Pentagon Confirms Hasan Firing Squad Execution Will Be Livestreamed
The Pentagon has confirmed that the firing squad execution of Nidal Malik Hasan, the former Army major convicted of the 2009 Fort Hood mass shooting, will be livestreamed publicly — a decision that would make it the first U.S. military execution in more than six decades and the first ever broadcast to the general public online.
“It will be livestreamed. Details will follow,” a War Department official told Fox News Digital. The execution is scheduled for 1 p.m. Central Time on Dec. 3 at Fort Hood, Texas — the same base where Hasan carried out the attack.
Hasan, then an Army psychiatrist, opened fire on unarmed soldiers and civilians at the base on Nov. 5, 2009, after shouting “Allahu Akbar,” killing 13 people and wounding 32 others. He was convicted in a 2013 court-martial and sentenced to death. He has been held on military death row at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, ever since.
How the Decision Was Reached
President Donald Trump approved the use of an Army firing squad following a recommendation from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell announced the decision on X, declaring, “Judgment day for Hasan has finally come.”
Hegseth, who had long pushed for Hasan’s execution, framed the public nature of the penalty as a deterrent. “He’s gonna get a firing squad of soldiers, as it should be,” Hegseth told Real America’s Voice, according to CBS News. “We’ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it’s public — because people need to understand that there’s serious consequences for these types of things.”
Hegseth said Fort Hood was chosen because it was the site of the attack, and that the 1 p.m. execution time was selected to roughly coincide with when the shooting began, ABC News reported.
The choice of a firing squad forced the Army to abandon months of preparation built around a different method. Internal documents reviewed by ABC News show that officials had been developing a plan dubbed “Operation Resolute Justice” to use lethal injection in Terre Haute, Indiana — a plan abandoned when Trump ordered the firing squad. Trump’s approval came only days after the botched lethal-injection execution of Christa Pike in Tennessee, who survived the attempt.
Bipartisan Backlash
The decision drew swift, unusually broad condemnation from lawmakers in both parties, as well as international human-rights bodies.
Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., speaking on CNN, called the plan “disgusting.” “What, is he mimicking ISIS executions?” Murphy asked, per The Guardian. “Public execution is medieval. It’s frankly one of the things that we abhor about terrorist groups, and the fact that the United States is doing it.”
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., who supports the death penalty for Hasan, said making the execution public was “beyond disgusting.” “Public executions are what oppressive dictatorships like Iran and Afghanistan do,” he wrote on X. “It should not be happening in America.”
Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., warned of the message sent to children. “We are long past the days of public hangings in the town square,” she wrote. “The Pentagon must revoke this decision immediately.”
Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, called the decision “a barbaric spectacle” and “yet another stunt by Secretary Hegseth,” adding that a livestream would be a “gift to anti-American terrorist recruiters.”
The United Nations also weighed in. “The livestreaming of an execution is tantamount to a public execution and would breach the absolute prohibition of torture,” the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said in a message to AFP, noting it had issued similar statements about public executions in Afghanistan and Iran.
Some hard-right Republicans, meanwhile, welcomed the news. Rep. Andy Ogles, R-Tenn., wrote on X: “Public execution is what this terrorist deserves. We will be watching.”
Legal and Practical Questions
Hasan’s civilian attorney, John Galligan, a retired Army colonel and former Fort Hood military judge, criticized the plan. “I’m surprised and shocked that they want to bring him back to Fort Hood,” he told ABC News. “I think it’s more of a public spectacle, closely akin to almost — I see it more as political theater.” He added that making the execution public is “not great for the confidence in our system of justice.”
Galligan said Hasan was notified late at night that Trump had approved the execution, and that no defense attorney was present when he received the notice. He said filing a federal habeas corpus petition is “a distinct possibility” that could delay the execution. The Supreme Court declined to review Hasan’s court-martial conviction last year.
Geoffrey Corn, a Texas Tech law professor and former Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps officer, told CBS News the plan “raises significant moral questions, above and beyond the questions related to the death penalty generally.” He noted that executions normally limit the gallery of observers — an “acknowledgment of the gravity of the penalty to be imposed.”
“In short, turning the execution of such a penalty into some type of public spectacle echoes of the past we seem to have put behind us,” Corn said.
Robin M. Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, told The Guardian her group is “not aware of any regulation or precedent for a military execution to be live streamed on the internet or otherwise made widely available to the public.” She added that public executions “are typically held in authoritarian countries to instil fear in the population.”
The Army’s most detailed firing-squad procedures date to 1959 and have not been updated. Under those old rules, eight riflemen led by a senior enlisted soldier with a pistol would fire simultaneously from 15 paces; one to three rifles would be loaded with blanks. The Army is now rapidly developing new procedures, and it remains unclear how the protocol will be adapted for Hasan, who is paralyzed and uses a wheelchair as a result of being subdued during the attack.
Survivors and the Human Cost
Alonzo Lunsford, a retired Army sergeant who was shot seven times in the attack — including once in the head — told the BBC that the firing squad is a fitting end.
“I want him to go out the same way that he inflicted death on innocent soldiers,” Lunsford said. “So, I’m all in support of firing squad, yes.” He said he plans to attend the execution.
But Lunsford told the BBC he opposed the uncensored livestream. “To show the whole thing without it being censored for the general public, for me personally, I don’t agree with that, but it’s not about my personal belief,” he said, calling it “not something you should view for entertainment purposes.”
Mental-health experts warned that broadcasting the execution could traumatize viewers. “Recent events suggest that executions do not always go to plan,” Dr. Simon Duff, a forensic psychologist at the University of Nottingham, told The Guardian. “That possibility needs to be acknowledged, and the likelihood that this would increase the trauma for viewers.”
What’s Next
If carried out, Hasan’s death would be the first U.S. military execution since 1961 and the first military firing-squad execution since Pvt. Eddie Slovik was executed for desertion in 1945. The last widely recognized public execution in the United States was in 1936, when Rainey Bethea was hanged in Kentucky before a crowd estimated at 20,000.
Several questions remain: whether Hasan will file a habeas petition to delay the Dec. 3 date; how the Army will select and train executioners and adapt a half-century-old protocol for a paralyzed prisoner; and how — on what platform, and with what safeguards — the livestream will actually be shown.
At a White House event on Oct. 9, Trump referenced the case but misstated the facts, saying the administration was “giving a man the death penalty who killed 14 soldiers a couple of years ago.” Hasan killed 13 people, and the attack occurred in 2009.
With less than a month until the Nov. 3 midterm elections, the backlash — spanning both parties and drawing international condemnation — has ensured that the mechanics of a nearly 70-year-dormant military procedure will be debated in public view.