Pentagon Plans First U.S. Public Execution Since 1936

The Pentagon says it will livestream the military execution by firing squad of Nidal Hasan, the former Army psychiatrist convicted in the 2009 Fort Hood mass shooting — a move that would mark the first public execution in the United States in nearly a century and the first ever to be broadcast online.

If carried out as scheduled on the afternoon of Dec. 3, 2026, Hasan’s death would be the military’s first execution of a service member since 1961 and its first firing-squad execution since World War II. The plan, announced by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth this week, has drawn swift bipartisan condemnation from lawmakers, religious leaders, human rights organizations and military law experts, and has raised major legal, ethical and constitutional questions.

A Spectacle or a Deterrent?

The Pentagon confirmed to NPR on Friday, Oct. 9, that Hasan’s execution “will be livestreamed,” saying details would follow. The confirmation came a day after Hegseth said the proceedings would be made public.

“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 in an interview with Real America’s Voice, a right-wing streaming network. He added: “He’s gonna get a firing squad of soldiers, as it should be.”

According to CBS News, President Trump approved the plan to execute Hasan by firing squad earlier this month. Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said the method was recommended by Hegseth and approved by the president.

Hasan, 56, was convicted in 2013 of 45 counts of premeditated murder and attempted murder for killing 13 people and wounding 32 at Fort Hood, Texas, on Nov. 5, 2009. He has been on military death row at the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, since his sentencing. The execution is set for 1 p.m. local time at Fort Hood — now Fort Cavazos — deliberately the same time of day as the 2009 shooting.

Breaking With a Century of Practice

The United States has not carried out a public execution since 1936, when Rainey Bethea — a Black man convicted of raping a white woman — was hanged in Owensboro, Kentucky. As WKMS recounts, roughly 20,000 spectators gathered on the riverfront, vendors sold sandwiches and soft drinks, and the atmosphere was described by attendees as that of a picnic. Public outrage over the spectacle effectively ended the practice; Kentucky outlawed public hangings in 1938.

The closest modern analogue may be the 2001 lethal injection of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, which the Justice Department made available via closed-circuit telecast to 232 designated survivors and victims’ relatives gathered in Oklahoma City.

Robin Maher, executive director of the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center, told NPR that the historical record offers no precedent for what the Pentagon now proposes.

“Public executions have typically been held in authoritarian countries to instill fear in the population and to show the power and control of the government,” Maher said. “We’re not aware of any regulation or historical precedent for a [U.S.] military execution to be livestreamed on the internet or otherwise made widely available to the public.”

Bipartisan Condemnation

The plan has united an unusual coalition of critics. Senator Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican, wrote that he supports Hasan’s death sentence but called a livestream “beyond disgusting.”

“Public executions are what oppressive dictatorships like Iran and Afghanistan do,” he said. “It should not be happening in America.”

Fellow Republican Representative Austin Scott of Georgia struck a similar note. “I absolutely support the sentence of death, but live-streaming executions is what jihadists do,” he said. “America is better than that.”

The top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, called the plan “a barbaric spectacle” and “yet another stunt by Secretary Hegseth to distract from his tenure’s repeated failings.” He also described it as “a gift to anti-American terrorist recruiters.” Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut told CNN that public executions are “medieval.”

Even Vice President JD Vance, a Marine Corps veteran, declined to endorse the spectacle. “If it’s ultimately livestreamed, I’m not going to be watching it,” he told reporters.

Religious and human rights leaders were equally pointed. Archbishop Paul S. Coakley, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said the decision is “a barbaric promotion of a culture of death and must be reconsidered,” adding that a public execution “will only further undermine the moral fabric of our nation and be a blight on the conscience of its people.” The United Nations human rights office warned that broadcasting the execution would breach the absolute prohibition of torture.

The Legal and Moral Questions

Geoffrey Corn, a Texas Tech University law professor and former Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps officer, told CBS News that the plan “raises significant moral questions, above and beyond the questions related to the death penalty generally.”

“There’s a certain protocol that is normally followed with executions limiting the gallery of observers, which usually includes people close to the victims and certain members of the media,” Corn said. “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.”

Army policy limits who may witness military executions: no one under 18, plus victims, their families, the prisoner’s lawyer and at least two members of the media. Making Hasan’s death “public” may require a presidential waiver, according to Senator Reed.

Much also remains procedurally uncertain. Legal experts say Hasan could delay the execution by years by filing a federal habeas corpus appeal, and outside groups could challenge the livestream plan itself. Michael Radelet, a professor emeritus at the University of Colorado Boulder who studies capital punishment, cautioned that an announcement is not a guarantee.

“Hegseth is a rather controversial person,” Radelet told NPR. “If he says, ‘Do it this way,’ it’s not at all clear that it will actually be done that way.”

The Federal Communications Commission has signaled it will not stand in the way. “Ultimately, we’re going to defer to Secretary Hegseth and his decisions on how to move forward with this,” FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said.

A Nation Divided on Capital Punishment

The proposal arrives at a moment of shifting public sentiment. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, public support for the death penalty has fallen to a five-decade low, with just 52% of Americans in favor — and fewer than half of adults under 55 now backing it. Support is sharply partisan: 82% of Republicans favor capital punishment, compared with 47% of independents and 32% of Democrats.

Radelet suggested the spectacle could accelerate that trend rather than reverse it. “There probably wouldn’t be too much blood, but enough to make people talk about it over their morning coffee, if they’re not sick,” he said. “And that discussion might be yet another step towards abolishing the death penalty.”

What to Watch

Whether Hasan’s execution actually takes place — and in what form — depends on several unresolved questions. Courts could intervene through habeas appeals or challenges to the livestream itself. Broadcasters and social media platforms have yet to say whether they would carry the feed. And the Pentagon has offered no operational details, saying only that they will follow.

What is clear is that the proposal has already reopened a debate the United States had seemed to settle generations ago — and done so in the middle of a polarized country that remains deeply divided over who should decide how, and how publicly, the state may take a life.