US public opinion on the death penalty is being tested by plans for a firing-squad execution and a proposal to livestream it, as polling suggests support for capital punishment is broad but increasingly qualified.
President Trump initially backed the idea of broadcasting the execution before withdrawing his support. The case involves Nidal Malik Hasan, a former Army psychiatrist who killed 13 people and wounded 32 others at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009.
Hasan’s execution is scheduled for December, although appeals could delay it. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth announced earlier this month that it would be carried out publicly, despite the United States not having held a high-profile public execution for 90 years.
An October poll found that 52 per cent of Americans supported Hasan’s execution, but 80 per cent said it should not be livestreamed.
Support for the death penalty remains divided
The debate has intensified after two botched lethal injections in Tennessee this year. The state struggled to find veins to administer the drugs intended to kill Christa Pike and Tony Carruthers.
After Ms Pike’s failed execution, Tennessee governor Bill Lee said residents were disappointed but maintained that capital punishment remained appropriate for the worst crimes.
“The people of Tennessee have determined that the death penalty is an appropriate penalty for the most heinous crimes in this state,” he said. “The people of Tennessee make that decision and my job is to make sure that those sentences are carried out.”
About two-thirds of Americans supported the death penalty for people convicted of murder in a Pew Research Center poll conducted this summer. But separate Gallup polling in 2025 put support at 52 per cent, its lowest level in more than 50 years.
Daniel LaChance, a history professor at Emory University, said the headline figures concealed substantial differences in how questions were put to voters. When respondents were offered life without parole as an alternative, 60 per cent preferred it to execution. Support fell further when financial help for victims’ families was included as an option.
The Pew survey also found that 59 per cent did not believe the death penalty deterred serious crime, compared with 39 per cent who thought it did. People who support capital punishment are more likely to be Christian, white and Republican voters, according to research by the non-partisan Public Religion Research Institute.
Wrongful convictions fuel concern
The Death Penalty Information Center has recorded 203 people who were exonerated after being wrongly convicted and sentenced to death since 1972.
Robin Maher, the organisation’s executive director, said the known cases might represent only part of the problem.
“Those are just the ones we know about,” she said. “We don’t know how many innocent people were executed before we learned about their claims.”
Six states carried out the 31 executions recorded in 2026, even though 27 states still legally permit capital punishment. Florida accounted for more than half of them, while Texas has carried out the most executions since the 1970s.
Ms Maher said the contrast between the number of states allowing the death penalty and the declining number of death sentences suggested growing public disenchantment with its use.
“More often than not, they are finding it is not the right answer to violent crime,” she said. “Executions on the other hand, are the result of what a handful of elected officials in just a few states are doing.”
Executions move out of public view
Public executions once attracted crowds of up to 10,000 people in some parts of the United States, according to Professor LaChance. He said the increasing use of anaesthesia helped turn public displays of pain into something many people regarded as unacceptable.
“Pain, especially in public spaces, starts to seem scandalous,” he said. “It’s preventable now. It starts to seem barbaric.”
Professor LaChance said public reaction could also turn those executed into symbolic figures. In immigrant communities, he said, people sometimes claimed the bodies and held small parades celebrating the person who had been put to death.
A US official, speaking anonymously, said Mr Trump had been persuaded to abandon the livestream because it was considered inconsistent with American values. The official also said there were fears footage could appear on jihadist websites, potentially helping recruitment and increasing risks to US forces in the Middle East.
Michigan has had the longest-running abolition of the death penalty in the country, having banned it in 1847. The debate over Hasan’s planned execution has nevertheless placed the punishment, and the question of whether it should be seen by the public, back at the centre of national attention.
