As Public Executions Return to the National Spotlight, Historians Warn of a Haunting Legacy

Sonya Lea, author of a recent book examining the 1936 public execution of Rainy Bethea in Owensboro, Kentucky, expressed profound distress upon learning that a proposed firing squad execution might be livestreamed. “What they called it in 1936 was a carnival of sadism,” she said. “That we now have the technology that can make it go wider than the 20,000 people who showed up … to witness in Owensboro, Kentucky, it just makes it even more horrific.”

Lea’s grandparents were teenage newlyweds among that 1936 crowd. She only discovered the significance of their presence years later, after her grandmother’s death in 2002, when she found an account her grandmother had written describing how close they were to the execution site—so near they could hear Bethea’s neck snap.

Years of subsequent research by Lea revealed that many Kentuckians remained haunted by that public spectacle. “I really thought, with all my heart, that we had put this in the rearview mirror, this level of grotesquery that only a few countries in the world engage in—Iran, North Korea, Afghanistan,” she said. “Are we now, as the United States of America, considering ourselves to be part of that kind of government? It’s just horrific.”

The current debate over public executions reflects broader political polarization in the U.S., suggesting a possible shift in public sentiment, according to Kurt Gray, a social psychology professor at Ohio State University. “Some Americans might thirst for blood, but I think a lot of Americans don’t,” he said. “And, if anything, I think a lot of other Americans are just kind of maybe desensitized. So it’s not like they’re cheering a public execution; they’re just like, ‘Oh, yeah, I guess that’s where we’re at now.’”

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