We’re Covering Executions All Wrong

-first published in Substack blog “The “Last Editor” on January 21, 2026

I’ve always wanted to witness an execution. That may be an odd statement—particularly if you know I am a death penalty opponent. I believe no person ever born has the right to take the life of any other person ever born. Period. Still, I’ve always wanted to go see an execution carried out. Perhaps it’s because of my opposition that I wanted to be a witness, to see what the state is doing on my behalf, even if it is against my wishes. Or maybe it’s just my journalistic curiosity.

I certainly had the opportunity to be an official witness to an execution.

I lived and worked as a journalist in a state that performed a lot of them. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, Missouri has carried out more executions per capita than every state except Texas and Oklahoma and is one of only five states that have carried out more than 100 executions in that time. Missouri has carried out 101 executions, Florida (where I first worked professionally as a journalist) 106, Virginia 113, Oklahoma 127 and Texas, a whopping 591. Between 1976 and 1989, Missouri carried out its executions at the historic Missouri State Penitentiary in Jefferson City, just 25 miles or so down U.S. 63 from my newsroom at KOMU-TV in Columbia. It would have been easy for me to make that trip then (I started working as a news manager at KOMU in 1986). In 1989, the state moved death row to its Potosi Correctional Center in Washington County, a difficult three-hour drive from Columbia through some remote back roads.

It’s also a tough drive from the state’s largest media market in St. Louis. In 2005, the state moved the women on death row to the Women’s Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center in Vandalia, leaving the men in Potosi and carrying out the executions of both men and women at the Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center in Bonne Terre ever since. That may seem like a lot of unnecessary location details, but I’ll come back to why they’re important.

I’m writing about the death penalty now because of an interesting court ruling in Tennessee.

Seven news organizations and their owners, including TEGNA, Scripps and the Associated Press brought suit to gain more access to the state’s execution procedures. A judge in Nashville ruled last week state prison officials must grant journalists access to view the entire execution process in Tennessee. The judge ruled journalists have the right to witness the procedure from the time the condemned inmate enters the execution chamber until officials pronounce the inmate dead. Previously, the state only allowed journalists to enter the viewing room after the inmate was already on a gurney with IV lines connected. At some point, the lethal injection was administered out of sight of the journalists—there was no indication to them when that happened—and then a five-minute clock started. When that clock ran out, curtains on the execution chamber were closed and the medical checks on the inmate were done out of view of the journalist witnesses. I applaud the judge’s ruling on this issue, as there are certainly newsworthy issues to cover through the whole process, including botched executions.

You’ll recall I said I’d get back to all those details on the location of Missouri’s death row and execution chamber. I believe the move to perform the execution away from the state capital (and the many journalists based there) and into the wilderness of southeastern Missouri was a deliberate attempt to move executions out of public sight and out of public mind. In fact, the move coincided with the beginning of a decline in support of the death penalty nationwide. That support peaked around that time with about 80 percent of the public backing capital punishment. The figure now stands at 52 percent among all age groups, with Millennial and Gen Z support hovering around 45 percent. Twenty-seven states allow the death penalty (though Democratic governors in California, Pennsylvania and Oregon have continued holds on executions started by previous governors and Republican Mike DeWine in Ohio postponed three execution scheduled for last year and has said he “does not expect” any more executions before his term ends in January 2027). The U.S. military and the federal government also use capital punishment. With support for death sentences falling, it’s easier for those who support it to carry it out without the public—or journalists—watching.

My take on this has always been that executions should be public.

This is the most significant act governments do on behalf of their citizens, and it should not be done in secret. Much of the world has a history of public executions, mainly when the primary method was hanging. A number of factors in the United States led to making executions private—including new methods like the electric chair and growing research showing the death penalty is not a deterrent to crime. The last public execution in the U.S. took place in 1936 in Kentucky. Lately, renewed calls for public executions have made for strange bedfellows. Capital punishment opponents wanting to show the barbarism of the act support making it easier for people to see the act carried out, while conservative voices like the late Charlie Kirk saw it as way to warn people of the consequences of their actions (again, research shows no real deterrent effect).

Our current coverage of executions consists pretty much of these steps: first, we report on the lead-up to the execution as lawyers ask for stays or reprieves and states and their governors (usually) hold firm and carry out the sentence; next, we use file video or pictures of the death row inmate; and finally, we report what happened during the execution based on the word of state corrections spokespeople—whom we just have to trust are telling the truth. It’s all very routine—seldom the lead story, usually getting minor play in newscasts, in print and online. Only when something goes wrong (remember Oklahoma’s issue with not being able to actually kill an inmate?) does it get some additional coverage. Because of the significance of this act, we should cover this the same way we cover elections or a big football game (I’m not trying to be funny with that comparison—think of the resources we put toward football games).

We should set up cameras, have reporters live on the scene and carry the entire execution process live on the air and on streaming. Viewers should be able to watch their government kill someone on their behalf. Let’s lead into it with solid coverage of the crime(s) of which the inmate was convicted, interview family of the victims and thoroughly explore the case against the inmate. Then we carry the execution live and follow up after the inmate is pronounced dead with an analysis of how well the execution was carried out, talking to prison officials, doctors, etc. Additional cameras outside the prison or in the city where the crimes took place can bring coverage of supporters and protestors making their views known on the execution.

I’ll even take this proposal one step further—out of just taking about media coverage to what citizens’ should expect if they want the government to execute prisoners.

Just as we all get summons to serve on jury duty, states should send out summons to get citizen executioners to do their part in the process. If a jury of the convict’s peers was the panel that ruled in favor of a conviction, then a panel of peers should be responsible for carrying out that final order. Set it up so that there are three switches to start the lethal injection—two dummies and one that actually starts the flow. Have three citizens summoned to be the executioners and let them commit the act. We’ll interview them in our wrap-up, too.

I know some people reading this think it is an outlandish suggestion, but I must ask why? Don’t we have a duty to cover state or federal action as important as the decision to take a life? We should fight to get full access to death chambers and get everything that happens there broadcast and streamed out to the public. What argument could there be against that?