72 Former Officers Argue That Livestreaming an Execution Would Stain the Military's Honor

Seventy-two former officers signed a letter arguing against putting Nidal Hasan's execution on a livestream, the BBC reports. Their words: the broadcast “will taint the honor of the military that employs it, and a nation that allows it.” The phrasing is the story. The signatories object to the cameras rather than the sentence, which makes this a narrower and, for the Pentagon, more awkward argument than a general objection to capital punishment. It says the injury from an execution watched live lands on the institution and the country — on the people who carry it out and the public that tunes in — not only on the man being put to death. Institutions usually answer that kind of claim with procedure. Here the claim is about reputation, and reputation is harder to litigate.