Shot seven times at Fort Hood, he forgives and will still watch

Alonzo Lunsford was shot seven times at Fort Hood on November 5, 2009. One memory from that day still bothers him. A woman told the gunman she was pregnant, and after the shot her last words were "my baby, my baby." The Army plans to execute that gunman, Nidal Hasan, by firing squad on the same base. It is set for December 3 at 1 p.m., an hour Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth chose because it "is when he did it." Lunsford will be there. "I want him to look at me in my eyes," he told the BBC, so Hasan will know: "Dude you failed, I'm still here."

On October 8, Hegseth said the execution will also be livestreamed, "because people need to understand that there's serious consequences." No legal US execution has ever been broadcast live. Lunsford calls the firing squad "befitting," but he doesn't want the stream. Survivors and families should be able to look, he says, but it isn't for "entertainment purposes." He is also a Christian who has forgiven Hasan, "because I cannot heal if I don't forgive him."

Deuteronomy would side with Hegseth on one point. Moses' law kept a death sentence in plain sight. It took at least two witnesses (verse 6), and the people who had seen the crime had to act first, with their own hands. Then the whole community took part and shared the blame. Fordham law professor Deborah Denno makes a modern version of the argument: if Americans want the death penalty, "we are going to show you how it's conducted." That stings anyone who supports executions and would rather never see one.

A livestream keeps the crowd and takes away the hands.

Everyone at a Torah execution had a part in it and answered for it. A stream asks only for attention, and Reason's Liz Wolfe asks whether watching "deadens us." The Bible's concern is what happens in the heart of the one who watches, and it has a proverb for anyone with a real enemy:

Proverbs 24:17Don't rejoice when your enemy falls. Don't let your heart be glad when he is overthrown;

It speaks first to the person who was wronged, the one with the most right to be glad. If even he is told not to gloat, a crowd with no wound has less claim still, and a stream makes that gladness cheap and easy. Lunsford's last words to Hasan won't be gentle. He has forgiven him and still means to look him in the eye. That is the Torah's witness: someone who was there and has to carry what he saw. The rest of us could get the same picture with none of the weight, and a death watched with nothing at stake is just a show.