Why didn't they put them away privily? Why is this detail included? Alma 14:3

Why didn't they put them away privily? Why is this detail included? Alma 14:3

After Alma and Amulek had called the wicked people of Ammonihah to repentance, they were really upset. They didn't like the way Alma and Amulek were able to confound Zeezrom with plain speech. They claimed Amulek was a liar and had crossed their law, lawyers, and judges. They decided to put them away "privily", but then... they didn't. Instead, they bound them before the judge, accused them falsely, and eventually caused all the believers to be burned in a mass murder!

Why did they start by wanting to put them way privately? It doesn't really say what that means, but it could mean murdering them secretly, or kicking them out of the city, or hurting them, or etc. But always in private.

I think it's kind of like 1 Nephi 16:2, where "the guilty taketh the truth to be hard, for it cutteth them to the very center." At first, these wicked people still felt some - however slight - degree of shame or guilt, causing them to want to hide their actions from the public eye. Eventually though, they became so enraged and incensed that it no longer mattered whether it was done in secret or not.

I live in a world where sins are constantly being shifted from the private to the public eye - and to be fair, from the public to the private eye, too. For example, a socially unacceptable sin today is rape. Not acceptable. In the past, in some places, it was. But to leave some of the extreme examples, a more relateable one might be public lying. I mean, our culture seems to value transparency more and more. So if you choose to lie, you really need to be sneaky and clever so that nobody thinks you are lying, because lying is much more distasteful today than perhaps it was 100 years ago.

Or maybe I don't really know what I'm talking about and just making up an answer.

Answer:
I don't really know!