Probably not because movies glamorized it. If it was done in France or Belgium or Germany then it would seem cold and inhuman, but when it's in the US then people see it as Sean Penn and Susan Sarandon waltzing around the electric chair.
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
