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Leaving aside my objection to the death penalty in the first place...
I can't think of a good reason for televising executions, in large part because the level of violence and the advent of special effects have rendered anything on television unreal. The deaths of three thousand people in the World Trade Center became just a clip to play over and over again to the point where it almost lost its impact. Maybe it was the scale of things that made it so unreal, but I don't think so - I think it's the medium and its place in the American psyche.
If your goal is to heighten the deterrent impact of the death penalty by displaying it in public, I think you'd fail, for the above reason: it's just not "real" enough when it's on the tube. How long before the effect of watching even a really grisly execution would just wear off?
If your goal is to show the brutal nature of execution and sway opinion against the death penalty, how are you going to pit, say, a relatively quiet death by lethal injection or the gas chamber, or even the comparatively disturbing electric chair, against the kind of staged brutality that can be seen on most networks?
Television is kind of a cess pool, and regardless of the high-minded intentions behind televising executions, in the end it'd be just another spectacle to generate ad revenue. How can you expect any kind of genuine reaction to this when it'd be sandwiched between commercials for deodorant and ziploc bags?
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"If ten million people believe a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing."
- Anatole France
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