Rainey Bethea in custody. Public domain.

The last official public execution in the US was in 1936, when Rainey Bethea, a young black man (naturally), who was just 5’3″, was hanged in Owensboro, Kentucky, before a crowd of 20,000 people.

The sheriff of the county, who was charged with killing Bethea,  was a woman named Florence Thompson. Florence was concerned that the planned site for the execution, the landscaping on the front lawn of the courthouse, would be marred by the scaffolding and the large crowd, so it was moved to a lot in front of the county garage.

The hangman arrived drunk and was so intoxicated that he staggered around the scaffolding, barely able to stand up and a deputy had to pull the trigger, releasing the trap door. A professional hangman who witnessed the execution later said it was the worst display in the 70 hangings he’d watched.

Bethea’s only request was that his body be shipped home to South Carolina so he could be buried next to his dad. The lady sheriff refused and dumped his corpse in an unmarked pauper’s grave.

Unofficially, of course, the government executes people in public all of the time, before they’ve been convicted or even charged with a crime. Last year, police killed 1,201 people on their streets, in their houses, in parks or in their cars. Through September of this year, police have already killed 964 people. As for the federal government, Hegseth and Trump have been showing snuff film-like videos of their extrajudicial airstrikes on suspected “drug boats” in the Caribbean and Pacific that have killed at least 238 people.

Add to these, the recent killings by Trump immigration officers, most of which have been captured on video and repeated endlessly on social media:

Johan Sebastian Duran Guerrero,  July 2026, killed by ICE

Alex Jeffrey Pretti, January 2026, killed by CBP

Renee Good, January 2026, killed by ICE

Joan Sebastian Guerrero, July,2026  killed by ICE

Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, July, 2026 killed by ICE

Keith Porter, December 2025, killed by ICE

Silverio Villegas González, Sept. 2025, killed by ICE

Rocky the Rottweiler, Sept. 2025, killed by ICE

Rueben Ray Martinez, March 2025, killed by ICE