The Pentagon will allow the public to watch the firing squad execution of Nidal Hasan, the former Army psychiatrist convicted of the 2009 Fort Hood massacre, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Thursday. The decision sets the stage for the first U.S. military execution in more than six decades—and the first by firing squad since World War II.
Hasan is scheduled to die on Dec. 3 at 1 p.m. local time at Fort Hood, now known as Fort Cavazos, in Texas, according to the Army. A Pentagon official told The Hill that the proceeding will be livestreamed, a step with no modern precedent. Current Army regulations permit at least two media outlets to witness an execution, but no U.S. execution has ever been broadcast live. The last public execution in the country occurred in 1936.
What happened at Fort Hood
On Nov. 5, 2009, Hasan opened fire with a personal handgun at a Fort Hood processing center where troops were preparing to deploy to Afghanistan. He killed 12 soldiers and one civilian and wounded 32 others. Witnesses reported he shouted “Allahu akbar” during the attack. Civilian security officers shot and arrested him; he was left paralyzed from the waist down. It remains the deadliest mass shooting on a U.S. military installation.
At his 2013 court-martial, Hasan represented himself and declared in his opening statement, “The evidence will clearly show that I am the shooter.” An American-born Muslim, he claimed he had “switched sides” and carried out the attack in response to U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The shooting came one month before he was due to deploy to Afghanistan. A military jury convicted him on all 45 counts of premeditated murder and attempted premeditated murder, dismissed him from the Army, and sentenced him to death. The case remained in appellate limbo until April 2025, when the Supreme Court declined his final petition. Hasan is now held at the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., one of only four inmates on military death row.
Hegseth’s push for ‘harshest lawful punishment’
Hegseth has long argued that Hasan deserves the maximum penalty. In September 2025, he told reporters he had asked President Trump to approve the execution. “The victims and survivors deserve justice without delays,” he said in a statement at the time. After Trump greenlit Hegseth’s recommendation, the Pentagon chief confirmed the Dec. 3 date—a Thursday, the same day of the week Hasan chose for his attack.
“Of course we’re going to do it at Fort Hood. We’re going to do it on a Thursday, we’re going to do it at one o’clock, which is when he did it, and it’s going to be soldiers with rifles executing the firing squad,” Hegseth told Real America’s Voice on Thursday. He added, “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.”
The mechanics of the execution
Acting Army Secretary Adam Telle selected death by firing squad after Trump approved Hegseth’s recommendation, acting under a 2023 Army regulation governing military executions. That rule gives the Army secretary authority to decide the time, location, and method, with the execution to occur no sooner than 60 days and no later than 150 days after presidential approval. Hasan’s execution falls 63 days after Trump’s sign-off. The regulation also requires that “all lawful and feasible methods available” be presented for consideration.
The execution could still be delayed if Hasan files a habeas corpus petition in federal court, a possibility that legal observers say remains open. Such a move would echo other recent death penalty cases, like the Texas inmate seeking a stay after a botched execution in Tennessee. That incident, which involved the botched execution of Christa Pike, has renewed scrutiny of lethal injection protocols and could influence how courts view this military case.
Historical context
The last U.S. service member executed by firing squad was Pvt. Edward Donald Slovik, who was convicted of desertion during World War II and shot in France on Jan. 31, 1945. He was the only American soldier executed for desertion since the Civil War. Most other U.S. military executions during WWII used hanging, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Since then, the military has carried out only one other execution: the 1961 hanging of Pvt. John Bennett for the rape and attempted murder of an Austrian girl.
The Army formally set the December date for Hasan earlier this week, as reported in the scheduling of Hasan’s execution. With Hegseth’s announcement, the Pentagon is now preparing for an event that will draw intense public and media attention—and could reignite broader debates over capital punishment, as seen in the political fallout from Tennessee’s execution fiasco.
