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I used to find this position compelling: executions should be public and not medicalized. If we are empowering the state to take the lives of prisoners then we should be confronted with the bloody consequences of granting it such power.
I no longer find that compelling. It's not a matter of taste, it's that I don't believe that the people would actually respond with any kind of sober solemnity about the state taking a life. Throughout history public executions haven't been solemn, they've been spectacle.
Probably the right path is to make them public in the same way that court records are public. They're kind of hard to get if you don't know what you're looking for, but if you care enough to make sure the state is performing its duties properly, then you can view all of the executions. Political leaders ought not celebrate or shy away from the executions, but treat them as justice served.
Ececuting a murderer should be an exciting day for the people. Properly, there shouldn't be that many murderers in their community. This is complicated in that we now live in a multi billion person world with many multi million person cities, but the base truth is the same: If someone kills a person or persons in good standing in your community, that evil persons execution is going to be a day of celebration. The defense and appeals bar has ruined this by delaying execution for decades at this point, and a nationally seen execution is historically unheard of, but... arent the victims of Islamic terror all of America? Shouldn't we all have the reminder that Sharia is evil and the enemy of America just as a small town of 900 people in Massachusetts in 1830 would have been reminded that killing the butcher is evil? Shouldn't we be able to rejoice in evil being exterminated just as they did when a rapist in 1910 was executed?
Or must we go along with the people who's role in the world is fighting biology and reality and deny that we think killing bad people is good and pretend to cry when bad people go to prison? Should we keep letting dogs die so coyotes can live?
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I agree completely with all of this, except of course there is a fly in the ointment: With computers and the internet, the concept of public records that are "kind of hard to get" is going the way of the dodo-bird. Even if you put the execution video in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying "beware of the leopard," some journalist (professional or amateur) is going to obtain it and post it online.
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