Story highlights Austin Sarat: Arkansas is having trouble finding witnesses to all its planned executions -- what if a solution were to televise them?

Televising executions forces us to consider the meaning and significance of the public's own instinct to turn away when the state takes a human life, he writes

Austin Sarat is associate dean of the faculty and William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence & Political Science at Amherst College and the author of "Gruesome Spectacles: Botched Executions and America's Death Penalty." The views expressed here are solely his.

(CNN) Arkansas's controversial plan to execute eight men in 10 days later this month has hit an unexpected stumbling block. State law requires that at least six people, "respectable citizens," witness executions to ensure that its laws and procedures are followed. But, to date, the state cannot find enough people who are willing to witness them.

So serious is this problem that the director of the Arkansas Department of Correction, Wendy Kelley, has tried to solicit volunteers. According to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette , she made a personal plea in a speech to the Little Rock Rotary Club to take on this unusual civic role. "You seem," she said, "to be a group that does not have a felony background and are over 21 ... So if you are interested in serving in that area, in this serious role, just call my office."

This problem is itself a symptom of the troubling secrecy of what is in fact a public event. One solution to the problem is all too telling: television broadcasts of executions. I oppose the death penalty and if televised executions bring it to an end sooner than would otherwise happen, that would be great. But even if executions go on indefinitely, there's a strong argument to be made for televising them.

Austin Sarat

Whether televised or not, executions are always public by their very nature. The death of a condemned person is in no sense just his own death; it is a killing carried out in our name. The seemingly bureaucratic act of a few state officials is our deed as well. Hiding the deed does not change this fact.

Arkansas, like other states, regulates who can witness an execution . Only "respectable citizens" can serve as witnesses.