The Pentagon has announced plans to livestream the firing-squad execution of Nidal Hasan Who killed 13 people and injured 31 at Fort Hood back in 2009.
The planned execution is scheduled to take place at Fort Hood, Texas, December 3, at about 1:00 p.m. CST. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said earlier Thursday in an interview with Jack Posobiec on Real America’s Voice that the execution will be 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,”
“He’s gonna get a firing squad of soldiers, as it should be,” Hegseth added
Hasan was an Army major and psychiatrist when he opened fire on Nov. 5, 2009, inside the Soldier Readiness Processing Center at Fort Hood, where soldiers were preparing for deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan. That attack killed 13 people and wounded 31 others.
🚨 WOW! SecWar Pete Hegseth just announced the firing squad execution of Fort Hood Islamist terrorist Nidal Hasan will be **PUBLIC** At the SAME time and place where Hasan carried out the attack. "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’s gonna get a firing squad of soldiers. As it should be." @JackPosobiec: Did he make any final requests? HEGSETH: "Don’t care. We’ll see him on December 3rd." 🥶 Hasan m*rdered 13 people at Fort Hood in 2009 while yelling "Allahu Akbar" and wounded more than 30 others He was sentenced to death in 2013 and then sat on death row for over a DECADE. The Acting Sec. of the Army made it official The victims’ families finally get JUSTICE 🙏🏻 Our SecWar is stone COLD when it comes to traitors like this who take American lives. @RealAmVoice
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) October 8, 2026
During Hasan’s trial, he acknowledged that he was responsible for the shooting, but his claims for the act were not for the weak. According to him, he opened fire on fellow members of the Army in an attempt to protect Islamic insurgents from U.S. military forces.
The court-martial jury found Hasan guilty of a total 42 counts on Aug. 23, 2013, and then five days later set his punishment at death.
If carried out, Hasan’s case could mark the military’s first execution of an American service member since 1961.
“it hasn’t been since World War II since we’ve done that,” Hegseth pointing to the military’s 1945 execution of Pvt. Eddie Slovik for desertion. Slovik had left his unit and refused to return to combat. He was the only American service member executed for desertion during World War II and the only U.S. soldier executed for that offense since the Civil War.
“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,” Geoffrey Corn said speaking to CBS News.
Corn, a former member of the Army’s Judge Advocate General’s Corps and now a law professor at Texas Tech University, told the outlet that livestreaming the execution raises ethical concerns beyond those surrounding the death penalty itself.
“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,” he said. “I think it’s an acknowledgment of the gravity of the penalty to be imposed,”
The Supreme Court denied Hasan’s request for review of his court-martial conviction on March 31, last year. He had asked the Court in 2024 to review his case, arguing that the judge who oversaw his case at the time of his trial had violated his right to a public trial by clearing the public from the courtroom before discussing some of his issues with the attorneys.
“The President has sole authority to approve the sentence of death for a military prisoner. On Oct. 2, 2026, President Donald J. Trump approved the death sentence in this case. The President acted following completion of a full appellate process which upheld the conviction and sentence to death,” Army Public Affairs said.
The statement came on Oct. 7. Days earlier, Sean Parnell, assistant to the secretary of defense, announced on X that Trump had approved the execution method recommended by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
“Judgement day for Hasan has finally come,” Parnell said?
In accordance with Army Regulation 190-55, the Secretary of the Army must select an execution date that falls within 60 to 150 days from the date the President approved the death sentence.
The last U.S. service member executed under military justice was Army Pvt. John Arthur Bennett, who was hanged at Fort Leavenworth on April 13, 1961.
Bennett had been serving in occupied Austria when, while heavily intoxicated, he left his base near Salzburg in search of a brothel and encountered an 11-year-old Austrian girl whom he then raped and attempted to murder.
He was convicted by a court-martial of rape and attempted murder and sentenced to death. President Dwight D. Eisenhower approved the sentence in 1957, and Army Secretary Elvis J. Stahr Jr. ordered it carried out in February 1961.
Although the victim’s family sought his pardon, Bennett still was executed at 25.
In some cases, executions are witnessed by small groups of people, including reporters and victims’ family members. This move by the Trump administration to execute Hasan would mark a major moment in U.S. history, making an execution viewable by the general public.
The last public execution in the United States took place in 1936, when Rainey Bethea was hanged for rape in Kentucky, an execution that drew a crowd of about 20,000. That was a civilian execution, not a military execution carried out by the armed forces.
