less make it a public event.
He said there is a legitimate argument for transparency in capital punishment, because the public should understand how government policy is implemented. But he warned that transparency becomes something very different when political leaders treat an execution as a demonstration of power.
“We have the power and we’re going to show off,” Bookman said, describing what he viewed as the administration’s approach.
Bookman said even people who support capital punishment should recognize the dangers of transforming an execution into a spectacle.
“We can’t have it as a secret. We have to know what’s going on, but we can’t gloat about it,” he said. “We can’t try to encourage violence in our world by showing off.”
The United States has a long history of public executions, including events that attracted enormous crowds and sometimes took on the character of public entertainment.
Bookman recalled the 1936 execution of Rainey Bethea in Kentucky, which drew thousands of spectators and became notorious for the atmosphere surrounding the hanging.
He compared historical public executions to lynchings, arguing that both were used to communicate power and intimidate communities.
The return of a public execution, he suggested, raises questions about whether American society has learned from that history.
The discussion also examined the potential consequences of broadcasting or widely distributing images of an execution.
Bookman warned that extensive publicity surrounding the execution of a mass killer could encourage individuals seeking notoriety.
He compared the concern to decisions by news organizations to limit publicity for perpetrators of mass shootings, recognizing that attention itself can become a motivating factor.
At the same time, he acknowledged that witnessing the reality of an execution might cause some Americans to reconsider their support for capital punishment.
“I honestly don’t know how this is going to be handled,” Bookman said. “And I think you’re making a good point that this may repel some people, but we’ve had so many repellent things when it comes to the death penalty, and it hasn’t moved the needle far enough yet to really make a difference.”
The conversation also addressed the role of victims and surviving family members in determining punishment.
Bookman rejected the assumption that all families of murder victims support executions, arguing that reactions to violent crime vary considerably.
He said victims and their families have every right to their feelings, including anger and a desire for the harshest punishment, but that those feelings cannot become the sole basis for sentencing.
“Victims are entitled to feel any way they want and desire anything that they want,” Bookman said. “Our laws right now allow the prosecution to consider what the victim wants, but the victims cannot decide.”
He pointed to changes in Supreme Court precedent governing victim impact evidence and to historical cases in which judges imposed death sentences despite juries recommending life imprisonment.
Bookman cited the case of Buford White in Florida, where a judge overrode a unanimous jury recommendation for life imprisonment and imposed a death sentence.
For Bookman, such cases illustrate the arbitrariness that has persisted throughout the modern death penalty system.
The discussion also turned to former President Joe Biden’s decision to commute 37 of 40 federal civilian death sentences before leaving office, while allowing three death sentences to remain.
Bookman acknowledged that the exceptions reflected a political and legal calculation about particularly notorious crimes, but argued that efforts to determine which defendants deserve execution have repeatedly failed to produce a consistent and principled system.
“We’ve struggled and failed to draw a reasonable line when it comes to the death penalty for 50 years,” he said.
That question has renewed significance in California, where Gov. Gavin Newsom is reportedly considering commuting the state’s remaining death sentences.
The possibility raises questions about whether Newsom would issue blanket commutations or make individual determinations, potentially reproducing the same inconsistencies that have shaped capital punishment elsewhere.
Bookman argued that the more fundamental question is not which individuals deserve to die, but whether the government should possess the power to execute people at all.
“And doesn’t it come down again to what we were talking about maybe 20 minutes ago, which is not who deserves to die, but do we deserve to kill?” he asked.
“We shouldn’t be in this business. We’ve got sufficient punishment at our disposal to protect the community and not engage in this kind of measuring stick of who deserves what.”
Bookman also pointed to countries that continue to conduct public executions, including Iran and Afghanistan, arguing that the United States should consider what it means to revive a practice associated with governments widely criticized for human rights abuses.
The discussion concluded with Bookman describing his forthcoming novel, Albert’s Time, which examines capital punishment through the experiences of people confronting vengeance, forgiveness and the consequences of violence.
Unlike conventional legal thrillers, Bookman said the novel focuses on the human consequences of the death penalty rather than dramatic courtroom revelations.
“It’s a realistic novel about the death penalty and its effect on everybody,” he said. “And again, that choice of vengeance and forgiveness.”
Bookman previously authored A Descending Spiral: Exposing the Death Panalty in 12 Essays, published in 2021.
The Atlantic Center for Capital Representation, based in Philadelphia, provides free legal resources and assistance in death penalty cases and relies on charitable contributions to support its work.
More information about the organization is available at https://atlanticcenter.org.
As the administration moves toward a public execution and states continue to confront the consequences of failed lethal injections, Bookman argued that the debate must move beyond the mechanics of killing.
The larger question, he maintained, is whether a justice system that already has the power to imprison people for life can justify taking their lives — and what happens to society when that power becomes a public spectacle.
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