It is perhaps inevitable, following a high profile execution such as the State of California carried out on Tookie Williams, that debate should be re—opened on making executions public events. And while the death penalty issue itself is usually reduced to moral arguments or its efficacy in a modern industrialized society, the idea of allowing 300 million people to become living witnesses to another human being's death causes even many death penalty advocates to squirm uncomfortably in their seats, recoiling at the prospect of watching life leave another person against his will. Does this say something about our society's attitudes toward death, or does it say something profound about our ambivalence toward the death penalty? This is no small matter, for on the answer rests the fate of the death penalty itself. The last public execution in the United States was in 1936 in Owensboro, Kentucky. But the fight to hide the execution of criminals from public view actually...(Read Full Article)