A memorial to the victims of the Fort Hood shootings, photographed in November 2009, outside the apartment complex where Hasan lived.
Eli Kaplan/Getty Images
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Eli Kaplan/Getty Images
President Trump approved the execution by firing squad of Nidal Hasan, the former U.S. Army psychiatrist who killed 13 people in a shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009.
It would be the first U.S. military execution in more than six decades – and the first mass shooting since World War II.
Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell announced the news on X Monday evening, writing: “The day of reckoning for Hasan has finally arrived.” Army Secretary Adam Telle said in an order issued Tuesday that Hasan’s execution would take place at Fort Hood on Dec. 3.
But Hasan could delay that process if he files a habeas corpus petition in federal courts, said Robin Maher, executive director of the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center.
“The fact that the president approved the death sentence for Mr. Hasan is one step closer to his execution,” Maher said. “But that doesn’t mean his execution will be imminent.”
For example, Ronald Gray, who committed multiple rapes and murders near Fort Bragg in the 1980s, remains on military death row even though his sentence was approved by President George W. Bush in 2008.
It’s unclear why the Pentagon is moving forward now, or why it specifically chose firing squad as its method of execution. But some death penalty experts interviewed by NPR suspect it could be linked to the botched lethal injection of Christa Pike in Tennessee, which has made headlines and reignited debate over the past week.
“For years now, states have been pushing this Sisyphean rock up… They spend millions of dollars, and yet they have botched executions,” said Corinna Lain, whose book, The secrets of the murderous state, was released last year. “So that’s when states really think about the question: What are we doing and what best serves the death penalty? Whether the answer to that question is the firing squad is a whole different question.”
The White House referred NPR’s questions to the Pentagon, which declined to elaborate beyond Parnell’s message.
In his announcement, Parnell said Trump acted on the recommendation of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who said last September that he was “100 percent committed to ensuring that the death penalty is carried out against Nidal Hasan.”
“This savage terrorist deserves the harshest legal punishment for his mass shooting at Fort Hood in 2009,” Hegseth told several media outlets at the time, including The Hill. “Victims and survivors deserve justice without delay.”
Hasan was working as a military psychiatrist in November 2009, when he opened fire on the Fort Hood treatment center where troops were preparing to deploy to Afghanistan. He shouted “Allahu akbar” – “God is great” – before killing 13 people and injuring 32 others. The attack ended when he was shot dead by civil security officers at the scene, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down.
Hasan acted as his own lawyer during his 2013 trial, during which he admitted that “the evidence will clearly show that I am the shooter.” The American-born Muslim said he had “switched sides” and turned against the United States because of its military actions in the Middle East.
The military jury found Hasan guilty on all counts. He was discharged from the army and sentenced to death, triggering an automatic appeal process that only ended when the Supreme Court rejected his final petition in the spring of 2025.
Hasan is one of four people currently on military death row – all convicted of murder – according to the Death Penalty Information Center. They are all incarcerated at the American disciplinary barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
This undated photo provided by the Bell County Sheriff’s Department shows former Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Hasan.
Uncredited/Bell County Sheriff’s Department/Bell County Sheriff’s Department
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Uncredited/Bell County Sheriff’s Department/Bell County Sheriff’s Department
The last execution by a military firing squad was in 1945.
The first recorded execution by shooting on what would become American soil took place in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1608, when one of the colony’s first council members, Captain George Kendall, was put to death for mutiny. Since then, firing squads have been used sparingly, including during the Civil War.
“On the one hand, it’s one of our earliest forms of execution,” said Deborah Denno, a professor at Fordham Law School who has studied execution methods for 36 years. “On the other hand, it’s always been controversial because people associate it with extreme barbarity and … the Wild West.”
The U.S. military last executed someone by firing squad in 1945: Private Eddie Slovik was shot for desertion in France, the only U.S. soldier to be executed for that reason since the Civil War.
“They didn’t even tell his wife he was executed; they just said he died in Europe,” journalist Charles Glass, who wrote a book about World War II deserters, told NPR in 2013.
Most known U.S. military executions during World War II took place by hanging, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. The last time the U.S. military carried out any execution was in 1961, when Private John Bennett was hanged for the rape and attempted murder of a young Austrian woman in 1955.
“So far, we have pretty much stopped executing people through the military justice system,” said Eugene Fidell, who teaches military justice at Yale Law School.
The military officially suspended the death penalty after a 1983 court ruling, but reinstated it the following year and specifically designated lethal injection as the standard method. Fidell says that changed with new Army regulations in 2023.
“The regulations have been amended so that the choice or method of execution is left to the discretion of the president,” he said. “And obviously the president in this case approved the use of the firing squad.”
Under current rules, once the president approves an execution, the secretary of the army decides the time, place and method, which will take place within 60 to 150 days.
Fidell said he was not surprised by Trump’s endorsement, given his administration’s embrace of the death penalty overall and the seriousness of Hasan’s offenses. But he suggested some might find the social media announcement inappropriate.
“The military has not been executed since 1961, and yet we are faced with a truly serious case,” Fidell said. “I think it would have been much better to choose a more formal and dignified way to disseminate this information.”
The Pentagon has not held a formal press briefing since May.
The death penalty is already under scrutiny
This photo provided by the South Carolina Department of Corrections shows the state’s death chamber in Columbia, South Carolina, including the electric chair, right, and a firing squad chair, left.
AP/South Carolina Department of Corrections
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AP/South Carolina Department of Corrections
Denno, who studies the death penalty, doesn’t think the timing of the Pentagon’s announcement is a coincidence.
Denno says Pike’s case “is probably the worst that’s ever happened.” But it’s far from the only botched legal injection in recent years, she says, highlighting what she calls a trend of convicts being “unnecessarily tortured” that has prompted some jurisdictions to seek alternatives.
The Justice Department made firing squads available for federal executions earlier this year, following a directive from Trump. Seven states now have firing squads as a method of execution, which Denno said is the highest number ever recorded.
Denno claims that firing squads are “the least inhumane method of execution we have” because, when used correctly, death can occur within seconds.
But she acknowledges that those, too, have been plagued by problems, including last year in South Carolina, when an autopsy found that shooters may have prolonged a prisoner’s death by missing his heart.
“There is a humane way to take a life. It’s called life without parole,” said Lain, the author.
Lain says lethal injections, because of their relative lack of blood, have kept the death penalty “out of sight, out of mind” for many people over the past five decades.
But she sees signs of change. Analysis of data from the Death Penalty Information Center shows that death sentences have decreased by 90 percent over the past three decades. Fewer than 50 new death sentences have been imposed each year since 2015. A 2025 Gallup poll places public support for the death penalty at its lowest level in five decades, with opposition highest among younger generations.
“The death penalty in this country is slowly dying,” she said. She believes the federal government’s embrace of the firing squad, including in Hasan’s case, could speed up the process even further.
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