There were 17 people publicly executed in 2025. Of those, 11 were in Iran and 6 were in Afghanistan (according to Amnesty).

On December 3, the United States plans to execute a man by firing squad at Fort Hood and broadcast it. The UN human rights office has already said that livestreaming an execution is tantamount to a public execution and breaches the prohibition on torture.

We’ve always executed people here, so that’s not new. What is new is the camera. The last American execution open to the public was in 1936, and the crowd that turned up for it is the reason we stopped.

America plans to join the 2026 list.

So just to be clear, the list will be Iran, Afghanistan, and the United States of America. That seems all kinds of messed up.