Making death a public spectacle is part of the United States’ history of enforcing white racial power. The proposed livestream of an execution brings that history into the present, while Tennessee’s failed execution exposes the violence beneath the language of lawful punishment. Lynching and judicial executions sustained racial inequality, and constitutional law has failed to eliminate racism from capital punishment. Racial justice requires confronting that history, rejecting the spectacle, and ending the government’s power to kill.

On September 30, 2026, Tennessee tried to kill Christa Pike. She survived two doses of pentobarbital, the drug intended to end her life. She was hospitalized unconscious and placed on a ventilator. By October 10, her attorneys reported that she had been discharged and returned to prison, where she continued to receive medical care. The state tried to kill her. Medical workers then had to save her life. That sequence exposes the violence concealed by the language of lawful execution.

Days later, the Pentagon announced plans to livestream the firing squad execution of Nidal Malik Hasan, convicted of killing 13 people at Fort Hood in 2009. His execution was scheduled for December 3. As of October 10, the broadcast remained uncertain: President Donald Trump said he had not decided whether to allow it.

These events raise different questions about the same power. Pike’s failed execution exposes the physical reality beneath the language of lawful punishment. The proposed livestream asks the public to watch the government deliberately end a human life.

In the United States, public killing has a racial history. Any government that proposes to broadcast an execution must answer for what it is reviving.