The Pentagon says the firing squad execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan will be livestreamed for the public. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced the plan this week during an interview with the conservative network Real America’s Voice, saying Hasan will be put to death at Fort Hood in Texas on December 3.
“We’ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it’s public,” Hegseth said, adding that Hasan is “going to get a firing squad of soldiers.” Pentagon officials confirmed Thursday that the execution will be streamed live and said more details are coming. The department has not said which platform will carry it, and the White House sent all questions about the livestream to the Pentagon.
Hasan is a former Army psychiatrist who held the rank of major when he opened fire at Fort Hood in November 2009, killing 13 people and wounding more than 30 others. A military jury convicted him and sentenced him to death in 2013, and he has been on military death row ever since.
Trump approved the execution on Monday, according to Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell. Under military law, a death sentence handed down by a military court cannot be carried out until the sitting president personally signs off, which is a big reason Hasan’s case sat untouched for more than a decade.
If it goes forward, it will be the first military execution in 65 years. The last one took place on April 13, 1961, when Army Private John Bennett was hanged. Hegseth said a firing squad execution has not been used on a service member since World War II. TMZ reported that no execution in the United States has been open to the public in more than 90 years.
The plan is already drawing pushback from military law experts, who have raised concerns about whether the required process for setting an execution date was actually followed. They also say Hasan could fight it by filing what is called a habeas petition in civilian court. A habeas petition is a legal challenge asking a judge to decide whether the government is lawfully holding someone, or in this case, lawfully carrying out his punishment. Filing one could push the December date back significantly.
Eugene R. Fidell, a Yale Law School lecturer who specializes in military law, suggested that legal fight could drag on past the current administration, and that whoever comes next may not be as eager to carry out executions.
The announcement is part of a wider push by the Trump administration to expand the death penalty. The Justice Department previously brought back the lethal injection drug pentobarbital for federal executions and added the firing squad as an approved method alongside it. During Trump’s first term, the federal government executed 13 people in its final six months alone. Five states currently allow the firing squad: Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Utah. South Carolina carried out two firing squad executions within five weeks in the spring of 2025.
