For centuries, public executions served as demonstrations of state power—intended to warn potential offenders, reassure the public that justice had been done, and provide a visible conclusion to acts of violence that shook communities. Crowds gathered to watch, sometimes with solemnity, sometimes with excitement, and occasionally with open celebration. Over time, much of the world moved away from these spectacles, recognizing that there was something deeply troubling about gathering people together to witness the deliberate taking of a human life. Yet the impulse behind public executions has never entirely disappeared. In the United States, recent events have brought this tension between justice and vengeance into sharp focus.

Earlier this month, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced plans to livestream the execution by firing squad of Nidal Hasan, a former Army psychiatrist convicted of killing 13 people and wounding dozens more at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009. Scheduled for 3 December, the execution would be the first carried out by the US military since 1961. The proposal has provoked criticism from lawmakers, religious leaders, and members of the public, including people who felt that broadcasting Hasan’s death would be an affront to the dignity of those he had killed.

On 15 October, US President Donald Trump announced that the livestream would not proceed, although the execution itself remained scheduled. Trump defended capital punishment as a deterrent while acknowledging objections to making the killing publicly visible.

The reversal was an encouraging development, but the original proposal deserves our attention. It suggests that the ancient desire to display punishment has survived remarkably well into the digital age. What once drew crowds to public squares can now be offered to millions of viewers on their phones and computers. The technology has changed, but the underlying message remains recognizable: those who commit grave offenses will be made to suffer, and society will be invited to witness their punishment. That message should trouble Buddhists, not because we believe that harmful actions ought to go unanswered, but because we understand how easily anger and the desire for retribution can become normalized in our individual and collective lives.

Just a few weeks earlier, another execution in the US had drawn international attention. On 30 September, Tennessee attempted to execute Christa Pike, who had been sentenced to death for her participation in the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer. Pike, who was 18 at the time of the crime, had spent three decades in prison. After receiving two administrations of the lethal injection drug pentobarbital, she remained alive. The execution was abandoned, and Pike was eventually taken to hospital in critical condition. She has since been returned to prison, while Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee has suspended further executions for the remainder of the year pending an investigation.

As BDG reported before the scheduled execution, Pike had embraced Buddhism during her incarceration and had requested that Buddhist teacher Rev. Mikey Noechel accompany her during her final moments.* The two planned to practice loving-kindness meditation as she approached death. According to accounts of the execution attempt, Pike expressed wishes for peace and kindness toward those present, including the people witnessing the state’s attempt to end her life.

There is something deeply unsettling about this scene. On one side was the state, carrying out a sentence imposed for an act of extraordinary cruelty. On the other was a woman who has spent most of her adult life in prison, attempting to meet her expected death with the cultivation of goodwill. Neither circumstance cancels the other. The horror of Slemmer’s murder remains, as does the suffering endured by her family over the subsequent decades. Her mother, May Martinez, has spoken of her desire to see the sentence completed, and the failed execution has brought further uncertainty to a tragedy that has already consumed so much of her life. Their suffering deserves our compassion no less than that of the condemned.

At the same time, the Buddhist teachings encourage us to consider the possibility that a person may change profoundly over the course of a lifetime. A crime committed in youth can have irreversible consequences, but the individual responsible does not remain frozen in the moment of its commission. Whether Pike has truly developed remorse, wisdom, or compassion is not something that observers can determine from a few reported words or gestures. Yet Buddhist practice is founded in part on the conviction that even deeply entrenched habits of greed, hatred, and delusion can be transformed. To deny that possibility altogether would be to reject something essential to the Dharma.

Pike’s experience is not an isolated intersection of Buddhist practice and the American death penalty. In March 2025, Louisiana executed Jessie Hoffman Jr., who had become a Buddhist while incarcerated. Hoffman was put to death using nitrogen hypoxia, a method that his attorneys argued would prevent him from engaging in meditative breathing practices at the moment of death. His Buddhist spiritual adviser, Rev. Reimoku Gregory Smith, accompanied him during his final hours. Before the execution, Hoffman reportedly held a copy of Thich Nhat Hanh’s The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching and requested a reading about the four immeasurables: loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity.**

In Texas, Buddhist practitioner Patrick Murphy received stays of execution in 2019 after challenging the state’s refusal to allow his Buddhist spiritual adviser into the execution chamber. Christian and Muslim chaplains were permitted to accompany prisoners, but Murphy’s Buddhist priest initially was not. The dispute reached the US Supreme Court and raised important questions about religious equality and the rights of incarcerated people to practice their faith at the end of life.***  

Meanwhile, the story of Jarvis Jay Masters, whose decades of Buddhist practice on California’s death row have been documented in books and interviews, provides another example of how spiritual transformation may occur under circumstances of extreme confinement and uncertainty. Masters has also maintained his innocence in the crime for which he was condemned, reminding us that questions of culpability and institutional justice can themselves be complicated.****

These individuals have different histories, and their circumstances should not be treated as interchangeable. Nevertheless, their stories illustrate a profound tension between a judicial system organized around final punishment and a Buddhist tradition that emphasizes the possibility of continuing moral development. A death sentence effectively declares that, whatever a person may become in the future, the state has determined that their life must end because of what they have done in the past. The Buddhist teachings invite us to look more carefully at the relationship between these two realities.

The doctrine of karma is sometimes misunderstood as a system of cosmic rewards and punishments, in which suffering is simply the deserved consequence of previous misconduct. Yet karma is fundamentally concerned with intentional action and the ways our actions shape future experience. It is not a theory of divine justice, nor does it establish that a person’s present suffering should be celebrated because of their past wrongdoing. Instead it challenges us to recognize the ongoing consequences of our choices and the possibility of cultivating more skillful intentions.

This understanding is inseparable from the Buddhist teaching of impermanence. We are shaped by our actions, but we are not permanently fixed by them. The person who committed a crime decades ago is connected to the person who exists today through an ongoing process of causes and conditions. The past cannot be undone. Nonetheless, the future remains open to new possibilities. For Buddhists, genuine accountability must include recognition of both realities—the enduring consequences of harmful deeds and the human capacity for transformation.

There is another dimension to these questions that deserves equal attention. Violence is not confined to the individual who commits a crime or the institutions that punish it. It can become embedded in cultural expectations, political language, and the ways communities understand strength, authority, and justice. When public figures describe enemies as deserving destruction, when military force becomes a source of entertainment, or when the suffering of despised individuals is treated as something to celebrate, we reinforce habits of mind that make further violence easier to justify.

The proposed livestream of Hasan’s execution offers a particularly stark example. Its stated purpose was to demonstrate the consequences of terrorism and perhaps discourage future attacks. However, broadcasting a person’s death would also have invited viewers to participate in an act of state violence as spectators. Some might have watched with sorrow, others with curiosity, and still others with satisfaction. The danger here lies not just in the images sent out across the world, but in the attitudes they might encourage and reinforce. When killing becomes a public performance, the distinction between justice and vengeance can become dangerously blurred.

The American criminal justice system often speaks of closure, particularly in cases involving murder and capital punishment. For some families, the completion of a sentence may provide a meaningful sense that justice has been done. Others discover that the death of the offender does little to diminish their grief. Both responses deserve respect. However, Buddhism’s understanding of suffering suggests that no single act can neatly conclude the complex consequences of a violent death. Families continue to live with loss. Communities carry memories of fear and anger, while those tasked with administering punishment must also live with what they have done.

Our responsibility, then, extends beyond the question of whether a particular prisoner deserves mercy. It includes asking what forms of justice are most likely to create a society in which fewer people are harmed. Capital punishment deserves scrutiny not only because it ends the life of the condemned, but because it represents a collective decision about the place of killing within our moral and political institutions.

Justice is necessary. As is Accountability. But neither requires us to surrender compassion. If Buddhist practice teaches us anything about the cycle of violence, it is that suffering cannot be reliably brought to an end by cultivating more of the intentions that produced it. Our task is to find ways of responding to wrongdoing that protect life, acknowledge suffering, and leave room for the possibility of change.

That is not an easy path, but it is one worth pursuing, both in our personal relationships and in the societies we help create.

* Buddhist Spiritual Adviser Prepares to Accompany Christa Pike at Tennessee Execution (BDG)
** Louisiana Executes Buddhist Death Row Inmate Amid Controversy Over Nitrogen Hypoxia (BDG)
*** Buddhist Death Row Inmate Given Second Stay of Execution in Texas (BDG)
**** The Buddhist on Death Row: Book on Jarvis Jay Masters Released (BDG)

See more

Fort Hood Shooter’s Execution Will Be Public and Streamed Live, Pentagon Says (The New York Times)
Trump Cancels Planned Livestream of Fort Hood Shooter’s Execution (The New York Times)
The Final Hours of Jessie Hoffman, Murdered by the State of Louisiana (Common Dreams)
Tennessee suspends executions as Christa Pike’s lawyer says failed lethal injection leaves her in critical condition (The Guardian)
Christa Pike getting ‘life-saving medical care’ after surviving Tennessee execution (Reuters)

Related features from BDG

Religious Leaders Call for Abolition of the Death Penalty in South Korea
Buddhistdoor View: Reckoning with Those Who Do Wrong
It Is Time for Justice and Freedom for Jarvis Masters
Buddhistdoor View: Dreams of Justice
How Should a Criminal Be Treated? (A Buddhist Response)