Pentagon Plans First U.S. Public Execution Since 1930s

The Pentagon says it will livestream the planned military execution of Nidal Hasan, the former Army psychiatrist convicted of killing 13 people and wounding 32 in a 2009 shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas — a decision that would produce the first public execution in the United States since 1936 and the first ever to be broadcast live.

Hasan, 56, is scheduled to die by firing squad on the afternoon of Dec. 3 at Fort Hood, the site of the attack, according to NPR. It would be the first U.S. military execution of any kind since 1961 and the first by firing squad since World War II.

A Livestream Announced, and Immediately Contested

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Thursday that the proceedings would be made available for public viewing. “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 a video interview with Real America’s Voice, a right-wing streaming network.

The Pentagon confirmed in a statement that the execution “will be livestreamed,” saying details would follow. President Trump approved the execution on Hegseth’s recommendation, and Acting Army Secretary Adam Telle signed an order setting the date and location. Under Army rules, executions must take place between 60 and 150 days after presidential approval — making Hasan’s date almost as early as permitted.

But significant uncertainty remains. Legal experts have said Hasan could delay his execution by years if he files a habeas corpus appeal in federal court. “Hegseth is a rather controversial person,” Michael Radelet, a professor emeritus at the University of Colorado Boulder who studies capital punishment, told NPR. “If he says, ‘Do it this way,’ it’s not at all clear that it will actually be done that way.”

Vice President JD Vance, asked about the plan on Friday, was equivocal: “If it’s ultimately livestreamed, I’m not going to be watching it.”

Echoes of 1936

The last high-profile public execution in the United States was the hanging of Rainey Bethea — a Black man convicted of raping a white woman — in Owensboro, Kentucky, in 1936. Roughly 20,000 people gathered on the riverfront, where workers had built a gallows, according to NPR station WKMS. People celebrated with “necktie” parties the night before and vendors sold sandwiches and soft drinks in what attendees described as a festive atmosphere.

“They sold sandwiches and they sold Coca-Colas, and you’d have thought it was a big picnic or something,” attendee Bill Shelton recalled in a 2013 oral history interview with the Daviess County Public Library.

The spectacle prompted a public backlash over the perceived barbarity of executions. Kentucky held a “semipublic” hanging in a prison yard the following year before outlawing public executions altogether in 1938. There have been none in the U.S. since.

The closest modern precedent was 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’ loved ones gathered in a viewing room in Oklahoma City.

“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,” Robin Maher, executive director of the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center, told NPR. “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.”

A Case Two Decades in the Making

Hasan was working as an Army psychiatrist in November 2009 when he opened fire at the Fort Hood processing center where troops were preparing to deploy to Afghanistan. He shouted “Allahu akbar” — “God is great” — before killing 13 people and injuring another 32. The attack ended when civilian security officers shot him, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down.

Hasan acted as his own lawyer during his 2013 court-martial, admitting that “the evidence will clearly show that I am the shooter” and saying he had “switched sides” over U.S. military actions in the Middle East. A military jury found him guilty on all counts; he was dismissed from the Army and sentenced to death. The Supreme Court denied his final petition in the spring of 2025.

Hasan is one of just four people currently on military death row, all incarcerated at the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Survivors Divided on the Spectacle

For survivors of the attack, the news unearthed complicated emotions. Alonzo Lunsford, who was shot seven times and witnessed Hasan kill several colleagues, told ABC News he plans to attend the execution because he wants to “lock eyes” with Hasan.

“I want him to be able to look at my eyes and to let him understand I won’t be defeated, can’t be defeated,” Lunsford said. “I am no longer a victim, his victim. I am a survivor.”

He said he supports the firing squad — “It’s how he shot us” — but has misgivings about the livestream, arguing it should be shown only to survivors and victims’ families. “I don’t want this to be viewed upon as a spectacle, like a pay-per-view event, or like going to a basketball tournament,” he said. “We’re not trying to meet a standard — we’re trying to set a standard for the free world.”

Dayna Ferguson, who was shot three times at age 21, said she did not expect the execution to be livestreamed. “It’s not completely shocking, given that death and war have historically always been documented through photographs and video. But it’s just not something I expected to hear,” she said. “I’ve been hurt worse in life than by Nidal. Sometimes you’re just the collateral damage in someone else’s warfare in their own mind.”

Bipartisan Backlash

The announcement drew condemnation from across the political spectrum. Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., wrote on X that he supports Hasan’s death sentence but called a livestream “beyond disgusting,” adding that “public executions are what oppressive dictatorships like Iran and Afghanistan do.” Rep. Austin Scott, R-Ga., a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, said that “live-streaming executions is what jihadists do. America is better than that.”

Democrats were similarly critical. Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, called it “another stunt by Secretary Hegseth to distract from his tenure’s repeated failings” and “a gift to anti-American terrorist recruiters.” Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., said, “A country cannot condone livestreaming a man’s death for entertainment.” And Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., the panel’s top Democrat, said livestreaming an execution “makes a mockery of our legal system.”

Archbishop Paul S. Coakley, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, released a statement calling the decision “a barbaric promotion of a culture of death” that “must be reconsidered.” “The public execution even of one who has done grave harm will only further undermine the moral fabric of our nation and be a blight on the conscience of its people,” he wrote.

Why Now, and Why a Firing Squad

It is not clear why the Pentagon is moving forward now, or why it chose a firing squad. But some death penalty experts suspect it is connected to Tennessee’s botched lethal injection of Christa Pike, which dominated headlines and reignited debate over capital punishment in the days before the announcement.

“For years now, states have been pushing this rock of Sisyphus uphill … They’re spending millions of dollars, and yet they’re having botched executions,” said Corinna Lain, author of Secrets of the Killing State. “So this moment in time is one where states are really thinking about: what are we doing and what best serves the death penalty? Whether the answer to that is firing squad is another question entirely.”

The military suspended the death penalty after a 1983 court ruling, reinstated it the following year, and designated lethal injection as the standard method. That changed with new Army regulations in 2023. “The regulation was changed to make the choice or the method of execution a matter for the president’s discretion,” said Eugene Fidell, who teaches military justice at Yale Law School. “And obviously, the president has, in this case, approved the use of a firing squad.”

Earlier this year the Justice Department made firing squads available for federal executions following a directive from Trump. Seven states now have firing squads on the books — the highest number ever recorded, according to Fordham Law professor Deborah Denno, who calls the method “the least inhumane method of execution that we have” when done properly.

What to Watch

Whether the livestream ultimately happens remains an open question, complicated by a possible habeas appeal, administrative uncertainty, and unanswered questions about whether major platforms would carry it. The Army has also not said how it will adapt its 1959-era firing squad procedures for a prisoner who is paralyzed and uses a wheelchair, or how it will protect the identities of the executioners.

Some observers believe the spectacle could backfire on the death penalty itself. “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,” Radelet said. “And that discussion might be yet another step towards abolishing the death penalty.”

Lain put it more starkly. “There is a humane way to take a life,” she said. “It’s called life without parole.”