The United States is about to do something it has not done in 65 years: execute one of its own service members. President Donald Trump has approved a firing-squad execution for former Army Maj. Nidal Hasan, the psychiatrist convicted of the 2009 Fort Hood mass shooting that killed 13 people. Acting Secretary of the Army Adam Telle has set the date — December 3, 2026, at 1 p.m. — at Fort Hood itself, the Texas base where the attack happened. And in an extraordinary departure from every modern execution in American history, the Pentagon said it would livestream the execution publicly — a plan President Donald Trump cancelled on 15 October, announcing that the execution "will not be streamed." The story is trending per news coverage across USA Today, CNN, the New York Post, Le Monde, the BBC, and the Death Penalty Information Center, and it has opened a fierce national debate over the military death penalty, firing squads, and the spectacle of a state broadcast.

How the decision happened

The chain of events began on Oct. 5, when Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell announced on X that Trump had approved the firing-squad execution for Hasan at the recommendation of Secretary of War Pete Hegseth. "Judgement day has finally come," Parnell wrote. On Oct. 7, Acting Secretary of the Army Adam Telle signed the execution order, setting Dec. 3 at 1 p.m. local time at Fort Hood — deliberately, the same base and the same hour the 2009 shooting began.

Then came the announcement that turned a military-justice story into a global one. On Oct. 8, Hegseth told podcaster Jack Posobiec in an interview aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln that the public would be able to watch the execution. "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," he said. A Pentagon official confirmed to the BBC that the execution will be livestreamed, with details still to follow, and Hegseth later confirmed it himself in a post on X. Trump told reporters he approved the livestream plan: "Absolutely, I approved," though he cautioned that a final determination on logistics still needed to be made. A week later, on 15 October, Trump reversed himself: in a Truth Social post he wrote that streaming the execution "might have been a strong deterrent," but that "many very good and well meaning people would rather not watch him die, through streaming, or through any other visual device," and that "He will die, as scheduled, by firing squad, but this event will not be streamed." Immediate family members of the victims may attend in person if they choose. The execution date itself — 3 December at 1 p.m. at Fort Hood — is unchanged.

The last public execution in the United States took place in 1936, when a crowd of around 20,000 gathered in Owensboro, Kentucky. No one alive today has seen anything like what the Pentagon was describing — and, after Trump's 15 October reversal, no one will: the execution will not be broadcast.

Who Nidal Hasan is, and what he did

Nidal Hasan was a major in the U.S. Army Medical Corps, a psychiatrist posted to Fort Hood, Texas. On Nov. 5, 2009, he walked into the base's Soldier Readiness Processing Center — a medical building where soldiers were undergoing final health checks before overseas deployments — and opened fire with a laser-sighted handgun, shouting "Allahu Akbar," Arabic for "God is great."

He killed 13 people — 12 U.S. service members and one civilian employee — and wounded 32 others. He then followed fleeing soldiers out of the building's back door before exchanging gunfire with base police, who shot him and left him paralyzed from the waist down. A later U.S. Senate report designated the attack the deadliest terrorist attack on U.S. soil since Sept. 11, 2001. Hasan later said he had acted in the name of jihad and wanted to stop American troops from deploying to Afghanistan.

At his 2013 court-martial, Hasan made little effort to contest the charges. He admitted to being the gunman, called no witnesses for his own defense, and described himself to jurors as a soldier who had "switched sides." A military panel unanimously convicted him of 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder, sentencing him to death on Aug. 28, 2013 — a sentence that also included dismissal from the Army and forfeiture of all pay and allowances. He has been held on military death row at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, ever since.

Hasan's death sentence did not arrive at the president's desk by accident. Military capital cases undergo one of the longest appellate journeys in American law. After the court-martial, the Army's appellate courts reviewed the conviction, and in March 2024 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces affirmed it. In March 2025, the Supreme Court denied Hasan's petition for review. In May 2026, Army Lawyer magazine noted that a president's approval of a death sentence is the beginning of a potentially lengthy post-appellate process — and this is that process reaching its end.

One avenue remains open. According to the Associated Press, Hasan is constitutionally entitled to file a habeas corpus petition in civilian federal court, asking a civilian judge to review the legality of his detention — a step that could indefinitely delay the execution. Whether he will do so is unknown; during his trial he declined to mount a defense, though leaked documents at the time revealed he had told mental health experts he could "still be a martyr" if executed.

The context for understanding this case's stakes is the broader landscape of federal power over life and death — see our explainers on the DOJ's denaturalization drive and the probe of Fed Governor Lisa Cook for parallel examples of this administration testing the limits of federal authority.

Why a firing squad — and why now

Choosing a firing squad over lethal injection is deliberate, and it did not come from nowhere. Two weeks before Parnell's announcement, on Sept. 30, Tennessee's execution of Christa Pike went badly wrong: two doses of pentobarbital failed to kill her, and she was hospitalized in critical condition. That botched execution — lethal injection accounts for the vast majority of botched executions in the United States — reignited a nationwide crisis over execution drugs, which states increasingly struggle to procure and administer.

The firing squad is rare in modern America — it has been used in just six modern executions, about 0.4% of the total, in only two states — but it has a reputation for speed and reliability that lethal injection has lost. Earlier this year, the Trump administration's Department of Justice proposed using the firing squad, alongside other methods, in federal executions. Trump has long pushed for more aggressive use of the death penalty: in the closing weeks of his first term he authorized a record-breaking 13 federal executions. Columbia Law School professor Bernard Harcourt, who is writing a book about a botched lethal injection in Alabama, told USA Today that Pike's failed execution could have helped sway federal officials toward the firing squad.

The military's own history makes the choice even more striking. The U.S. military has not executed anyone since 1961, when Army Pvt. John Bennett was hanged at Fort Leavenworth for the rape and attempted murder of an 11-year-old girl — hanging is no longer used by any American jurisdiction, and rape is no longer death-eligible under Supreme Court precedent. A military firing squad has not been used since World War II, and no one has been shot by the armed forces since 1946, even though four service members currently sit on military death row. Hasan would be the first executed in 65 years.

The backlash — from courtrooms to the United Nations

The reaction has been swift and bipartisan. John Galligan, a lawyer representing Hasan in civil matters and a retired colonel and former military judge, called the decision "abominable" and "akin to a public lynching" in an interview with USA Today, asking: "Who in their right mind would want to livestream an execution?"

Sen. Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat, called the planned spectacle "medieval" and asked pointedly whether the Pentagon was mimicking the public executions of terrorist groups. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights reminded the United States that public executions are considered a form of torture under international human rights standards. Even Vice President JD Vance distanced himself from the broadcast before it was cancelled, telling reporters on 9 October that he doubted the livestream would actually happen — "I don't know that that's actually going to happen" — and that he wouldn't watch it if it did. Six days later, Trump cancelled it.

Supporters frame it differently. Hegseth's argument is deterrence through visibility: that making the consequences public will deter future attacks. Trump said simply of Hasan: "He deserves it. Killed and wounded many, many people. Maniac." The tension between those two readings — justice served in the open versus punishment as spectacle — is what has made this one of the most discussed stories of the week.

What to watch next

Four things matter now. First, the witnesses: with the livestream cancelled, attendance follows the military's standing rules — Army Regulation 190-55 limits witnesses to designated personnel, the condemned prisoner's attorney, a chaplain, family representatives, and at least two news media representatives chosen by Army public affairs — and Trump said immediate family members of the victims may attend in person if they choose. Second, Hasan's remaining legal option — a habeas petition in civilian federal court — could pause everything, and the clock to Dec. 3 is short. Third, the reaction of the other three military death-row cases, whose lawyers will be watching closely for any precedent. And fourth, the midterm elections on Nov. 3: the decision to carry out the first military execution in 65 years, weeks before voters go to the polls, has ensured the debate will play out in the open — even though the execution itself will no longer be broadcast.

For readers who want to understand the machinery this case moves through, our guide to how the court system works explains the civilian and military layers involved.

Sources

Reporting drawn from USA Today, CNN, the New York Post, Le Monde, the BBC (via Pentagon statements), the Death Penalty Information Center, Reuters, and the Associated Press (5–12 October 2026).