The United States Can’t Televise an Execution Because It Will Make Condemned Men Feel Bad about the Death Penalty: Issues Raised by the Suit to Make McVeigh’s Execution Public

Introduction ........................................................................................................ 171 Televised Execution Lawsuits and Democratic Values ................................. 173 McVeigh and Government Teaching by Example ......................................... 177 Photographer-Free Executions and Democratic Values ............................... 183 References ............................................................................................................ 185 Cases Cited .......................................................................................................... 186

Throughout much of European history, executions were not just public, but they were conducted in public squares with pageantry and spectacle. At times, tens of thousands of people would attend an execution, and the atmosphere was so festive that one of the terms for celebration-gala-comes from the word gallows (Johnson 1998). The tradition of public executions was brought to the Unted States and persisted into the 20th century. Extra-legal executions (lynchings) attracted crowds and families even as states curtailed legal executions conducted with portable electric chairs set up so the local community could watch offenders be punished (Johnson, 1998).